The title of Dave Barry’s latest New York Times bestseller is almost as long as the book itself, Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up. However, the book is more serious than you’d expect from that title.
Although Barry talks a little about his childhood, and how much he enjoyed it, he also talks about his father’s alcoholism and his mother’s depression and eventually suicide. It wasn’t an easy time for Barry who was in his twenties when his parents died. But, he stresses he learned good, old-fashioned Midwestern values from his parents.
At seventy-seven, Barry’s experiences at school were different from mine since I’m nine years younger. Like Bill Bryson, he talks about duck-and-cover drills at school. He also talks about polio, and the shot that changed the scare for the better. Wel, for the better for some. Barry is still scared of shots.
Much of the book covers Barry’s years working in newspapers, and writing his humor column. He says, deep down he’s still a newspaper man. He has been retired from that aspect of his career for years now.
While he covers his time as a humor columnist covering Presidential campaigns, my favorite parts of the book were the sections about The Rock Bottom Remainders, the band he plays in that’s made up of authors such as Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Mitch Albom. I was lucky enough to see them in concert in Greenwich Village years ago. It was the first time Stephen King rejoined the group after he was hit by the van. I have the feeling if Barry hadn’t written humor, he would have wanted to be in a band.
Class Clown is an enjoyable memoir, a little repetitive at times, and not as funny as the title indicates, but still fun.
Dave Barry’s website is https://davebarry.com/
Class Clown by Dave Barry. Simon & Schuster, 2025. ISBN 9781668021781 (hardcover), 256p.
FTC Full Disclosure – Library book
Dave is a good guy, and a funny one. I still remember one year, we were in London taking the bus to the airport to go home, and Jackie was reading one of Dave’s columns in the International Herald Tribune, and laughing, unusual for her. His zany sense of humor is generally more in touch with my own. As mentioned yesterday (in my review), we’ve met Dave several times at his talks, book signings, and Rock Bottom Remainders concerts, and I’ve been contributing to his blog for decades, so I am not unbiased, but if you need a laugh (and who doesn’t?) in this awful timeline, Dave is one of the guys who can give it to you, though I’d recommend one of his earlier books like DAVE BARRY TURNS 40 or DAVE BARRY’s BOOK OF BAD SONGS (a classic). I enjoyed this. I did not know the details of his parents’ deaths before, or some of the other details. Good stuff.