From Publishers Weekly
Brash comedy and a surprising bitterness fuel this unsparing account of Diller's drive to make it big. Born to elderly parents in Lima, Ohio, in 1917, Phyllis Ada Driver was blessed with neither beauty nor wealth. At 20--and already pregnant--she married Sherwood Diller, a handsome, selfish ne'er-do-well who became the "Fang" in her comic monologues of domestic life; the couple had five children. Nearly 40 when she began her performing career, Diller turned a knack for relentless self-deprecation into a nightclub act. She performed in The Poets' Follies of 1955 with poet/painter/composer Weldon Kees and Beat writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti. But women were a novelty in the bar-based world of stand-up comedy, and plenty of humiliating club engagements ensued. Diller persisted, though, and while her male colleagues (Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Lenny Bruce) were pioneering 1950s "insult comedy," she turned the venom on herself and reaped its rewards. Eventually shedding her dud husband, Diller became a superstar--and the first one to go public about her plastic surgery ("I was a walking billboard for plastic surgery," she observes wryly). Retired from show business since 2002, Diller retains a dedicated fan base and an enormous interest in the world that spawned her. And considering she's the original "He's just not into me" girl, a pioneering desperate housewife, might this be the time to launch a comeback? Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
From housewife to humorist, Phyllis Diller has been making millions laugh for five decades with her groundbreaking comedy. Now the laughter continues with her uproarious autobiography.

Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse recounts the story of how, against all odds, Phyllis Diller became America's first successful and best-loved female stand-up comic. She began her professional career at age thirty-seven, in spite of the fact that she was a housewife, mother of five, and working at a radio station due to her husband's chronic unemployment. Now, fifty years later, after two traumatic marriages; extensive cosmetic surgery; numerous film, television, and stage appearances; and separate careers as an artist and piano soloist with symphony orchestras, Phyllis Diller finally tells her story.

With her trademark laugh, incredible wit, and self-deprecating humor, Phyllis Diller has etched her way into comedic history. And while her wild hair and outrageous clothes may make her look "like a lampshade in a whorehouse," her strength, self-belief, perseverance, and raucous sense of humor are what make her truly unforgettable.

About the Author
Phyllis Diller, the world's first and foremost successful female stand-up comic, has been at the top of her game for five decades.

Richard Buskin has written more than a dozen books, including biographies of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe, and Sheryl Crow. He makes his home in Chicago.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"From housewife to humorist, Phyllis Diller has been making millions laugh for five decades with her groundbreaking comedy, blazing a trail for comediennes during the fifties and sixties. She achieved this by poking fun at her own looks and frustrating life as a bored, ignored, and inept housewife. Yet while the routine broke new ground and opened the doors to subsequent generations of female standups, it also served as a form of self-therapy amid a life steeped in tragedy and turmoil." "Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse is Phyllis Diller's own story about the struggle and the pain behind the comedy and the success: her Depression-era adolescence; her marriage to a chronically unemployed first husband; the desperate attempts to stave off poverty as a professional comic while raising five children; the disastrous club engagements that coincided with homelessness and separation from her young family; and the problems that clouded her stage and screen success when a second marriage unraveled because of her new spouse's alcoholism and inner demons." Diller also describes her separate careers as an artist and as a piano soloist with symphony orchestras; her failed attempts to become a Playboy centerfold; and her outspoken attitude toward her extensive plastic surgery that earned her a special award from the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jane and Michael Stern - The New York Times

Like so many comedians, Phyllis Diller found a way to turn anguish into jokes, and her autobiography, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse, written with Richard Buskin, contains plenty of both. She married a ne'er-do-well from a family of losers, and although her husband was ''lousy at sex, the world's worst,'' they had six children (''I felt like a trampoline''). She does credit him with pushing her toward a career in show business, but only because he wanted her to be his cash cow. His meanness and stupidity were wellsprings of her humor when she started writing in the early 1950's; and while she denies he was ''Fang,'' the recurring rotten husband in her stand-up routine, it's impossible not to hear echoes of the marriage in such lines as, ''He once tried to run out on me, but the police arrested him for leaving the scene of an accident.''

Publishers Weekly