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Humorous reading
May. 13th, 2012 02:42 pmI LOVE YOU, DAVE
Dave Barry was one of my earlier writing influences; I was a teenager when I found his columns collected in a book ... then two ... then more. His column about riding along on a press junket for George Bush's presidential campaign - I believe it was in 1988 - brought me to tears of laughter. (George himself would bring me to tears again more than once in early 1991, for different reasons. But that's a different post.) His "Mister Language Person" columns inspired a few of my own in a column I wrote under a pseudonym many years later while working at my first newspaper.
If you want to read other good old humorists, I highly recommend Erma Bombeck (on having a name tag slapped on one side of her chest at a party she attended, she looked down ruefully, then at the other side, asking, "And what shall we name the other one?"), Jean Shepherd (a man, despite the spelling; he's writer and narrator of "A Christmas Story"), Frank Gilbreth ("Cheaper by the Dozen"), Lewis Grizzard (despite having some offensive ideas - but I think these writers can still be valuable), Jean Kerr, and pretty much anyone Johnny Carson might have interviewed on his show. I read all of these before I was ten years old, and a lot of it still holds up now.
Dave Barry was one of my earlier writing influences; I was a teenager when I found his columns collected in a book ... then two ... then more. His column about riding along on a press junket for George Bush's presidential campaign - I believe it was in 1988 - brought me to tears of laughter. (George himself would bring me to tears again more than once in early 1991, for different reasons. But that's a different post.) His "Mister Language Person" columns inspired a few of my own in a column I wrote under a pseudonym many years later while working at my first newspaper.
If you want to read other good old humorists, I highly recommend Erma Bombeck (on having a name tag slapped on one side of her chest at a party she attended, she looked down ruefully, then at the other side, asking, "And what shall we name the other one?"), Jean Shepherd (a man, despite the spelling; he's writer and narrator of "A Christmas Story"), Frank Gilbreth ("Cheaper by the Dozen"), Lewis Grizzard (despite having some offensive ideas - but I think these writers can still be valuable), Jean Kerr, and pretty much anyone Johnny Carson might have interviewed on his show. I read all of these before I was ten years old, and a lot of it still holds up now.
