Laughing Matters

I've been tardy with my reading (and some will say ' and this blog', apologies, I've been writing) . Even though I get through three books a week, plus magazines, plus newspapers there's always something that falls off the radar, gets pushed to one side, doesn't get read. Larry Gelbart's 'Laughing Matters' is one such book. I wish I'd read it when it came out in '97. I don't know why I didn't but I didn't. It was on my radar, then it went off it and it's taken me all this time - two years after the great man passed away - to get around to it. It was worth the wait.

Gelbart began as a writer at the age of sixteen, his dad go him a job on The Danny Thomas Radio Show "My kid's funny, you should hire him". He wrote for Jack Parr, Bob Hope and famously Sid Ceasar alongside a writing team that reads like a Who's Who of comedy scribes: Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen. His movies include Tootsie and Movie Movie, his theatre credits A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To The Forum and City of Angels. And then there was M*A*S*H.

For anyone interested in writing comedy - or drama - 'Laughing Matters' is up there with Adventures in the Screen Trade. It's not an autobiography, though it's autobiographical in part. It's not a 'how to' book - though you'll learn more here than in twenty such tomes. Gelbart knew his patch and knew it well. He thought about his writing, what he was going to write, how and why. That last one is often missed; why am I writing this? Will it improve the human condition, will it throw some light into a dark corner, is it purely an entertainment or is there something deeper to say, something no-one has said before.

For some people Larry Gelbart was just a name, a credit on M*A*S*H 'Developed for television by...', but for those of us who followed his extraordinary career he was much more. I'm sure he would have eschewed such titles as sage and guru, but he was that and more. A mentor to many, a collaborator, a writer who used his pen to make his points. His targets were often wrapped up in a joke but as he grew older he discovered he didn't always need the funny - though he never wrote anything that didn't drip with wit and sophistication.

If you are a student of comedy or have any ambition to write anything pick up a copy of his book. And through the wonders of You Tube you can listen to the words of the great man in an extended fascination interview.

I'm off to finish the last ten pages - I've got  feeling the author did it.