In the parlance of the time he was known as a “sick comedian.” He was also called a junkie, a hipster, a satirist, a shaman, a free-speech martyr, “a disease of America,” “a nightclub Cassandra,” and a prophet. But Lenny Bruce, the caustic comedian who gained a following in the late 1950s and early 1960s, called himself something else: a deviate. “All my humor is based on destruction and despair,” he said. “If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline.”