How to understand late-period Steve Martin. - By Nathan Heller - Slate Magazine

Late-Period Steve MartinHow to understand the actor, novelist, essayist, playwright, banjo player, crotch-centric variety show performer, and Oscar co-host.

By Nathan HellerPosted Thursday, March 4, 2010, at 6:23 PM ET

Read the rest of Slate's coverage of the 82^nd Academy Awards here.

For those who have some aspiration in the arts, this is a good time to aspire to be Steve Martin. The actor has spent so many hours on honorary daises of late that getting tapped to co-host the Oscars—this weekend he will lead the ceremony for the third time in a decade, more than any other recent host—seems less a tribute than a kind of expert summons. In 2005, Martin accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the closest thing to a lifetime achievement award that Washington bestows on funnymen. Two years later, he was feted at the Kennedy Center Honors. His bluegrass album, meanwhile—The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo—earned him, just a few weeks back, his second banjo Grammy of the new millennium. This sounds like, but is not, the basis for a joke that Steve Martin might make.