Word: bombecks
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Your cover story on Erma Bombeck [LIVING, July 2] was a revealing close-up of that gifted lady. I must be a maverick. I am not one of her fans. But I admire her ability and the self-discipline she brings to her work. If she has been able to ease the strain of thousands of harassed housewives and mothers dealing with their daily chores, so much the better. Catherine T. Squires New London...
...Bombeck's success has spawned a split-level cottage industry. In newspapers throughout the land, local scribblers focus on the foibles of their own lives and families to win sympathetic chuckles from readers. And readers cannot seem to get enough. Most of these Bombeckians receive more mail by far than their publications' other life-style columnists, some are nationally syndicated, and a few have had their work collected in book form. None are precise Erma clones, and they wryly observe life from varieties of settings including city apartments and even Embassy Row. But wherever they call home...
...Mass., the shy, dark-haired wife of a silverware-company executive can be as reserved as the framed family pictures in the living room. But beneath the propriety is the heart of a humorist. Dykstra struggled to be a comic writer for a decade, but got little encouragement until Bombeck responded to her advice-seeking letter by urging perseverance, "because there isn't enough humor in the world." Dykstra pressed on, and two years ago began selling" whimsical pieces to the Boston Herald. Last year she was given her own weekly column, "That's Life," which appears...
...Stewart, 41, settles down at the typewriter four times each week to record household observations in the best Bombeck tradition. The difference is in the voice: Stewart has a much deeper one. D.L., who was known as Denny before legally changing his name to initials, is a liberated husband of 20 years and the father of four. In a Dayton Journal Herald column, he writes about the ordinary upsets at his tri-level home in the bedroom community of Beaverbrook, Ohio. Stewart has not always been one of the dinette set, however. In the beginning, he wanted to be another...
...project turns out to be playing rock music to the house plants, the consequences for the plants, he writes, are surreal: "They're all deaf and two of them are starting to grow zits. And last night our Boston fern's hair caught fire." Stewart remembers when Bombeck wrote at the Dayton paper early in her career. "I wouldn't say that I looked at her and saw she was making $40 million and said, 'God what a racket!' But she certainly gave me an inspiration." -By J. D. Reed