Author Q&A

Art Buchwald: The Living Legend Keeps Living - And Writing

By Michael Causey, WIW Board Member

When I called Art Buchwald to discuss his illustrious past he was more interested in the pressing present. "Can you call me back in five minutes?" he asked, "I'm just finishing up a column on Bush's ethics class in the White House."

Since 1949, Buchwald has been writing a regular column—and also found time to produce other projects including the 2000 novel Stella in Heaven: Almost a Novel and the script concept behind what became the Eddie Murphy hit movie Coming to America—that skewers the self-important in all walks of life. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for "Outstanding Commentary," and in 1986 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mr. Buchwald celebrated his 80th birthday October 20 with a star-studded party at the French Embassy in Washington. He's lived in D.C. since 1962. It may be his way of thanking the town that he says has given him so much raw material.

His new collection of columns, Beating Around the Bush (Seven Stories Press), shows he's not willing to rest on past laurels or even yesterday's news. He takes delight in using his satirist's typewriter on the biggest and freshest targets: That usually means the current occupant of the White House.

We spoke Nov. 7 as he was putting the finishing touches on the column that appears in, at last count, more than 300 newspapers including The Washington Post .

At WIW we're a bunch of writers. The first question I have to ask is how have you done so many columns for so long? Do you ever get stuck?

No, it's the only thing I do. [His bio for Beating Around the Bush says, "Mr. Buchwald is a workaholic and has no hobbies."] I never get stuck. With what's going on in D.C., I always have a lot to work with.

You've written countless columns, do you have a favorite?

Well, the public seems to like the Thanksgiving column I wrote in 1953 [that explains the holiday to the French]. I reprint that one each year. I loved bashing J. Edgar Hoover, that was fun. When Nixon said "I'm not a Crook," he made me a rich man. Clinton was okay, and [the current] Bush is excellent.

But no favorite?

Well, do you like to read your old stuff? It is a tough thing to ask a writer to pick. I couldn't even select the ones for this book. My assistant did it. I don't enjoy reading my own stuff.

Is your approach different when you are writing something other than a column? For example, how did you approach working on a novel?

It is a different approach, yes. In novels you are making up characters and sometimes they take over. They take you where you don't expect to go. When I started Stella in Heaven I really didn't have an ending. As you keep going the characters become really real and they tell you where they want to go.

What is your procedure for writing your columns? How do you do it so regularly?

I read all the papers in the morning— The Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , New York Times —and I watch news the night before, so I have ideas gestating. Then something just sparks you and you go with it.

How long do you spend writing each column?

Well, today's I started writing at 4:30 and I just finished when you called (at 5:50).

So that's less than 90 minutes?

Yes, you only have 500 or 600 words to say it all. You can't waste a word. I've seen great writers like John Steinbeck who couldn't write a short column like this.

The Grapes of Wrath is great, but it's longer than 500 words.

Yes. You have to be a very spare writer to do this.

How do you construct a column?

You have a beginning, middle/subject and end. The beginning [in my most recent column] said President Bush wants to have a crash course in ethics because of all his trouble. The subject is the actual class, and the end is the punch line which I'm still working on, but [at the moment] it comes down to the ethics class professor telling students that if you do something unethical Karl Rove can't do anything about it.

What are some of your other tricks when you write a column?

This is humor and you have to write about people that your reader knows about instantly. You can't do a "Chuck Hagel, the long-time Senator from Nebraska who is blah blah blah." You can't waste that time explaining who the person is. It has to be someone people know immediately: Rove, Hillary Clinton, Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart. When you are doing this shtick people must immediately know who you are talking about.

Finally, how has Washington, D.C. changed in the more than 40 years you've lived here?

I've lived here since 1962, it has changed but I have, too. I knew the Kennedy's, I went to dinners and parties [back then], but I take life easier now. The thrill is gone for those parties [laughs]. My columns are my life. [In 2000 Buchwald suffered a stroke and was in the hospital for more than two months. But with therapy and the tenacity he learned as a grind-it-out columnist he has made an almost complete recovery].