Class Clown Memoirs Professional Wiseass How I Went 77

Americas most beloved wiseass finally tells his life story with all the humor youd expect from a man who made a career out of making fun of pretty much everything. How does the son of a Presbyterian minister wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for writing a wildly inaccurate newspaper column read by millions of people? In Class Clown, Dave Barry takes us on a hilarious ride, starting with a childhood largely spent throwing rocks for entertainmentthere was no internetand preparing for nuclear war by hiding under a classroom desk. After literally getting elected class clown in high school, he went to college, where, as an English major, he read snippets of great literature when he was not busy playing in a rock band (it was the sixties). He began his journalism career at a smalltown Pennsylvania newspaper where he learned the most important rule of local journalism never confuse a goose with a duck. His journey then took a detour into the business world, where as a writing consultant he spent years trying, with limited success, to get corporate folks to, for Gods sake, get the point. Somehow from there he wound up as a humor columnist for The Miami Herald, where his boss was a wild man who encouraged him to write about anything that struck him as amusing and to never worry about alienating anyone. His columns were not popular with everyone He managed to alienate a vast army of Neil Diamond fans, and the entire state of Indiana. But he also developed a loyal following of readers... | Dave Barry Class Clown : The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77