Humor's been on the ropes, for years.
Between lingering cancel culture and an opera buffa administration that daily defies parody, you could be forgiven for thinking nothing is funny anymore. The Onion stuck in there for a while, but lately it seems to be crafting press releases for the Department of Government Efficiency.
Even Dave Barry threw in the towel, retiring from his regular column 20 years ago.
So the good news is that the wildly popular funnyman — once syndicated in 500 newspapers, with dozens of books under his belt — is back, with "Class Clown — The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up." (Simon & Schuster: $28.99).
I'll be honest — as heir to the sophisticated urban wit of Robert Benchley, in my own mind if nowhere else, I generally avoided Barry's column and, jeez, 45 previous books, including "Boogers are My Beat," which neatly explains why.
Plus Barry was syndicated in the Tribune, which for many years I refused to touch, since doing so seemed like laying flowers on the grave of its former publisher, xenophobe and Hitler bootlicker Col. Robert McCormick.
But a publicist invited me to talk with Barry and I couldn't see why not. We newspaper columnists are a vanishing breed, and I rarely get the chance to talk with one. Heck, I hardly talk to anybody anymore.
"I never set out to be an artist," Barry told me. "I set out to be a joke guy."
Mission accomplished. Though "Class Clown" begins seriously, with his parents — alcoholic father, depressive mother — in vignettes that are moving and real. I admired the details. A Swedish friend of his father, also named Dave, pronounces his name "Dafe," which made me think of the tailor in "The Inferno" squinting in the twilight. Making me the first critic to compare Dave Barry to Dante.
The book surprises, practically poking me in the eye.
His father, Barry writes, "was a fan of the great humorist Robert Benchley and owned several books of Benchley's collected columns. When I was somewhere around eleven or twelve I read those books and became obsessed with them; they definitely influenced my writing style, and I still read them today."
Ah. Did not see Benchley coming.
"I was a huge fan — still am," Barry said. "It's definitely a sobering thing if you are humor columnist, to realize nobody read him anymore."
I learned some unexpected facts about Barry, such as he attended Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington, once bumped into Bobby Kennedy, literally, the revered brother of JFK, not the anti-vax nutjob.
Being a veteran journalist myself, albeit playing AAA ball compared to Barry's big big leagues, I enjoyed his recounting the profession, from his early days at the West Chester, Pennsylvania Daily Local News to his rise at the Miami Herald and the go-go 1980s. In 1987, he and a photographer spent $8,000 to rent a helicopter to get a photo of a garbage barge, adding that today "you cannot spend $8 without prior written authorization from at least three executives."
That's not so much satire as dry reportage. Last month, in order to be compensated for a CTA bus ride, I had to secure a note from my editor, vowing that the expense is valid, and I wasn't just trying to steal $2.25 from the paper.
Between lingering cancel culture and an opera buffa administration that daily defies parody, you could be forgiven for thinking nothing is funny anymore. The Onion stuck in there for a while, but lately it seems to be crafting press releases for the Department of Government Efficiency.
Even Dave Barry threw in the towel, retiring from his regular column 20 years ago.
I'll be honest — as heir to the sophisticated urban wit of Robert Benchley, in my own mind if nowhere else, I generally avoided Barry's column and, jeez, 45 previous books, including "Boogers are My Beat," which neatly explains why.
Plus Barry was syndicated in the Tribune, which for many years I refused to touch, since doing so seemed like laying flowers on the grave of its former publisher, xenophobe and Hitler bootlicker Col. Robert McCormick.
But a publicist invited me to talk with Barry and I couldn't see why not. We newspaper columnists are a vanishing breed, and I rarely get the chance to talk with one. Heck, I hardly talk to anybody anymore.
"I never set out to be an artist," Barry told me. "I set out to be a joke guy."
Mission accomplished. Though "Class Clown" begins seriously, with his parents — alcoholic father, depressive mother — in vignettes that are moving and real. I admired the details. A Swedish friend of his father, also named Dave, pronounces his name "Dafe," which made me think of the tailor in "The Inferno" squinting in the twilight. Making me the first critic to compare Dave Barry to Dante.
The book surprises, practically poking me in the eye.
His father, Barry writes, "was a fan of the great humorist Robert Benchley and owned several books of Benchley's collected columns. When I was somewhere around eleven or twelve I read those books and became obsessed with them; they definitely influenced my writing style, and I still read them today."
Ah. Did not see Benchley coming.
"I was a huge fan — still am," Barry said. "It's definitely a sobering thing if you are humor columnist, to realize nobody read him anymore."
That's not so much satire as dry reportage. Last month, in order to be compensated for a CTA bus ride, I had to secure a note from my editor, vowing that the expense is valid, and I wasn't just trying to steal $2.25 from the paper.
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A CTA bus ride is $2.50, but soon you'll get your senior card & ride for half price.
ReplyDeleteAs so often happens when people offer corrections, it is you yourself who are mistaken. An 'L' ride is $2.50. On a Ventra card, which is what I use, a bus ride is $2.25.
Deleteim sure that at some point I read Dave Berrys column in the trib. much like with baseball ill Payton watch the cubs or the sox. try to avoid the tribalism.
ReplyDeletestill I can't remember a single thing I might have read by him. im not much for comedy as its commonly understood. something seems to have happened to whatever part of the brain that makes you laugh after 20 years of cocaine use.
I laugh most often inappropriately and sometimes cry at the stupidest shit a tv commercial for instance. anyway good on you for giving him some free press. comrades in yarns or some such I guess.
I'm happy to see that he wrote another book. I thought he had passed away, years ago. I see now that my confusion can be blamed on Harry Anderson's passing. This is why I don't play Trivial Pursuit.
ReplyDeleteDave Barry’s books are hilarious. One that comes to mind is The Book of Bad Songs.
ReplyDeleteRobert Benchley. Wow. I'm a little torn on him. Run hot and cold. (He could be charming the movies.) We're talking about humorists now. Specifically humorists that wrote for The New Yorker. Not so many of them hold up for my taste, I'm afraid. I am aware of S.J. Perelman trying to be funny as I read him. He's entirely lost on me. When my mother-in-law died last year I inherited a book of New Yorker pieces published in 1940. I've been plowing through it. This morning I read a dandy by Janet Flanner, in fact. The care put into crafting sentences and then building them into precise narratives is the common thread for me with all of these writers from the 1930s and 1940s. Humor changes with the times, obviously. But the attention given to creating work does not change. The willingness to go back in again and play with a thought, to try again another way. To cut. To fiddle. To throw away when it's just no damn good. Dave Barry is a clever man. I never had the impression he needed to work terribly hard on his stuff once the Dave Barry brand was established. I am probably wrong. I prefer Calvin Trillin in that regard. But then Dave Barry is a rich man. So what do I know?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on Benchley, but not on Perelman. His writing still amazes me; his use of language and obscure words -- I would never know what nainsnook and quahog are had I not read him -- is unmatched by any writer. You can see touches of Perelman in Barry's pieces, the way he uses misdirection to make an unexpected point. Whether Barry just "dashes off" his columns is questionable. Perelman told a number of interviewers that it sometimes took him several hours to craft a sentence to his liking, and that he considered it a good day when he completed on page of copy.
DeleteIf you're interested in other New Yorker humorists of the 1930s and '40s, try Wolcott Gibbs. His NY'er piece on Time magazine and its founder, Henry Luce, is a classic, especially the unforgettable line: "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind."
Quote for the day: "Fame is an accident."
ReplyDeleteI copied his column on how obvious it is for Parisians to identify American tourists ( puffy white gym shoes era) for my students of French. I wanted to prove that Madame had a sense of humor, in spite of her intolerance of grammar blunders.
ReplyDelete