Richard Lewis claimed that he abstained from masturbation because he worried he “might give himself something.” It was one of his many comic confessions effectively capturing how anxiety becomes not only a condition but a lifestyle. Attributing his lifelong struggle with worry, fear and insecurity to his family’s dysfunction, he also insisted that his dog committed suicide to escape the perpetual anxiety of the Lewis household. It was a Jewish home in a small town of New Jersey where, before Springsteen, the late comic said, “They had nothing to chant.” They would walk around the streets pumping their fists in the air silently.
His anxiety was, by his own description, a “blessing and a curse.” It was a curse for obvious reasons, along with his belief that it contributed to his alcoholism, but also a blessing because, as he believed, “it made me funnier.”
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