With the possible exception of the monster-truck pull, few art forms have evolved as slowly and fitfully as stand-up comedy. Like every art form, stand-up boasts a handful of innovators who've dragged it kicking and screaming into the present, but for every Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, there are countless shtick-slinging hacks whose ambitions begin and end with securing a lucrative television deal. But Marc Maron, a leading figure of the nebulously defined "alternative comedy" movement, follows in the hallowed tradition of impassioned truth-tellers like Bruce, Pryor, and Sam Kinison, using comedy to explore weighty spiritual and moral issues and find meaning in an often dark and absurd universe. That's a tall order, but as his new book's only partly ironic title suggests, Maron has ambition to spare. An expanded adaptation of his acclaimed one-man show, The Jerusalem Syndrome chronicles, in vignettes that are often harrowing and raucously funny at the same time, Maron's decades-long quest to find his place in the world. His long, brutally honest, and thoroughly engaging journey takes him everywhere from a satanist-infested cabal of Sam Kinison flunkies, hangers-on, and druggies to a Sony-assisted pilgrimage to the Holy Land. During his search for truth, Maron embraces everything from conspiracy theories to cocaine to beatnik romanticism to brand loyalty, before ultimately acknowledging, with refreshing maturity, the enduring worth and appeal of the faith of his ancestors. The Jerusalem Syndrome is often uproariously funny, but it's also a serious and moving look at the search for a reasonable set of beliefs in a world that seems to defy order and rational explanations. The inclusion of such memorable detours as a semi-religious trek to a Philip Morris factory and a frighteningly reasoned belief that the elder George Bush is the antichrist is just icing on a surprisingly substantial cake.