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Comic (and Column) Confessional
When you stay in one job for a quarter century, it helps to have good reasons for doing so. Here are a few: Heloise, Arianna Huffington, Gary Larson (“The Far Side”), Lynn Johnston (“For Better or For Worse”), Mort Walker (“Beetle Bailey”), Abigail Van Buren (“Dear Abby”), Ann Landers, Hillary Clinton, Walter Cronkite, Martha Stewart, Coretta Scott King, Herblock, Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”), Stan Lee (“Spider-Man”), Garry Trudeau (“Doonesbury”), and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”). The part-humorous Comic (and Column) Confessional chronicles Astor’s twenty-five years as newspaper-syndication reporter for Editor & Publisher magazine with candor — and anecdotes about famous people such as those named above. The important period in media history covered shows how the digital revolution, media mergers, and the shrinking newspaper business changed journalism forever.
238 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2012
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December 5, 2015
Laughter through tears, laughter through laughter
I first encountered Dave Astor about four years ago (?) in a Huffington Post literary article about a literary author, Margaret Atwood. At that time I had rarely encountered a blog post in a popular web page that is more devoted to paparazzi fodder than it is to literati. On the heels of this, this Dave Astor fellow reached even deeper into the literary cannon to write about George Eliot. This guy's on to something, I said to myself. I was so pleased that such a piece was out there that I posted a comment. I was even more pleased when Dave Astor posted a reply, to which I posted an appreciation that he had appreciated the comment to which this Dave fellow posted a follow-up expression of gratitude. A man who sends 'thank you' replies to online comments as faithfully as my mother sent thank you notes is a rarity these days.
Over the next couple of years I became a regular 'follower' of Dave's columns, which were consistently interesting. I was very pleased that he had read many of the great classic authors that I loved (Dostoevsky, Melville, Mark Twain, Henry James, Dickens, Balzac and most of the classic female British novelists (Austen, the Bronte's, Eliot) of the nineteenth century, etc. as well as many great 20th century writers.
Dave had many other followers who followed him into the territory of his own literary blog, which he operates as well as a column on the local doings of his residential city, Montclair, New Jersey ('The Montclairvoyant'). Along the way I became aware of a memoir that he had written, presumably in those days between a HuffPost career and one as independent blogger, his alliterative 'comic, column confessional'. One quality I share with Dave: a love of alliteration and other word play along with most things punny. Another that I discovered in these pages was that Dave could at one time in his childhood recite the names of all the occupants of the Oval Office, which I was able to do as well, probably between the ages of seven and ten. I believe I've lost that ability as other information has been crammed into my brain over the years. I don't know if the same thing has happened to Dave.
So now I have read the comic, column confessional and I suppose the only 'c' I could follow up with would be 'confusion' that this Dave character is not a bestselling author of humorous books (as that other 'Dave'—Barry—once was) and wonder that he hasn't yet turned his hand to other memoirs or books about newspapers, magazines, the publishing world, the literary world or just about any other world he cares to write about.
Dave has enlightened me about many things of which I was unaware before reading this book. First, that there was ever a magazine or newspaper in which a writer got paid to report on the syndicates (publishing, not Mafia) and the columnist world in general. Not only that, but this person was able to make a living for many years doing this, going to conventions, writing about them, presumably writing more general news pieces at the same time. I not only did not know that but I was unaware of the publication 'Editor & Publisher' that had its origins before the turn of the 20th century.
I have never followed daily comics much, even when I was a child, and I never 'grew into' an appreciation of 'Peanuts'. It left me cold at 10 and it leaves me cold at 60. I failed to appreciate most comics, so I concede that that may be a deficit in my character. However, Dave takes me on a tour of this world and I have come to appreciate how much effort goes into the process of creating a new strip daily or even weekly. I am still not inclined to seek them out and I was never very inclined to seek out the daily columnists (perhaps if I had acquired the lifelong habit of reading newspapers daily it might have helped). However, Dave has enlightened me about this world as well as the tough career he pursued and the daily pressures of working, overworking, caring for a wife and child, paying bills, traveling to conventions on his own dime with hope of eventual reimbursement—all of this is vividly illustrated in his account.
Concurrent with the threads of the newspaper business and his career of writing about the newspaper business is the personal life that was lived through all those years. Being a private person Dave is by no means obligated to divulge any more of his own life story than he has done in these pages. However, what he does share is quite compelling. He admits that he was a very introverted person growing up and very reluctant to assert himself. Was it perhaps a deeply rooted compulsion to liberate himself from the tyranny of his own fears that led him to pursue a career that would by definition require him to challenge those tendencies and counteract them with an assertiveness in getting information from people, interviewing them by phone, e-mail and in person and standing up for himself in his effort to retain integrity in the face of a demoralizing market? The evidence that leads me to conclude in the affirmative is presented in this book.
Along the way, he got married to someone he realized even at the time might not have been a wise choice. On top of that, they produced a child that suffered from the fatal genetically transmitted Tay-Sachs disease. The poor child did not live beyond the age of five but was at that point blissfully unaware of her destiny and so, hopefully, was not completely cognizant of her suffering. This is understandably heartbreaking. The irony is that he and his wife were both tested for this gene and the results came back negative, due to an incompetent lab technician's error. Legal action proved fruitless for the couple, as it does for many who choose such a course, and the only parties that really profited from it were the lawyers themselves. Like their unfortunate child, the marriage was doomed but, like many ill-matched people, the realization and the impetus to take action to end the union only occurred after years of pain and heartbreak. In print as well as in life Dave is a gentleman and so he has diplomatically left his first wife nameless.
The introverted Dave is actually a closeted humorist. He drew and sold at least a few cartoons of his own through freelancing and he wrote numerous humor columns. In some respects this book could be seen as an extended humor column. He possesses the quality that I've noticed in many columnists of finding a connecting link or thought from the preceding paragraph as a lead-in to its successive paragraph, sometimes stretching far afield to make a connection. I also get the impression that Dave never met a quip he didn't like and so he uses a scattershot approach to his one-liners that results in some misses and some hits. Among the quotable hits are the following:
'As you've probably noticed by now, I'm often a "glass-half-empty" guy who also worries about breaking the glass and stepping on the pieces barefoot."
'This was a win-win situation…for sadists and masochists.' (referring to reduction in advertising and dailies, which resulted in fewer jobs for journalists)
'Walking from the front desk to my room seemed to take 10 minutes, because you had to go through several betting areas before reaching your bedding area' (referring to finding his hotel room in Las Vegas)
'Had the immortal 'Three Musketeers' phrase "one for all and all for one" turned into a management cry of "less for all and more for us"?'
'I spent the long plane rides drawing cartoons as the passengers sitting next to me cast surreptitious glances. It was just like an in-flight movie for them—minus the actors, sound, scenery, special effects, plot, and talent.'
Dave ends his chronology roughly four years before the publication of this book with his inevitable layoff from E&P at the end of 2008, the year of the incredible shrinking economy. This is an appropriate place to conclude the narrative because the saga of the newspaper (and by extension, the publishing) industry had imploded in reaction to the burst of the long-growing economic bubble.
And so I trust that Dave might continue his saga at some point or even dig deeper into his past. He, like so many other writers in the business, has been underappreciated and underutilized for far too long. He has the skill, the wit and the sensitivity to pursue any other chronicle he chooses.
I first encountered Dave Astor about four years ago (?) in a Huffington Post literary article about a literary author, Margaret Atwood. At that time I had rarely encountered a blog post in a popular web page that is more devoted to paparazzi fodder than it is to literati. On the heels of this, this Dave Astor fellow reached even deeper into the literary cannon to write about George Eliot. This guy's on to something, I said to myself. I was so pleased that such a piece was out there that I posted a comment. I was even more pleased when Dave Astor posted a reply, to which I posted an appreciation that he had appreciated the comment to which this Dave fellow posted a follow-up expression of gratitude. A man who sends 'thank you' replies to online comments as faithfully as my mother sent thank you notes is a rarity these days.
Over the next couple of years I became a regular 'follower' of Dave's columns, which were consistently interesting. I was very pleased that he had read many of the great classic authors that I loved (Dostoevsky, Melville, Mark Twain, Henry James, Dickens, Balzac and most of the classic female British novelists (Austen, the Bronte's, Eliot) of the nineteenth century, etc. as well as many great 20th century writers.
Dave had many other followers who followed him into the territory of his own literary blog, which he operates as well as a column on the local doings of his residential city, Montclair, New Jersey ('The Montclairvoyant'). Along the way I became aware of a memoir that he had written, presumably in those days between a HuffPost career and one as independent blogger, his alliterative 'comic, column confessional'. One quality I share with Dave: a love of alliteration and other word play along with most things punny. Another that I discovered in these pages was that Dave could at one time in his childhood recite the names of all the occupants of the Oval Office, which I was able to do as well, probably between the ages of seven and ten. I believe I've lost that ability as other information has been crammed into my brain over the years. I don't know if the same thing has happened to Dave.
So now I have read the comic, column confessional and I suppose the only 'c' I could follow up with would be 'confusion' that this Dave character is not a bestselling author of humorous books (as that other 'Dave'—Barry—once was) and wonder that he hasn't yet turned his hand to other memoirs or books about newspapers, magazines, the publishing world, the literary world or just about any other world he cares to write about.
Dave has enlightened me about many things of which I was unaware before reading this book. First, that there was ever a magazine or newspaper in which a writer got paid to report on the syndicates (publishing, not Mafia) and the columnist world in general. Not only that, but this person was able to make a living for many years doing this, going to conventions, writing about them, presumably writing more general news pieces at the same time. I not only did not know that but I was unaware of the publication 'Editor & Publisher' that had its origins before the turn of the 20th century.
I have never followed daily comics much, even when I was a child, and I never 'grew into' an appreciation of 'Peanuts'. It left me cold at 10 and it leaves me cold at 60. I failed to appreciate most comics, so I concede that that may be a deficit in my character. However, Dave takes me on a tour of this world and I have come to appreciate how much effort goes into the process of creating a new strip daily or even weekly. I am still not inclined to seek them out and I was never very inclined to seek out the daily columnists (perhaps if I had acquired the lifelong habit of reading newspapers daily it might have helped). However, Dave has enlightened me about this world as well as the tough career he pursued and the daily pressures of working, overworking, caring for a wife and child, paying bills, traveling to conventions on his own dime with hope of eventual reimbursement—all of this is vividly illustrated in his account.
Concurrent with the threads of the newspaper business and his career of writing about the newspaper business is the personal life that was lived through all those years. Being a private person Dave is by no means obligated to divulge any more of his own life story than he has done in these pages. However, what he does share is quite compelling. He admits that he was a very introverted person growing up and very reluctant to assert himself. Was it perhaps a deeply rooted compulsion to liberate himself from the tyranny of his own fears that led him to pursue a career that would by definition require him to challenge those tendencies and counteract them with an assertiveness in getting information from people, interviewing them by phone, e-mail and in person and standing up for himself in his effort to retain integrity in the face of a demoralizing market? The evidence that leads me to conclude in the affirmative is presented in this book.
Along the way, he got married to someone he realized even at the time might not have been a wise choice. On top of that, they produced a child that suffered from the fatal genetically transmitted Tay-Sachs disease. The poor child did not live beyond the age of five but was at that point blissfully unaware of her destiny and so, hopefully, was not completely cognizant of her suffering. This is understandably heartbreaking. The irony is that he and his wife were both tested for this gene and the results came back negative, due to an incompetent lab technician's error. Legal action proved fruitless for the couple, as it does for many who choose such a course, and the only parties that really profited from it were the lawyers themselves. Like their unfortunate child, the marriage was doomed but, like many ill-matched people, the realization and the impetus to take action to end the union only occurred after years of pain and heartbreak. In print as well as in life Dave is a gentleman and so he has diplomatically left his first wife nameless.
The introverted Dave is actually a closeted humorist. He drew and sold at least a few cartoons of his own through freelancing and he wrote numerous humor columns. In some respects this book could be seen as an extended humor column. He possesses the quality that I've noticed in many columnists of finding a connecting link or thought from the preceding paragraph as a lead-in to its successive paragraph, sometimes stretching far afield to make a connection. I also get the impression that Dave never met a quip he didn't like and so he uses a scattershot approach to his one-liners that results in some misses and some hits. Among the quotable hits are the following:
'As you've probably noticed by now, I'm often a "glass-half-empty" guy who also worries about breaking the glass and stepping on the pieces barefoot."
'This was a win-win situation…for sadists and masochists.' (referring to reduction in advertising and dailies, which resulted in fewer jobs for journalists)
'Walking from the front desk to my room seemed to take 10 minutes, because you had to go through several betting areas before reaching your bedding area' (referring to finding his hotel room in Las Vegas)
'Had the immortal 'Three Musketeers' phrase "one for all and all for one" turned into a management cry of "less for all and more for us"?'
'I spent the long plane rides drawing cartoons as the passengers sitting next to me cast surreptitious glances. It was just like an in-flight movie for them—minus the actors, sound, scenery, special effects, plot, and talent.'
Dave ends his chronology roughly four years before the publication of this book with his inevitable layoff from E&P at the end of 2008, the year of the incredible shrinking economy. This is an appropriate place to conclude the narrative because the saga of the newspaper (and by extension, the publishing) industry had imploded in reaction to the burst of the long-growing economic bubble.
And so I trust that Dave might continue his saga at some point or even dig deeper into his past. He, like so many other writers in the business, has been underappreciated and underutilized for far too long. He has the skill, the wit and the sensitivity to pursue any other chronicle he chooses.
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