Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee

New Book in August:

We’re thrilled to be able to announce the publication in August this year of How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, the new book from Stewart Lee – officially the 41st Best Stand Up Ever!

We’ll be publishing to coincide with Stewart’s performances at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.

Faber’s Hannah Griffiths:

Revealing the realities of being a Faber author, editor Hannah Griffiths reflects on how the deal was struck:

When I first met Stewart Lee to talk about writing a book I said:

“Are you sure you want to do this? It’ll be hard and lonely and I’ll be constantly chasing you for approvals on copy and covers and you’ll be hanging out with your comedy mates and there’ll be a phone call from me hassling you about coming to the sales conference and … and … books isn’t TV, it isn’t all 1.3 million readers and cold beers in the green room. It’s more things like ‘you didn’t get into Sainsbury’s chart’ and ‘I’m so sorry the books didn’t get to the venue in time’ and a copy-editor will point out all your stylistic failings and you’ll probably have to proofread your book when you’re on holiday …”

He was sitting in his coat in one of the narrow, corridor-style offices in editorial. He told me how as a teenager he loved Faber’s book of monologues by the American stand-up Eric Bogosian and how he wanted to write a book along the same lines, but with notes about how he arrived at the material, about the circumstances surrounding the show and also about his techniques, improvisations, how the shows changed through the run. And that yes, he knew it would probably be hard work but he wanted to write a proper book about comedy without being made to compromise.

So I said ‘great’.