How does the son of a Presbyterian minister wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for writing a wildly inaccurate newspaper column read by millions of people? America’s resident wiseass tells his life story with the humor you’d expect from a man who made a career out of making fun of pretty much everything.
[Barry's] prose style hasn’t matured either, thank heavens. It’s as ideally sophomoric as ever, if more rueful around the edges, what with civilization aflame and all that ... Class Clown, as funny books go, is a home run—albeit a shallow, wind-aided home run. Barry leans heavily on old clips of his writing to fill this book up, and that’s fine, but near the end the bag of leftovers grows soggy ... This book never goes too deep. Barry had two early marriages before marrying his current wife in 1996, for example, but no details are provided.
Barry is the epitome of the laugh-out-loud writer ... Barry had his share growing up, and he shares that with his audience in a mixture of gentle humor and humility.
