When doctors told Art Buchwald that his kidneys were
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. “[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 Brokaw
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