Buchwald, Art

Born in a Jewish family of immigrants from Poland and Austria-Hungary , who arrived in the United States in 1914 ^[5] . Buchwald's mother, Helen Kleinberger, was placed in a psychiatric hospital shortly after his birth. Buchwald never once saw her, although she lived another 35 years. The father of the future writer, Joseph (Joseph) Buchwald, was a curtain manufacturer. After the beginning of the Great Depression , when the father’s business fell into disrepair, little Arthur was sent to a Jewish orphanage in New York (in the family, in addition to him, there were three more children - daughters Alice, Edith and Doris). Buchwald changed several shelters until at the age of 5 he was reunited with his family, who then lived in the New York area of Queens .

Having not finished school, at the age of 17, Buchwald fled from home and, overstating his age, enrolled in the Marine Corps. He served from October 1942 to October 1945 , two years of his service took place in the Pacific theater of operations . He retired from the army with the rank of sergeant.

Soon Buchwald entered the University of Southern California at Los Angeles. There he first tries himself in journalism - he edits the magazine of the campus "Wampus", and also writes for the university newspaper "Daily Trojan". In 1948, he dropped out and went to Paris , where he worked as a correspondent for Variety magazine, and in January 1949 published the first column in the European version of the New York Herald Tribune .

In November 1952, an article by Buchwald was published in the New York Herald Tribune, in which he told the French about Thanksgiving ( How to Explain Thanksgiving to the French ). The column was so successful that it was subsequently reprinted in the newspaper annually. Buchwald himself considered the article the best material.

In the late 50s, the only one of all journalists, Buchwald interviewed the future sergeant Elvis Presley , who spent the weekend in Paris while serving in the army (the military unit of Presley was stationed in Germany). Memories of this were subsequently included in the book “I'll Always Have Paris”.

At the end of 1957, Buchwald was talked about after he printed a column where he jokingly depicted a press conference by Jim Hogerty, who served as presidential spokesman Dwight Eisenhower .

Art Buchwald returned to his homeland in 1963 with his wife and three children adopted from different shelters (in Ireland, Portugal and France). In the US, he began working for The Washington Post . The main problems that worried him were politics and society, but, according to the testimonies of people who knew him, he could come up with an aphorism on any topic.

During his life, Buchwald wrote more than 8,000 columns, and in the 60s and 80s, they were reprinted by about 550 publications around the world, including the Soviet edition of “ Abroad ” founded by Gorky, as well as the newspaper Pravda .

In the summer of 1988, Buchwald visited the Soviet Union as part of a delegation of American satirists. He visited Moscow and Leningrad, talked with Soviet satirists Mikhail Zhvanetsky , Grigory Gorin , Arkady Arkanov , Alexei Pyanov and others. The latter subsequently published Buchwald's article “You Have Become Different” (Buchwald’s headline) about the satirist’s visit to the USSR. At the beginning of 2007, Pyanov prepared for the Literary Newspaper an essay on memoirs about those days; when the material was ready for publication, it became known about the death of Buchwald. ^[6]

In 1990, Buchwald sued “ Paramount Pictures ” due to the fact that the story, invented earlier by Buchwald , was based on the film “ A Trip to America ” made in 1988 at the movie studio with Eddie Murphy . The process was won by a journalist: the studio was forced to pay him 900 thousand dollars. Since then, film studios have made it a rule to include in their contracts a clause that original ideas of third-party authors are not payable. This link went down in America’s copyright history as the Buchwald Act. ^[7]

Details of the case, dubbed Buchwald vs Paramount, were described in the 1992 book Fatal Subtraction: The Inside Story of Buchwald v. Paramount ”(sponsored by Buchwald in court, Pierce O'Donnell and Los Angeles Times reporter Dennis McDougal).

In 1993 and 1995, Buchwald presented to the public two books of memoirs - “Leaving home” and “I'll always have Paris”. After that they started talking about him, not only as a columnist , but also as a writer.

On July 3, 1994 ^[8] after a serious illness, Buchwald’s wife Ann McGarry Buchwald died with whom they divorced after 40 years of marriage in 1992 . ^[9] He suffered a stroke in 2000 and spent more than two months in the hospital, but then was able to return to work.

In total, Buchwald released about forty books and works - in addition to journalism, his script, in particular, the script for the film " Entertainment Time " - " Playtime " by Jacques Taty (English dialogues, 1967 ), as well as the satirical play "Sheep on the runway ”, delivered on Broadway in 1970 and then transferred to the USSR.

In February 2006, Buchwald said goodbye to readers, saying that he had a kidney disease and, according to doctors, he had a couple of weeks left to live. However, a few months later he suddenly recovered and returned from the hospice home. In his new column in May, he said that "for some reason that even doctors can’t explain," his kidneys started working again. On November 7, 2006, Buchwald presented to the public his last lifetime book, “ Too soon to say good-bye, ” where he described the crowds of friends who came to say goodbye to him in an ironic style, and concluded: “I never thought it's so fun to die. ”

Buchwald died January 17, 2007 at his son’s house in Washington. After the satirist’s death, the Washington Post , for which he wrote columns for over forty years, published his farewell article, Good-bye, my friends. Also on the Internet there was a video in which Buchwald himself announced his demise.

The long-term dean of the faculty of journalism at Moscow State University, Jasen Zasursky, in connection with the death of Buchwald, said: "He was a wonderful person and a great publicist, he wrote sharply and interestingly about American issues." According to him, Buchwald was always interesting for Russian journalists , and many of our feuilletonists sought to learn something from him, to borrow something. ^[ten]

• 1982 - Pulitzer Prize for satirical commentary in the Washington Post .

• 1986 - election to the American Academy of Literature and Art .

• 1993 - Receives a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. According to the results of studies in the 1940s, Buchwald did not have the right to apply for a university diploma, since he did not have a school certificate. The degree was awarded to Buchwald on the basis of his merit (see: Honoris causa ).

In Russian (USSR and Russia)

• “This is America ...” (M .: Publishing house of political literature, 1969 );
• “Sheep on the Runway”, a comedy in 2 acts. (Translated from English by Boris Izakov . M.: VUOAP, 1970 );
• “Rams on the Runway,” a play in 2 acts. (Translated from English by S. Shaykevich. M.: VUOAP, 1970 );
• “America and the Americans” (Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1981 ).

In collections

• “Nothing funny” ( New Literary Review , 1999, compiled by Alexander Livergant ; pp. 43–44, 138–141, 154–156, 290–292).

In English

Autobiographical prose

• Leaving Home: A Memoir (1994)
• I'll Always Have Paris: A Memoir (1995)
• Too Soon to Say Goodbye (Bantam Books 2006) ISBN 1-58836-574-3 ISBN 978-1-58836-574-3

• Sally Pieron

• Difficult surname (02.10.2005)
• Radio Liberty: “Humbly ridiculed human weaknesses” (January 19, 2007)
• Orphanhood and humor of Art Buchwald ( Azari Messerer , "The Seagull" No. 9 (236), May 1, 2013)