I Can't Make This Up

A memoir with a lesson in every chapter

I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons is the 2017 memoir of comedian and actor Kevin Hart, written with Neil Strauss, the author of The Game. It follows Hart from a hard childhood in North Philadelphia to sold-out arenas and lead roles in Hollywood films. The book is part memoir and part motivational guide. Each chapter tells a story and then ends with a short lesson that Hart draws from it.

Hart's tone is the one fans know from his stand-up: fast, self-mocking and honest about his own flaws. He makes fun of his height, his fears and his bad decisions. Under the jokes, the book has one steady message: success comes from work, from ownership of your choices and from refusing to quit.

Growing up in North Philadelphia

Hart was born in Philadelphia in 1979. His mother, Nancy Hart, raised him and his older brother, Robert, mostly on her own. She worked at the University of Pennsylvania and ran the home with strict rules. His father, Henry Witherspoon, was addicted to cocaine and was in and out of jail for much of Hart's childhood.

The neighborhood offered drugs, guns and easy ways to get lost. Hart watched his brother drift into that world. Robert sold drugs and became violent at home, including toward their mother. Hart says this shaped his teenage years. It showed him exactly where one path led.

His mother's answer was to fill every hour of his day. She signed him up for after-school programs, sports and activities so he had no time to get in trouble. She also demanded respect and good manners. Hart describes her as loving and frightening at once. He credits her rules and her work ethic as the base of everything he built later.

His father appears in the book as a source of pain and of comedy. Hart describes the broken promises and strange visits of an addict who loved his son in his own way. Over time Hart learns to laugh at these stories instead of being crushed by them. That habit becomes the core of his stand-up.

Finding the stage

After high school Hart drifts. He briefly attends community college and then works as a shoe salesman. Friends and coworkers tell him he is funny. He decides to try stand-up.

His first performance is at an amateur night at The Laff House in Philadelphia, under the stage name Lil Kev. It goes badly. Over the following months he is booed many times. Some crowds are brutal. He enters comedy contests outside the city and slowly improves.

His mother does not like the idea of comedy as a career. She agrees to support him for a limited time, on the condition that he go back to school if it fails. This deadline pushes him to treat comedy as a job, not a hobby.

At first Hart imitates other comedians. He copies the energy of stars he admires, such as Chris Tucker. Older comics tell him that this will never work, because audiences can tell when someone is not being himself. The turning point comes when he starts to talk about his own life: his size, his mother, his father and his fears. The material is more honest, and the crowds respond.

Learning the craft

Hart splits his time between Philadelphia and New York, chasing stage time. He describes the New York clubs as a hard school, where veteran comics test and toughen younger ones. One of them, the comedian Keith Robinson, becomes a mentor and friend. Hart learns to write and rewrite jokes, to study a crowd, and to accept that every bad set teaches something.

He also learns the business. He sees comics with talent who never make it because they are late, rude or lazy. Hart decides that he will be the most reliable person in any room. He shows up early, does the work and says yes to small gigs. This becomes one of his central lessons: talent gets you in the door, but discipline keeps you there.

Hollywood false starts

In the early 2000s Hart gets his first chances on screen. He appears in the comedy film Paper Soldiers, has a part on Judd Apatow's college sitcom Undeclared, and plays a role in Scary Movie 3. A network gives him his own sitcom. Then the show is canceled quickly, and other projects fall through.

Hart is crushed. He realizes that he had let executives shape his comedy. They wanted a safe, generic version of him. When it failed, he had nothing of his own to fall back on. He resolves to stop waiting for Hollywood to make him a star.

This is the book's turning point. Hart decides to build his audience directly. He tours constantly, including small cities that bigger comedians skip. He uses social media early to talk to fans. He pays attention to ticket sales and to which markets respond.

Building his own audience

The strategy works. His stand-up specials grow his fan base: I'm a Grown Little Man in 2009, Seriously Funny in 2010, and the concert film Laugh at My Pain in 2011. He invests his own money in Laugh at My Pain and releases it in theaters. The tour behind it grosses more than 15 million dollars, and the film earns about 7.7 million dollars at the box office on a small budget. The title captures his approach. He turns the worst parts of his life, from his father's addiction to his mother's death, into material.

His mother dies of cancer in 2007, before his biggest success. Hart describes her death as one of the hardest moments of his life. He writes about her with deep love and regret that she did not see what he became.

Film studios now come to him on his terms. He stars in hit comedies such as Think Like a Man, Ride Along and Central Intelligence. He builds his own production company and business ventures. He insists on owning his work wherever he can.

Marriage, money and mistakes

Hart is open about his failures. He marries his first love, Torrei, in 2003, and they have two children. He describes the marriage as falling apart under the pressure of his career and his own behavior. He admits that both partners did damage, and that he was not the husband he should have been. They divorce in 2011.

He also writes about drinking too much, spending carelessly and falling into debt during his early success. Each time he gains something, he risks losing it through his own choices. He learns to look at himself honestly, to cut out habits that hurt him, and to build a team he trusts.

He writes about fatherhood and about trying to give his children the presence his own father could not. He describes his relationship with Eniko Parrish, whom he marries in 2016.

The lessons

The lessons at the end of each chapter repeat a few big ideas:

• Work is the only shortcut. Hart believes most people want success without the hours. He outworks everyone around him.
• Own your story. His best material comes from his real pain. Hiding it made him generic.
• Failure is information. Every booed set and canceled show teaches him something.
• Bet on yourself. When gatekeepers say no, build your own path.
• Look in the mirror. He takes responsibility for his marriage, drinking and money troubles instead of blaming others.

How the book is written

The book reads like Hart talking. Neil Strauss, who has co-written memoirs with musicians and celebrities, shapes Hart's spoken stories into chapters while keeping his voice: loud, self-deprecating and full of tangents. Hart often stops a story to mock himself or to address the reader directly.

The chapters move roughly in order, from childhood to stardom. Each one builds to a moment of failure or embarrassment and then explains what Hart learned from it. The structure makes the book easy to read in short sittings. It also makes the message repetitive in places, since many lessons return to the same theme of hard work.

The book is most powerful when Hart writes about his parents. His mother's strictness and his father's addiction are the two forces he keeps returning to. One gave him discipline. The other gave him material, and a model of what not to become. Much of the book is his attempt to make peace with both.

What the critics say

Kirkus Reviews calls Hart a magnetic storyteller on the page. Some readers find that the lessons border on platitudes, that the book runs long and that the self-help sections are less fresh than the stories that lead to them.

Who should read it

Read it if you are a fan of Kevin Hart or stand-up comedy, or if you want an entertaining story about turning failure into fuel. It suits anyone chasing a creative career who needs a push to keep going.