“[Art Buchwald] has given his friends, their families, and his audiences so many laughs and so much joy through the years that that alone would be an enduring legacy. But Art has never been just about the quick laugh. His humor is a road map to essential truths and insights that might otherwise have eluded us.”—Tom BrokawWhen doctors told Art Buchwald that his kidneys were kaput, the renowned … kaput, the renowned humorist declined dialysis and checked into a Washington, D.C., hospice to live out his final days. Months later, “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die” was still there, feeling good, holding court in a nonstop “salon” for his family and dozens of famous friends, and confronting things you usually don’t talk about before you die; he even jokes about them.
Here Buchwald shares not only his remarkable experience—as dozens of old pals from Ethel Kennedy to John Glenn to the Queen of Swaziland join the party—but also his whole wonderful life: his first love, an early brush with death in a foxhole on Eniwetok Atoll, his fourteen champagne years in Paris, fame as a columnist syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, and his incarnation as hospice superstar. Buchwald also shares his sorrows: coping with an absent mother, childhood in a foster home, and separation from his wife, Ann.
He plans his funeral (with a priest, a rabbi, and Billy Graham, to cover all the bases) and strategizes how to land a big obituary in The New York Times (“Make sure no head of state or Nobel Prize winner dies on the same day”). He describes how he and a few of his famous friends finagled cut-rate burial plots on Martha’s Vineyard and how he acquired a Picasso drawing without really trying.
What we have here is a national treasure, the complete Buchwald, uncertain of where the next days or weeks may take him but unfazed by the inevitable, living life to the fullest, with frankness, dignity, and humor.
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Meant to be humorous, Did not quite reach that mark.
Great story told with humor.
Thought it would be humorous as I’d read some of his past things but this one wasn’t much good and I didn’t even finish reading it. It was a waste of money to buy on Amazon
One of America’s best humorist exits laughing. A wonderful memoir of end-of-life issues being met head on with wit and wisdom.
Entertaining as usual. LOL!!!
Inspiring and uplifting description of the experience of living through his last days on earth.
I religiously read his column for years. This book, tho charming is just to sad. He ate and drank on his problems, and this is difficult for me to read.
Truly an honest self tribute to a life wel lived.
Guess I just don’t have his sense of humor.
A realistic, positive look at what eventually will include us all: transition to the next realm. Told with his usual, loved perception. Wonderful book; wonderful attitude too, of course. Gift yourself with a reading of this book.
I really liked this book and the path he took to Heaven.
This book is everything you’d expect from a skilled and witty writer who winds up in hospice expecting to die and surrounded by people who expect him to die who doesn’t. In addition to reminiscences of his long and full life as a journalist and comments on current affairs, Buchwald also frankly discusses his thoughts about illness and death. What …
Funny, touching and strangely reassuring
Wonderful humorous book about living longer than expected.