You’d expect humorist Dave Barry to be funny in an interview, and you’d be right.
“I almost never go out on tour now that I’m literally hundreds of years old,” the prolific author and former longtime Miami Herald columnist said for starters.
Barry is 76, but anyone who has put out some 60 books — fiction, nonfiction and collections of columns — has a right to feel a bit older.
It’s safe to expect he’ll be funny Nov. 5, when he appears in an onstage conversation with radio interviewer Michael Krasny at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center.
“I never have anything to say,” Barry quipped. “That’s the story of my career.”
Barry, who was born in New York and has long lived in the Miami suburbs, has found Florida fertile ground for humor and fiction, including for his latest novel, “Swamp Story,” which came out in May.
“If you’re writing humor, you can’t be in a better place in the U.S. than Florida,” he said. “We have 12% of the population but 73% of the nation’s weirdness. It’s hot and steamy, so people are more likely to get naked and drunk.”
However, the current political climate makes parody difficult, because it relies on exaggeration for comic effect.
“It’s hard to make up anything more insane than what’s actually happening. How many times has Trump been indicted?” he said.
And what’s worse, the potential audience can be testy.
“People get angry about politics and culture so quickly,” Barry observed.
Barry began his journalism career in 1971. Most notably, he wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for the Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005.
Asked if he missed writing columns, Barry answered, “I don’t miss feeling like I have deadlines all the time. My wife is a sports writer for the Miami Herald, so she’s still employed in professional journalism.”
No longer a print journalist, Barry still laments the current state of the business, with newspapers struggling financially and writers and editors laid off. But he has a sense of humor about the profession.
“The reason we get everything wrong in journalism is that we don’t really hear what people are saying, because we’re too busy writing everything down,” he said.
Barry still writes his popular annual holiday gift guide, seeking out the most bizarre products he can find.
“I’ve got all of the items cluttering up my desk,” he said. “I am also working on my year in review. I don’t know where it’s going to run.”
Whatever happens with print journalism and publishing, Barry maintains faith in the value of humor.
“I think humor is an absolutely necessary component of the human psyche,” Barry said. “I feel sorry for people who don’t have a sense of humor.”
It’s hard to overstate Barry’s career success. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1988 and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2005.
From 1993 to 1997, CBS broadcast the sitcom “Dave’s World,” based on the books “Dave Barry Turns 40” and “Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits.” The show starred Harry Anderson as Barry. In an early episode, Barry appeared in a cameo role.
With a brother living in Marin County, Barry has a link to Northern California and has been a featured speaker three times at the annual Sonoma Valley Authors Festival in the city of Sonoma.
“Our attendees loved him,” said R. David Freeman, co-founder of the festival.
Barry looks forward to sharing the stage in Sebastopol with Krasny, retired host of the “Forum” news and public affairs program, which he hosted on San Francisco public radio station KQED-FM from 1993 to 2021.
The Sebastopol Community Cultural Center’s Author Talk Fundraising series started more than a dozen years ago, with Krasny hosting the events over the years and recruiting speakers, said Mark DeSaulnier, the center’s executive director.
“Michael Krasny is a friend,” Barry said. “Whenever I was in San Francisco on book tours, I was always on his radio show.”
And what will Barry say in Sebastopol?
“I’ll talk about my book, ‘Swamp Story,’ and I’ll also talk about what’s going on in politics,” Barry said. “I try to amuse people without informing them.”
You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5243. On Twitter @danarts.
