Review of "Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass" by Dave Barry

Dave Barry (b. 1947) is a prize-winning American writer and journalist who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for the Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. Barry has also penned books of humor and satire as well as comic novels and children's novels.


Dave Barry

In this memoir, Barry takes us from his childhood to the present, giving us a glimpse of his home life, education, employment, hobbies, and more. This is a fun book suffused with laughs.

Barry grew up in Armonk, New York, which at that time was a village of about 2,000 people. Dave's father was a beloved Presbyterian minister whom people trusted, confided in, and counted on; and Dave's mother was a busy suburban housewife raising four children. Both Dave's parents liked to laugh and have a good time, but Dave's wit comes from his mom, who had a wicked sense of humor.


Dave Barry with his mom

Barry had a happy childhood in a typical suburban atmosphere where his parents hosted or attended cocktail parties every weekend. Later on, Barry's father developed a serious alcohol problem and his mother - who suffered from depression - committed suicide. Dave tried to help both his parents, and is open about his efforts and regrets.

Harking back to his youth, Barry writes about attending Wampus Elementary School in the 1950s, during the nuclear arms race.


Dave Barry in the second grade

Dave recalls assembling a survival kit with, among other things two Hershey bars. He writes, "I apparently thought [the chocolate bars] would provide me with vital sustenance in the radioactive hellscape that Armonk would be reduced to following an exchange of nuclear missiles with the Russians."



Writing about his youth, Dave includes anecdotes about the Davy Crockett fad; the first polio vaccines; Sputnik starting the space race; his awkward first date, with his mom driving; the Twist craze; attending the 1963 March on Washington and seeing Martin Luther King; being elected 'Class Clown' in high school and much more.


Young Dave Barry


People dancing The Twist

After high school, Barry went to Haverford College in Philadelphia, where he majored in English and played in a rock band. Barry writes a good deal about the band's gigs, noting, "Frat parties were the trickiest, especially when the brothers decided they wanted to grab our microphones and sing, or worse, play our instruments. More than once I found myself wrestling some drunk bro mid-song for possession of my guitar."


Haverford College

At Haverford College Barry learned a smattering of literature, wrote the occasional humor column for the student newspaper, and got experience in real journalism as an intern at the 'Congressional Quarterly' in Washington, DC.

After college Barry became a reporter for a Philadelphia paper called the 'Daily Local News', and writes, "I never knew for sure what I'd be doing when I got to work, where I'd be sent that day - maybe to a fire, and maybe to a speech by John Kenneth Galbraith. I covered shootings, parades, charity canoe races, a smokestack demolition, the grand opening of a regional sewage treatment facility, and a campaign stop by presidential candidate George McGovern."


George McGovern

Barry goes on to say, "The Daily Local News is where I learned journalism....and where I started regularly doing the thing that eventually changed my life: writing humor columns." In a funny piece about surviving in the wilderness, Barry wrote, "If you or one of your companions gets bit by a snake, don't panic. Take a razor blade and make a cut shaped like an 'X,' then suck out all the blood. Snakes just hate this, and after you've done it to them one or two times, they stop biting people altogether."



From the 'Daily Local News' Barry went on to various other jobs, one of which was teaching effective writing to businesspeople. For this tough crowd, Barry used a lot of humor: jokes about dangling participles and jokes mocking the stilted language people use in business correspondence ('Enclosed please find the enclosed enclosure.')

During this time Barry also wrote freelance humor columns, which eventually landed him a job with the Miami Herald's Sunday Magazine, 'Tropic', where he worked for over two decades.



Barry includes numerous excerpts from his freelance columns. Here are two passages:

"Let's look at the positive side of nuclear war. One big plus is that the Postal Service says it has a plan to deliver mail after the war, which is considerably more than it is doing now."



"My family had a system for car travel. My father would drive; my mother would periodically offer to drive, knowing my father would not let her drive unless he went blind in both eyes and lapsed into a coma."



Barry spent decades with the Miami Herald and tells lots of tales about those times. Dave has high praise for his editors Gene Weingarten and Tom Shroder, who would give the 'go ahead' to any topic, no matter whom it offended.


Left to right: Dave Barry, Tom Shroder, and Gene Weingarten

Dave writes, "So Tropic was not a well-oiled machine. It was more like the laboratory of a mad scientist in an old black-and-white movie, with strange contraptions spewing sparks and smoke, and in the middle of it all a wild-haired lunatic as he prepares to throw a giant switch and launch an experiment that will, if it goes according to plan, produce some wondrous benefit to humanity, but there's a chance that it will go catastrophically wrong and unleash some unspeakable horror. That was Tropic philosophy: What the hell, let's try it."


This photo of Dave Barry with a basketball outraged many people

Barry includes examples of humor that garnered tons of reader mail, such as his critique of Neil Diamond's song 'I Am....I Said'; North Dakota debating a name change to Dakota; Indiana's nickname 'the Hoosier State'; and more. Fans also sent Barry innumerable newspaper pieces meant to inspire him, including an ad sent by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens about exploding cows and anti-flatulence medicine.



For Barry, no topic is off-limits if it will get a laugh, including politics, screenplays, book tours, the worst songs of all time, band names, harmonica safety, football coaches, basketball rivalries, and anything else you might think of.



Chatting about celebrity occupations, Barry lists the Top Thirty Celebrity Occupations. Some of these, from the top down, are:

Taylor Swift
Musical superstar other than Taylor Swift
Whoever is currently dating Taylor Swift
Stephen King
Person doing some idiot thing in a viral video
The Pope
Whoever was previously dating Taylor Swift
Nobel Prize Winner
Author other than Stephen King
Member of Congress


Taylor Swift

Outside of writing, Barry engages in recreational activities, and he's a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders band - composed of authors with no musical talent;


Stephen King and Dave Barry playing with the Rock Bottom Remainders Band

and the World Famous Lawn Rangers - a marching unit that performs maneuvers with lawnmowers and brooms.


World Famous Lawn Rangers

Barry doesn't write much about his personal life, though he mentions being divorced twice before he met his current spouse. Thus the memoir is more about Dave's professional life than his private life.


Dave Barry with his wife Michelle Kaufman

I laughed and laughed while reading this book, and recommend it to anyone who needs a chuckle, especially Dave Barry fans.


A Dave Barry author event

Thanks to Netgalley, Dave Barry, and Simon and Schuster for a copy of the book.

Rating: 4.5 stars