Obscenity and drug arrests had neutralized Lenny Bruce even before he died of an overdose of heroin in 1966. Few clubs would risk employing him. His lacerating attacks on social convention had evolved into convoluted harangues against the legal system that was successfully muffling him. He stuffed himself with soda and candy bars, a junkie's diet, and became fat. He undertook his own defense in court and, like a character out of Kafka, became lost before the law. His annual income in the late '50s and early '60s averaged $100,000; in 1965 he was...
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