Word: humorists
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DIED. LEWIS GRIZZARD, 47, humorist; from complications following heart surgery; in Atlanta. "A Faulkner for just plain folks" was how one publisher characterized Grizzard, who made hay of everyday angst and irritation in a syndicated column and 14 books -- not to mention on speaking tours and sundry media gigs. The titles of Grizzard's best-known works sum up his puckish view of the world, as filtered through his experiences as a multimarried Southern male child of the '50s: Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself and My Daddy Was a Pistol...
...Garrison Keillor's newest volume of short stories, entitled The Book of Guys(easy to understand, no big words), is actually a brilliant work of metabuffoonery, a calculated and strategic maneuver meant to keep the critics guessing? One would like to think so. Why else would Keillor, wry humorist and folksy radio personality, populate his stories with Neanderthals? Many of Keillor's narrators and protagonists, perplexed by the emotional machinations of modern women, can only shrug their shoulders, reach for another beer and perhaps scratch themselves. One story, written in verse, has the narrator muse...
...general it is, you always sound much smarter, and if you're a humorist, you can always find something. It's harder, in some ways it makes me feel grown up because it's not like, "Oh there are those grownups in the White House and when we get there it'll be better." Now it's us. It's scary in a way. You can see where we [our generation] is just like everybody else...
Buchwald tells the story in the short, strong declarative sentences that are his style -- an artful, solid kind of brick masonry. Twice in his adult years, he has fallen into serious psychological depressions. "For a humorist," Buchwald admits, "I think a lot about death. During both my depressions, I contemplated suicide. My main concern was that I would not make the New York Times obituary page." He consulted a Dr. Morse in 1962: "What made him unique among psychiatrists I have known is that he stretched out on his couch and the patient sat in the chair. Morse would stare...
...sturdy and precocious self- possession. He shares with his father, he says, the habit of smiling no matter what -- a sort of armor, a mask of self-containment. Buchwald writes: "I must have been six or seven when I said, 'This stinks. I am going to become a humorist.' " He got some minuscule revenge by refusing to be Bar Mitzvahed, which grieved his father, and by running away to join the Marines once World War II started. The Marines, he says, were the best foster home he had and made...