Remember to Hang by Your Thumbs
We've lost a legendary humorist: Bob Elliott has died at the age of 92. He and Ray Goulding worked in radio, on television and on Broadway. The New York Times noted that their deadpan, sometimes surreal, humor made them "godfathers of a wide swath of alternative comedy," from Second City Television and Saturday Night Live to the Daily Show. They were also authors, and Putnam editor-in-chief Neil Nyren wrote a remembrance of his time working with Bob and Ray:
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| Ray Goulding (l.) and Bob Elliott | |
"I was lucky enough to have done three books with them. In fact, they were my lucky charm. In my first editorial job, at Random House in 1976, it was Write if You Get Work: The Best of Bob & Ray. When I moved to Atheneum, they came, too, for From Approximately Coast to Coast... It's the Bob and Ray Show. And when I came to Putnam in 1984, I made two deals my first week, the first with Charles Kuralt, the second on The New! Improved! Bob & Ray Book. To judge who their fans were, here's who wrote the forewords: Kurt Vonnegut, Andy Rooney, Garrison Keillor.
"Each book was in the form of a radio show--a hello from the two of them; a series of their best sketches, interrupted by commercials both real and fake; and ending with their signoff: 'This is Ray Goulding saying... Write if you get work. And Bob Elliott reminding you to hang by your thumbs.'
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| Neil Nyren | |
"We put these books together in their little office in the Graybar Building in New York City. No jokes--comedy was serious business, though sometimes they couldn't help it: a routine broke out spontaneously. Remarkably, everything they'd performed on the air, all those flights of fancy, worked just as beautifully on paper. I'm thumbing through their books now, laughing myself silly. But there's more to it than just laughter.
"Vonnegut said it best in the first book's foreword: 'There is a refreshing and beautiful innocence in Bob and Ray's humor. Man is not evil, they seem to say. He is simply too hilariously stupid to survive.' And this I believe. Cheers.' "
Artist and author 
Even more importantly, librarians, teachers and parents are recognizing the value of graphic novels. They're being used in classrooms, and not just with reluctant readers. At every level, graphic novels are being accepted as a part of the literary landscape. Absolutely astounding.
For the next two years, you'll be traveling the country talking to readers of all ages about your platform, "Reading Without Walls." How would you explain your mission?
Carl Sandburg's monumental biography of Abraham Lincoln was originally published in six volumes. The first book, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1926) was two volumes; the second, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (Harcourt, Brace, 1939) was four volumes, and won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for History. (Sandburg also won two Pulitzers for his poetry.) An abridged single volume, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years, came out in 1954 and was last reprinted by Mariner in 2002 ($26, 9780156027526). Sandburg's book also inspired a Pulitzer-winning play, Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938), which was adapted into a film in 1940, and a six-part miniseries starring Hal Holbrook called Lincoln (1974-1976).
