PositiveThe Know...Tragedy Plus Time (named after the comedy axiom Comedy is tragedy plus time) may be a memoir, but its present-tense tone and trembling details give it an in-your-ear immediacy ... As Cayton-Holland captures his childhood in Spielbergian freeze-frames of ’80s youth, then traces his rise in Denver’s scrappy alt-comedy scene (which he helped create) onto mainstream clubs like Comedy Works, he’s soaked with the sense that something violent and defining will happen at any moment. Lydia, emotionally alluring and often joyous but intimidating in her intellect, became haunted ... but the most harrowing parts of the book — where she’s admitted into the psych ward at Denver Health after overdosing on pills, and where she takes her own life with a gun, only to be found later in her bed by her brother).
