Leaving Home: A Memoir

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 254 pages. Illustrations. Endpaper illustration. Inscribed by the author. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Derived from a Kirkus review: Humorist Buchwald turns serious, albeit not wholly so, in this affecting memoir of his painful youth and early manhood. The author's father, an impoverished draper, couldn't afford to make a home for young Art and his three older sisters, so the children shuttled about N.Y.C.'s foster-care system for most of the Depression. WW II gave him a chance to leave a hurtful past behind, and he took it, lying about his age to enlist in the Marines. After returning unscathed from the Pacific (where he served as an ordnance specialist in a fighter squadron), Sgt. Buchwald took his discharge and used the GI Bill to enroll at USC. Despite discovering that he lacked a high-school diploma, the university allowed him to attend classes as a special student. But after three fulfilling years there, Buchwald learned that his government stipend could be used to study in Paris. He transferred almost immediately and found the City of Light much to his liking. In relatively short order, he gained employment as a Variety stringer and convinced a Herald Tribune editor to let him write a column for $25 a week. At the close of this memoir, he's typing ``Paris After Dark'' by Art Buchwald. An often brutally frank account in which Buchwald reveals an affecting capacity for reflection without lapsing into pathos or losing the light touch that's gained him fame and fortune. The rest of the story can't come soon enough. Arthur "Art" Buchwald (October 20, 1925 - January 17, 2007) was an American humorist best known for his column in The Washington Post, which in turn was carried as a syndicated column in many other newspapers. His column focused on political satire and commentary. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in 1982 and in 1986 was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1949 he left USC and bought a one-way ticket to Paris. Eventually, he got a job as a correspondent for Variety in Paris. In January 1950, he took a sample column to the offices of the European edition of The New York Herald Tribune. Titled "Paris After Dark", it was filled with scraps of offbeat information about Parisian nightlife. Buchwald was hired and joined the editorial staff. His column caught on quickly, and Buchwald followed it in 1951 with another column, "Mostly About People". They were fused into one under the title "Europe's Lighter Side". Buchwald's columns soon began to recruit readers on both sides of the Atlantic. In November 1952, Buchwald wrote a column in which he attempted to explain the Thanksgiving holiday to the French, using garbled French translations such as "Kilometres Deboutish" for Miles Standish; Buchwald considered it his favorite column, and it was later re-run every Thanksgiving during Buchwald's lifetime. Buchwald also enjoyed the notoriety he received when U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's press secretary, Jim Hagerty, took seriously a spoof press conference report claiming that reporters asked questions about the president's breakfast habits. After Hagerty called his own conference to denounce the article as "unadulterated rot," Buchwald famously retorted, "Hagerty is wrong. I write adulterated rot." On August 24, 1959, TIME magazine, in reviewing the history of the European edition of The Herald Tribune, reported that Buchwald's column had achieved an "institutional quality." While in Paris, Buchwald became the only correspondent to substantively interview Elvis Presley, most notably at the Prince de Galles Hotel, where the soon-to-be Sgt. Presley was staying during a weekend off from his Army stint in Germany. Presley's impromptu performances at the Le Lido piano, as well as his singing for the showgirls after most of the customers had left the nightclub, became legendary following its inclusion in Buchwald's bestselling book, I'll Always Have Paris. Buchwald returned to the United States in 1962 and was syndicated by Tribune Media Services. His column appeared in more than 550 newspapers at its height, and he published more than 30 books in his lifetime.