Dick Cavett is, for me, like that cliché about the 1960s: If you remember him, you weren't there. I know I wasn't --- he launched his first talk show on 1968, when I didn't own a TV set, and he was pretty much finished with a regular show by 1987, when I finally bought one. So I never had the pleasure of watching him.
But I know about Dick Cavett. He was the smart one. Pretty much, the only smart one.
He was from Nebraska, and blond, and boyish to a fault. He was a gymnast and a magician, and then he went to Yale, where he read a book. But he was obsessed with show business, and, as quickly as he could, became a joke writer for Jack Paar and, later, Johnny Carson.
Then he got his own show --- and reinvented the form. Clive James, who knows a thing or two about talk shows, isolated his genius: "The idea that one man could be both playful and serious was never deemed to be quite natural on American television, and Cavett was regarded as something of a freak even at the time.... Cavett never mugged, never whooped it up for the audience, rarely told a formally constructed joke, and listened to the guest. To put it briefly, his style did not suit a mass audience..."
That's not exactly a knock --- I worked at America Online for a while, where we courted the mass audience as if it held the secret of life. (It doesn't.) In the years since, the Internet has taught us that "niches are riches." Despite this, no one has managed to come up with a way to lure Cavett back to TV.
On the other hand, why should Cavett do TV? It would be almost impossible to top his past. He's 74. And, more to the point, he's got a New York Times column that's won him the devotion of literate grownups --- in my view, the dream demographic.
You can read all of his Times columns online. Or you can buy "Talk Show," which arranges them slightly differently and doesn't excise the "dirty" words. Ordinarily, the tightwad in me would recommend clicking and scrolling. But the thing is, Cavett's columns --- unlike, say, the Times columns of Thomas Friedman and David Brooks --- hold up quote nicely in print.
Cavett started this column before the 2008 election, about which he had a few thoughts. Then his former guests started dying, which fueled a batch of columns. Then there was his personal drama, which took any number of readers by surprise. Finally, there were the show-biz stories, which, are, for some reason, extravagantly satisfying --- very little is more delightful than a star talking like a human.
In 2008, Cavett wrote often about politics. You may not agree with his views. [Richard Nixon didn't. After Cavett testified that John Lennon should be permitted to stay in the United States, his entire staff was audited by the IRS, right down to the lowest secretary. Though maybe that was a coincidence.] But however much you may disagree, I think you have to admire his elegance and timing. Here he is, days after we met Sarah Palin at the Republican convention:
"Performance is the mot juste for what she did at the convention. And I admit that even my own jaded and cynical showbiz heart leapt up as she wowed the adoring crowd with a show-stopper display of charm and personality. I even laughed at two or three of the two or three too many insults directed at Obama. Don Rickles could not have snapped them out better.
Watching a woman, slight of build and full of pizazz so thoroughly bedazzle a vast audience is entertaining. Something chimed in my memory when she brought that crowd to its feet with frantic and worshipful cheering.
Ah, yes. I had seen it all before.
It was Judy Garland at The Palace.
And yet no one offered her the vice-presidency. (Fact-checker: Am I right on this?)"
As a former talk show host, he's a quipster, master of the one-liner. And it shows. About McCain: "I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed." About Mitt Romney: "There is one question I have not seen Romney asked. It's the one a friend dared me to put to John Wayne when he appeared on a show of mine: Sir, how is it that neither you nor any of your multiple strapping sons have ever served a day in the armed forces?" Bush, however, inspired no wry amusement. He was, simply, "the capering loon who does soft-shoe in the White House while young Americans are dismembered and splattered in Iraq."
His piece on Norman Mailer ends with a great kicker: "I know someone who sure as hell hates being dead." And he consistently has the knack of delivering a jaw-dropper: "Wouldn't it be fun to know if some of the jurors who freed O.J. actually thought he was innocent? (I've decided that if I chance to meet the Juice at a party, I will chat amiably and then say, `If you'll excuse me, I feel the need to talk to someone who hasn't murdered anybody.')"
Like a blogger, he enjoys give-and-take: "Years ago, having just had someone like, say, Jane Fonda on my late-night show, I received the following masterpiece from Waco, Texas, crayoned in block letters on a Western Union telegram blank: `Dear Dick Cavett: YOU LITTLE SAWED OFF [.....] COMMUNIST SHRIMP.' I wrote back, I am not sawed off!'"
Droll. But the price --- and there is one --- was high. For Cavett, it was a bottomless depression: "There were times when I longed for my ancient .22 single-shot squirrel-hunting rifle." In 1973, shock therapy brought him back. Now he seems good for a long, long run.
Lucky for us. There are a few writers running hard behind Cavett, eager for his gig. On any given day, several could be his equal. But not --- as Cavett does in "Talk Show" --- 68 times in a row.
