Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Inimitable Buchwald

It was the 1990s and The Hindu was an incomprehensible sea of letters and words for the secondary school student that I was. However, one article that made an impression was the column by Art Buchwald.

With its lucid and down-to-earth style, reading the column was like listening to a very observant narrator who delighted in satirical digs at the game of politics and its players. And it hardly mattered that this reader hardly grasped the import of the satire. It has come as a revelation that his life was not all jokes and laughter. But then, perhaps it were the intermittent personal troubles that gave him the unique outlook that endeared him to his readers.

Priya Narayanan,
Thrissur

* * *

I find it extremely difficult to decide whom I like reading more — P.G. Wodehouse or Art Buchwald. Buchwald's column in The Hindu was always the first thing I read. Out of a trivial or banal situation he could weave a story raising a laugh even from confirmed cynics. That Buchwald had an unhappy life right from childhood is revealing but makes one wonder how it was possible for a man so cruelly treated by life to go around spreading fun. His millions of fans will miss him.

C.P. Srinivasan,
Chennai

* * *

In 1964, a friend of mine took me to the apartment of the mother of Arthur Godfrey, the king of comedians. There we not only met Arthur Godfrey but also Buchwald. That meeting remains etched in my memory.

S.P. Sundaram,
Chennai

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