Lewis Black pens his own dark comedy

Lewis Black, the angrier-than-thou stand-up comic known for his rants on ''The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," always wanted to write a book. After all, Black earned an MFA at Yale, and spent years trying to get his plays produced. But it took Black's biting riffs on politics, celebrity, and the absurdity of everyday life to score him a book deal.

Simon & Schuster released Black's ''Nothing's Sacred," a blend of bits and biography, this month. Black, calling recently from his tour bus, talked about President Bush, the Bible, and bar mitzvahs. He's at the Orpheum Theatre tomorrow night.

Things seemed to be going so well for you. Why spoil it by writing a memoir?

Nobody's ever asked me to write anything. I waited my whole life for somebody to ask me to write. I was a playwriting major, and nobody showed any interest in my writing. With this, I wanted people to understand why it was that I look at the world the way I do. I didn't know if anybody thought that was interesting or not, but that was the story I thought I could tell.

It's amazing how much your mom saved. Is it disturbing to have your bar mitzvah invitation preserved so nicely?

It's frightening. I think my mother always thought we were going to build a museum to us. I believe she still has all of my papers from elementary school through high school. I broke my two front teeth, and she might have preserved how they were going to fix them.

You clearly started to lose faith in adults at an early age.

When they told me to get under my desk to protect myself from a nuclear attack, I literally was thinking, you can't be serious.

So why did you continue to do well at school? You finished first in your high school class.

Fear or my parents yelling and screaming. Back then, too, it was completely different. Adults, as much as I thought they were nuts, they were in charge. They could take away certain privileges. And if you look at my pictures, I'm not like the kind of kid who looked like he was going to fare well if he ran away from home.

This book isn't just a memoir. You have bits that might end up in your stand-up. Politics, for example. Are you more or less hopeful since the last election?

The only hope I have is that I believe inherently in the good of the American people. That's about it. I just don't believe we know how to vote.

Did [Senator John] Kerry run a good campaign?

It was awful. Outside of [Michael] Dukakis, wow. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and carry a large photo of Bush standing on the carrier that said, 'Mission Accomplished.' Every time he was asked a question he just should have pointed at it.

How much has your act changed since last year when you were here?

I'd say it's about 70 percent different. Where last time a lot of it was about Janet Jackson, it's now focused more on gay marriage and the elections and the Bible. Basically that a lot of the problems that we're having -- it's not red state and blue state. It's the fact that I believe the Christians have a tendency to interpret the Old Testament, and they don't really know what they're talking about because it's not their book. If they liked our book so much they could have included it in their book. And they didn't. We as Jews respect the fact that it's their book, and we don't interpret the New Testament, so I don't want them interpreting ours. And that we Jews -- there's lots of us around -- if they need the book interpreted for them, we'll do it. If the price is right.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com