This biography of the legendary political humorist reveals the life behind his Washington Post columns, featuring never-before-published photos, documents, and interviews.
The world is thick with commentators who are indistinguishable, in their pretensions to glamour and wisdom, from the political knaves that inspire their furious discourse...The late and legendary Art Buchwald (1925-2007), the subject of Michael Hill’s admiring biography, Funny Business, was cut from a different cloth...Short and a bit of a pudge, he primarily wrote satirical newspaper columns...He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, though he parked seven or eight cigars there most days...His praises are well worth singing...Mr. Hill, a historical researcher who has worked with a wide range of luminaries, including John McCain, Walter Mondale and Ken Burns, begins with Buchwald’s recollection of his rough start...Yet Buchwald had big dreams...He joined the Marines at 17, seeing action in the Marshall Islands during World War II, then used the GI Bill at the University of Southern California and for a study program that took him to Paris...Mr. Hill tells us that Buchwald harvested plenty of bucks, both from his column (and column collections) and from the lecture circuit...By the late 1970s, his annual salary was around $2 million in today’s dollars...There was a dark lining to his golden cloud, including hospitalization for depression and the collapse of his marriage.
... brisk and engaging biography ... Meticulously researched and delivered in a taut, almost staccato style, Funny Business glides along the surface of Buchwald’s remarkable life, venturing wide but not especially deep ... The first two-thirds of Funny Business reads like a journalistic fairy tale ... Hill skillfully chronicles Buchwald’s ups and downs, relying heavily on a treasure trove of correspondence he unearthed: letters between Buchwald and A-list celebrities on both coasts, including Ted Kennedy and Charlton Heston. Some of these missives are more illuminating, and funnier, than others. At times, the book reads less like a biography and more like a document dump ... contains plenty of laughs but also elicits pangs of sadness. The reader feels sad for Buchwald, who for so long felt compelled to hide his struggle with depression. Sad for the passing of an era when the nation had a common conversation, even if it was one conducted in raised voices. And sad for today’s comedians, inheritors of the Buchwald tradition, who must find ways to be funny when the news satirizes itself.
In this affectionate book, Hill tells the story of Buchwald’s fascinating life, marked by bouts of depression that required hospitalization, through a selection of his funniest articles and speeches and previously unpublished correspondence with members of the Kennedy family, William F. Buckley Jr., P.G. Wodehouse, and others...The result is a tapas bar of a text, bite-sized snacks that add up to a satisfying whole. It’s an incomplete picture—Hill mentions Buchwald’s play Sheep on the Runway but not his absurdist English-language contributions to the dialogue in Jacques Tati’s film Playtime—yet Buchwald fans will enjoy revisiting his work...A heartfelt tribute to one of American journalism’s most influential jesters.
