****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I remember reading art buchwald in his almost daily column. He was such a funny writer. Always joking.The story of his young years, of being abandoned or passed around by relatives in the depression and dealing with his father's mental illness isn't fun at all. he tries to find humor. He isn't very successful at finding funny things to say.It is a very good memoir. He doesn't go "Woe is me." In a way he is one of the lucky ones in the depression years, as awful as his life was, it was better than many.He learned, he struggled, he came out of it a tough and fine man.Laughed a little, cried with sythpathy for what he endured in his childhood. A must read for anybody that wants to know what it's like to be without a home.Great book... A good read. This book would make a good gift for your friends who love to read. It is a good book to read.Great book.This book starts out slow. If you are interested in his time as an orphan, from home to home (even this makes it sound more readable than it is), then dig in. If not, skip to around page fifty or so. The book picks up and is filled with good old-fashion humor as only Art Buchwald can write. His experience in the U.S. Marines, his time at USC, and his eventual landing and living in Paris. Romance, friends, overcoming hurdles, family strife ... it's all here. Putting aside the first twenty percent of this book, it’s an entertaining, warm, humorous read.Not a bad story about a boy who grew up in foster homes and mother was institutionalized after his birth while dealing with a distant father. But famed writer Art Buchwald over came many mounting obstacles to have a successful career as a writer about life's peculiar happenings.In Leaving Home: A Memoir, Buchwald shares the early days as a boy, how he got a drunk bum to falsify his permission slip to join the marines. There he found out how much of a screw up he really was but being a marine opened the doors for his matriculation at USC [University of Southern California] and eventually relocation to Paris partly because of the GI Bill. It was Paris that he found his way as a writer and the rest as they say is history.This book is a straightforward tale of the good, the bad, and the ugly mixed in with a nostalgic look back to the early days of Art Buchwald. Told in a memoir style, Buchwald style makes you laugh, cry, and realize that in the end it all works out.O frabjous day when I found this out-of-print edition of Buchwald's 1993 "Leaving Home" in my public library. This laugh-aloud volume is a must-read for anyone like myself who has gone through the horrors of clinical depression and come through the better for it. A compelling storyteller, he recounts with candor and lack of embarrassment many tales that would make lesser folks shudder. Great anecdotes include his de-virginization, heroics & braggadocio as a Marine Corps air pilot, continual longing for women, his dreadful childhood in an orphanage for poor kids, the family secret that his mother was institutionalized after his birth for mental illness - he never met her - and his triumphant entrance into the publishing world via the Paris Herald Tribune. A truly brave model for those wishing to write their own memoirs.Mr. Buchwald's book is heartwarming. His narrative focuses on what is truly important in life: people's feelings. Whenever I need a lift, I open this book's pages. I remember what really counts to me, and who I really am. I strongly recommend this book to everyone.
