In “Comedy Is Hard to Quit: 9 Months at the Comedy Cellar, New York’s Most Diehard Club,” writer Jessica Pilot spends her nights watching shows at the famed Village club, gets in good with stand-ups like Colin Quinn and Jim Norton, and otherwise attempts to use comedy to claw her way out of a black depression. Along the way Pilot ruminates on the contrast between the hilarious legacy of the club, and the abject despair that caused her, as well as a host of other comics, to reach out and use stand-up to pull themselves out. “Great art comes from great suffering. I know it sounds fucking cliche, but it’s true for me. Comedy for me is a process of expressing–and really healing myself,” late stand-up Mike DeStefano tells her one night. Is there a greater kind of love than that?
