Word: bombecks
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...handsome new house in Paradise Valley, overlooking Phoenix, is calm now when calm is needed. There is a secretary to intercept phone calls and a maid to chase dust balls. Bombeck does not even know if there is a septic tank. Bill and Erma have separate offices, and she is in hers by 8 each morning, after walking a "killer mile" or puffing along with a videotaped exercise routine. At her desk she is all business. When she has time, she weaves twigs and bits of string into a play and says that the first act is in workable order...
...carefully chiseled way, spontaneous. Advice to imitators: to avoid marooning yourself without provisions in a trackless last paragraph, think ahead of time of your cheery ending, the gag that leaves the reader newly hopeful that joining the French Foreign Legion may not be the only answer. Bombeck is proud of never missing a deadline, and she makes a point of quoting the praise of an elderly Detroit Free
...beat," she explains; her readers would resent it. She does take risks with her writing, though she says, "You have to stand out there in your bloomers for a lot of years" before you have earned your readers' trust enough to try something radically new. Bombeck's readers have accepted a sharp departure in her latest book, Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession. Most of it is funny, the mixture of short pieces, one-liners and wry humor as usual, but there are several short, sad stories that have the quality of O. Henry's sentimental tales...
...always asked, with reference to the title of the new book, to name the oldest profession. She skips a beat, looks solemn and says, "Agriculture." It is very hard to catch her off balance. Her editor at McGraw-Hill, Gladys Justin Carr, recalls a lunch meeting in Chicago when Bombeck was publicizing her fifth book, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, hoping to match the previous sales of The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank. As Bombeck was about to begin her speech, a procession of waiters entered, each bearing...
...clack at kitchen tables and computer screens glow in closets. Who cares if the roast burns or the dog sheds on the couch? Not the scores of homemaker-columnists who are busy pounding out their copy. Such trifles must wait their turn behind dreams of hitting it big like Bombeck...