Usually one must at least read the headline of Bob Greene’s column to experience that pang of horrified revulsion–the dreaded Bob Shock, simultaneously fresh and oh so familiar.
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There, in Bob’s column, which turned out to be “Famous last words: Closing thoughts worth repeating” (May 29), was a photograph–the little mid-column picture that typically shows a sobbing Child Once Known as Richard or a grim-faced, hang-’em-high Judge Heiple.
Not this time. The photo was no quivering victim or cackling fiend. It was James Thurber, the beloved humor icon whose witty, finely honed, and memorable prose is the antipode of Bob’s muddily conceived, carelessly executed, and immediately forgotten glop. Just seeing the two juxtaposed was disturbing, like that art film shot of a razor blade going through an eyeball. The two together, Bob and Thurber, seemed almost a violation of physical law, a twist in the fabric of reality unimaginable under even the wildest theories of quantum mechanics. We’re lucky the universe didn’t fold in on itself and wink out of existence.
I fully expected Bob to sneak in the last line of Be True to Your School or, worse, last year’s All Summer Long. But Bob held back–rare restraint on his part.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Jeff Heller.
