Lighten Up, George

New Yrok: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1991. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good in very good dust jacket. Signed by author. DJ has slight wear and soiling.. 345 p. From Wikipedia: "Arthur "Art" Buchwald (October 20, 1925 January 17, 2007) was an American humorist best known for his long-running 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. Art Buchwald was born to an Austrian-Hungarian Jewish immigrant family. He was the son of Joseph Buchwald, a curtain manufacturer, and Helen Klineberger, who later spent 35 years in a mental hospital. He was the youngest of four, with three older sisters Alice, Edith, and Doris. Buchwald's father put him in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York when the family business failed during the Great Depression. Buchwald was moved about between several foster homes, including a Queens boarding house for sick children (he had rickets) operated by Seventh-day Adventists. He stayed in the foster home until he was 5. Buchwald, his father and sisters were eventually reunited and lived in Hollis, a residential community in Queens. Buchwald did not graduate from Forest Hills High School, and ran away from home at age 17. He wanted to join the United States Marine Corps during World War II but was too young to join without parental or legal guardian consent, so he bribed a drunk with half a pint of whiskey to sign as his legal guardian. From October 1942 to October 1945, he served with the Marines as part of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing. He spent two years in the Pacific Theater and was discharged from the service as a Sergeant. On his return, Buchwald enrolled at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on the G.I. Bill, despite not having his high school diploma. At USC he was managing editor of the campus magazine Wampus; he also wrote a column for the college newspaper, the Daily Trojan. The university permitted him to continue his studies after learning he had not graduated high school, but deemed him ineligible for a degree; he received an honorary doctorate from the school in 1993. In 1948 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 1949, 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, both at the Prince de Galles Hotel, where the soon-to-be Sgt. Presley was staying during a week-end off from his Army stint in Germany. Presley's impromptu performances at the Le Lido piano, as well as.