Bridgman reviewed Dave Barry Does Japan by Dave Barry
Review of 'Dave Barry Does Japan' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
My first exposure to [a:Dave Barry|6245|Dave Barry|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1668011283p2/6245.jpg] was reading his syndicated column in The International Herald Tribune in 1988 while I was living in Japan. He was hilarious. I felt a kinship with him in some ways. He went to Haverford College, which is across the street from The Haverford School for Boys, where I went for ten years. After college, Barry worked for a wire service in Philadelphia as what was then called "a rewrite man." I worked for a wire service in Philadelphia too, though not the one he did.
That said, [b:Dave Barry Does Japan|725996|Dave Barry Does Japan|Dave Barry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1399773285l/725996.SY75.jpg|121369], a 1992 book, is a good example of how badly humor ages. It's like watching the Abbott and Costello one-reel films that had people rolling in the aisles in the 1940s. You can see how it would have been funny then, but it isn't now. In …
My first exposure to [a:Dave Barry|6245|Dave Barry|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1668011283p2/6245.jpg] was reading his syndicated column in The International Herald Tribune in 1988 while I was living in Japan. He was hilarious. I felt a kinship with him in some ways. He went to Haverford College, which is across the street from The Haverford School for Boys, where I went for ten years. After college, Barry worked for a wire service in Philadelphia as what was then called "a rewrite man." I worked for a wire service in Philadelphia too, though not the one he did.
That said, [b:Dave Barry Does Japan|725996|Dave Barry Does Japan|Dave Barry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1399773285l/725996.SY75.jpg|121369], a 1992 book, is a good example of how badly humor ages. It's like watching the Abbott and Costello one-reel films that had people rolling in the aisles in the 1940s. You can see how it would have been funny then, but it isn't now. In fact, a lot of it's irritating, and some of it would have bothered me even if I'd read it when it was published, but that's because having lived in Japan for three years, I found some of his mistakes unacceptable, even though he's open about just visiting for a couple of weeks.
Its timing was unfortunate. Barry writes as if Japan was still the economic and cultural (one followed the other) juggernaut that it was in the 1980s, but by the time Does Japan came out, Japan was two years into a recession caused by the asset price bubble's collapse in 1990, a recession so severe it led to what the Japanese call The Lost Decades.
Barry talks about journalists he knew, whose knowledge of Japan was far greater than mine, and how helpful they were to him, yet they seemed to have failed him in some crucial ways. A noticeable one is when he writes about his difficulty with the language. He goes on at some length about how hard it was to say things like DOH-moh ah-REE-gah-toh correctly, for example. You'd think one of his experts or his own readings would have mentioned that Japanese is noninflected, so the right way would be closer to: Doumo arigatou.
I could go on, but I won't. I doubt many will bother reading this book these days, unless they're interested in how Japan has been seen by the West in the past. One lesson humorists might learn from it is to not use footnotes when trying to write funny. If you must, make sure they're used infrequently and only if they are hilarious.
4:17
