The Man Who Knew How to Say Goodbye

Buchwald’s Last Book
“Hi! I’m Art Buchwald and I just died.”
With that mischievous quip begins the video obit on today’s NY Times home page for the consummate humorist and satirist. He died Wednesday night in Washington of kidney failure at the age of 81.
He made death the ultimate absurdity: “I was put on earth to make people laugh,” he tells Times reporter Tim Weiner during his postmortem video closeup. His ashes, he decrees, should be “dropped over every cocktail party at Martha’s Vineyard.”
For the print version of the Times obit, by Richard Severo, go here.