The art of stand-up has one of the longest apprenticeships. (“It’s not fine art,” George Carlin liked to say. “But it is an art. It is a vulgar art.”) The careers of comedians can take decades just to gain momentum.Stand-ups need stage time to develop; the best among them find theirvoices in conversation with the work of other comedians. Carlin,inspired by the success of Danny Kaye,moved at a steady clip. He had already done radio and TV and movies bythe time he landed a gig at the Frontier Hotel in Vegas in 1967,earning $12,500 a week. Wearing a suit, he entertained businessmen andtheir wives with impressions and standard straight-man jokes. But hewas a true comic spirit, hard-wired to upend any kind of complacency,and having been stirred up by Lenny Bruce,he was no longer able to restrain his angrier self. He got himselfsuspended for using the word “ass,” then cursed again and got fired,which ended his run as a “people pleaser.” Carlin created his own rulesfor the next 40 years; lucky for us, the urge to please never returned.

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UnrepentantCarlin was an implacable foe of soft words.

After the Frontier, Carlinreturned to what he called his “gymnasium,” the small clubs and cafeswhere comics hone their material. He re-emerged as a raging hippieoriginal, doing keenly acerbic shows at Carnegie Hall.On cable, he was even more provocative. His acute mind chronicled theinanities of contemporary culture and religion and race. “Class Clown,”his 1972 album (still considered a masterpiece among comedians),included “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” the legendarybit about the way Americans avoid words that convey reality. How wetalk became one of Carlin’s lifelong themes. In another well-known riffon euphemisms, he listed every imaginable racist slur along withexample after example of “soft language” (toilet paper becomingbathroom tissue, slums becoming substandard housing). By the time hewas host of the debut of “Saturday Night Live,” in 1975, he was a bona fide star. He was 38.

Withmore verve than he had when he offended the Vegas conferees, he toreinto the beliefs of his new fans — the countercultural crowd, lapsedCatholics, liberals and their politically correct kids.Self-righteousness needed to be punctured, and no one was immune:feminists who couldn’t find the humor in rape; smug save-the-planetactivists; greedy baby boomers (“Whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgentpeople with a simple philosophy: Gimme it, it’s mine!!”)He fiercely allied himself with the underdog, but he didn’t let theunderdog off the hook: “Everybody’s at the mall, scratching his ass,picking his nose, taking his credit card out of his fanny pack andbuying a pair of sneakers with lights in them.”

Offstage, he wasa kind man who was unusually generous with young comedians. Liz Miele,who is now 23, was 15 when she wrote to 45 comics seeking advice. Tworesponded: Judd Apatowurged her to study English. Carlin called. He told her to keep writing,always. Four years later, they met for a soda in the lobby of theCarlyle, where he opened his laptop and showed her how he organizedthousands of idea files. She sent him progress reports, and he cheeredher on until two days before he died. Danny Lobell, 25, interviewedCarlin twice on his radio show. On the phone, they’d commiserate abouthumiliating subway rides home after awful sets.

In anotherinterview, Carlin said that his early aspirations for mainstreamsuccess had blinded him to the original outlaw within himself — the kidwho’d been ejected from summer camp, the high-school dropout, the AirForce demotee. “I’ve spent the first 45 years of my life trying tofigure out who I am,” he said.

This singularity is what thegreatest comics strive to render onstage — but it has to be funny. Theinstrument is the self. The toughest crowds are other comedians, soit’s significant that after Carlin died the conversations at open mikesand A-list clubs weren’t about the 130 appearances on “The TonightShow,” the 25 albums, three best-selling books or four Grammy awards.They quoted their favorite material and admired how Carlin didn’t needthe crutch of punch lines back to back. Comics usually cling to theirkiller bits, but Carlin, who had plenty, risked starting fresh for eachof his 14 HBOspecials. He also assumed the full scope of his intelligence onstage,something not many comics will allow themselves. He passionately lovedlanguage; he danced with it. His subjects became increasingly dark —wars, famine, human extinction. By the end, he was confronting his owndeath, which even some comedians found bleak. But through the hardlabor of his vulgar art, he had earned the right to stand up onstageunrepentant, as himself.

Lewis Black still cherishes a phonecall of support he received from Carlin during Black’s ownapprenticeship, the length of which he calls “staggering.” Stand-up isultimately an oral tradition. “It’s comics passing on to comics how tobecome a comic,” Black says. “When you begin to comprehend what Carlinwas doing, you’ve arrived in an extraordinary place. He’s theevolutionary step.”