On Culture and Society

Sincerity and Authenticity, by Lionel Trilling. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 199 pp.

The comedian Lenny Bruce occasionally used to open nightclub performances by stating his intention to piss on the audience. “I’m going to piss on you,” he would announce. This being greeted usually by much laughter and applause, Bruce would then say:

Always so much acceptance, you see that? I can’t take the bit out. . . . I just started it as a gag once, you know? And they just said, hooray, hooray, hooray! But just let me do a few talk bits. No! Piss on us first, then you’ll do the rest of it.

What Lenny Bruce caught in his unique idiom has become the object of ...