Can she talk! Here is the bitter and

bizarre struggle, the desperate hilarity,

the deep pain and anger, that created

one of the world s foremost comedians.

It is the story of Joan Rivers s obsessed

childhood and apprentice years, her

battle against doubting parents, sleazy

agents, hostile audiences in tawdry

clubs--as she says, "Dying on more

stages than Hamlet"--until literally in

one night, she burst through into the

bright light of her show-business dream.

Certain since earliest memory that

she belonged onstage, Joan Rivers sur-

vived taunts in a fat-girl youth, silence in

Catskills" showrooms, and jeers in

grimy strip joints. On her own in Man-

hattan, refusing to give up, she made

ends meet as an office temporary, steal-

ing stamps at work, hustling dimes from

pay phones, and letting friendly cooks

slip her scrambled eggs. From the freez-

ing midtown attic where she acted with

Barbra Streisand,to Chicago s comedy

crucible, Second City, where she mas-

tered the sophisticated comedy of her

predecessors Mike Nichols, Elaine May,