From Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Buchwald here delivers a bright, funny and poignant memoir of his early years, from a lonely childhood in Queens, New York City, to his start as a Herald-Tribune columnist in postwar Paris. He never saw his Hungarian-born, mentally ill mother, who was institutionalized shortly after his birth in 1925. His father, a Yiddish-speaking Austrian immigrant, a drape hanger, was a devoted parent, but was forced to place the author and his sisters in foster homes. It was a life with "no hugging," but Buchwald survived through humor born of much anger and sadness ("This stinks. I'm going to become a humorist," he told himself), eventually fleeing to join the Marine Corps in 1942. His later years would be "a lifelong search" for a surrogate mother and included two suicidal depressions. We see the development of a young writer in a book rich in incidents and rendered in wonderfully vivid scenes: Buchwald rollerskating down Queens Boulevard, losing his virginity to a hotel chambermaid, pulling burial detail as a Marine in the Marshall Islands, aspiring to screenwriting at the University of Southern California, where he studied on the G.I. Bill, and finally sipping Pernod in Hemingway-heady Parisian cafes on the eve of the 1950s. "I am new at writing memoirs," declares the author of this mature, immensely appealing look back at a youth of "luck and chutzpah." He is very good at it, too.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
A third of the way through this autobiography, syndicated columnist Buchwald says that when people ask what he's trying to do with humor, he tells them he's "getting even, avenging the hurts of the past." Written in fine, firm prose that never bursts into fireworks nor falls from grace, his "coming of age" memoir is a mingling of tragedy and comedy, a revealing self-portrait that is unsparing of himself and uncolored by sentimentality. No chapter in the book fails to offer a full yield of fascination, whether the subject is his relationship with his father and sisters, his days in foster homes, his years as a Marine, or his early writing experiences in Paris. Leaving Home will strengthen Buchwald's reputation. It answers beautifully the invitation, "Tell me about yourself." Recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/93.
- A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., BostonCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
