Our Daily Dead

From the Washington Post…Art Buchwald, 81, the newspaper humor columnist for more than a half-century who found new comic material in the issues that come up at the end of life, died of kidney failure last night at his son’s home in Washington, his family announced today.

“Buchwald, an owlish, cigar-chomping extrovert, zinged the high, mighty and humor-challenged. His column, syndicated to more than 550 newspapers at one point, won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1982. He also published more than 30 books.”

“Most of his books were collections of his columns, which were syndicated by the Los Angeles Times and appeared in The Washington Post. Two of his books ‘Leaving Home’(1993) and ‘I’ll Always Have Paris!’ (1996) were memoirs. They told the story of his journey from a lonely, impoverished childhood lived largely in foster homes, to the salons of the famous.”

“His entertaining, name-dropping memoirs — published in a period when some said his column was losing its edge — also won him new respect in the publishing world. Although he had been elected in 1991 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he said in a 1996 interview that ‘people don’t take humorists seriously; they don’t even call them writers.’”

“His children, he said, were initially upset with his decision to turn down dialysis treatments last year, but he insisted that he preferred to control his last days, which lasted longer than even he expected.”

“‘I don’t know if this is true or not, but I think some people, not many, are starting to wonder why I’m still around,’ he wrote while in the hospice. ‘In fact, a few are sending me get-well cards. These are the hard ones to answer.”

“‘So far things are going my way. I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn’t Die. How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don’t know where I’d go now, or if people would still want to see me if I weren’t in a hospice. But in case you’re wondering, I’m having a swell time — the best time of my life.’”

And thanks to Mr. Infospigot for this head’s up!: ‘The New York Times has a great video interview with Buchwald, done last July. He starts out by saying, “Hello, I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.” It’s four parts, something like 10 or 12 minutes total–good stuff.’

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: Washington Post, Art Buchwald, died, kidney failure, Pulitzer Prize

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 10:28 am and is filed under ODD Guests, Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.