Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets
By Dick Cavett
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
The legendary talk show host's humorous reminiscences and pointed commentary on the great figures he has known, and culture and politics today
For years, Dick Cavett played host to the nation's most famous personalities on his late-night talk show. In this humorous and evocative book, we get to hear Cavett's best tales, as he recounts great moments with the legendary entertainers who crossed his path and offers his own trenchant commentary on contemporary American culture and politics.
Pull up a chair and listen to Cavett's stories about one-upping Bette Davis, testifying on behalf of John Lennon, confronting Richard Nixon, scheming with John Updike, befriending William F. Buckley, and palling around with Groucho Marx. Sprinkled in are tales of his childhood in Nebraska in the 1940s and 1950s, where he honed his sense of comic timing and his love of magic.
Cavett is also a wry cultural observer, looking at America today and pointing out the foibles that we so often fail to notice about ourselves. And don't even get him started on politicians. A generation of Americans ended their evenings in Dick Cavett's company; Talk Show is a way to welcome him back.
Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett was the host of The Dick Cavett Show on ABC and PBS, and he also hosted talk shows on the USA, HBO, and CNBC cable networks. He appears frequently on stage, screen, and new media, and he was nominated for his most recent Emmy Award in 2012. He is the author of Talk Show and the coauthor of Cavett and Eye on Cavett, and he writes an online opinion column for The New York Times. He lives in New York City and Montauk, New York.
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Reviews for Talk Show
6 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a fine collection of columns that Dick Cavett wrote for the New York Times from 2007 to 2010. As erudite, witty, and urbane as ever, his writing focuses largely on his nostalgic and humorous reminiscences of his Nebraska boyhood, college days at Yale, working as a copy boy at Time magazine, his early years in show business as a comedy writer for Johnny Carson, and, of course, his years as a talk show host. The classic stories of his talk show guests - Paul Newman, Groucho Marx, John Lennon, Richard Burton, Bette Davis, William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Katharine Hepburn, and on and on - are particularly entertaining. Of decidedly less interest are the occasional columns on political events, mostly concerning the 2008 presidential campaign and the aftermath of the ill-fated Iraq War, stories whose time has now passed. But all the rest are indeed timeless stories - some of great good humor, and some of touching poignancy - that will never lose their appeal.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I need to stop listening if I am to continue to admire Dick Cavett as a talk show host. I was expecting mostly reflections of the characters he's met throughout his career, but after getting through the first disc, almost all of his musings are on his dislike of the Bush administration and misuse of the English language. We jive politically, but boy howdy is he just coming off like a crotchety, condescending old man.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dick Cavett hosted some of the most intelligent talk shows ever aired on TV and from 2007 through 2013 he ruminated about his experiences in a weekly on-line column in the New York Times. Thia book is a collection of his columns that ran from February, 2007 to April, 2010.The columns on show business are wonderful, especially his infamous show in 1971 that pitted Gore Vidal against Norman Mailer with poor erudite Janet Flanner trying to referee. I'm happy that I saw that show live & Cavett's writing brings it all back (with links to the video for those who missed it). Additionally there are wonderful stories about Paul Newman Groucho Marx, John Wayne and many, many more.If this book had stuck to show business I would have given it five stars. Unfortunately, however, a large portion deals with politics and those essays are no fun at all (although his apocryphal quote from George W Bush that" the French have no word for entreptreneur" and his comparison of Rod Blagolevich to a bowling ball cozy made me laugh out loud). Perhaps it's because, even when you would have agreed with his views six years ago, today with the passage of time, his political essays come across mostly as angry screeds. I ended up quickly skimming these to get back to the good stuff.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is a collection of articles that Cavett work for the NY Times. They are on various subjects – political (George W Bush, Sarah Palin, John McCain, film stars (John Wayne, Richard Burton, Groucho Marx), famous authors, as well as the demise of the English language. I found the political articles right on and especially enjoyed the ones on John Wayne and Richard Burton. However, at times Cavett uses words that are not part of an average person’s vocabulary and I hate to have a dictionary with me when I read a book. Is he just trying to show off? He makes a point of saying both of his parents were English teachers but some of the words are just not in daily vocabulary use.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a collection of all the articles Dick Cavett wrote for the New York Times during his short run at writing a bi-weekly column of his ruminations. In typical Cavett style the articles are irreverent, funny, and just a bit snarky (in a good way).
I bought this book having read a couple of his articles, in some reprinted fashion, some time ago. Of course the ones reprinted were the best of the best, so there are some articles in this book which weren't nearly as interesting.
My favorites were the ones about Richard Burton, The Art of the Insult, and the one that claimed Sarah Palin had no "first language." But there were definitely some which seemed more like personal ramblings in a diary.
It's a casual read and it was akin to popping open a can of Pringles. There's probably no more enjoyable way for people to improve their vocabulary than to read Cavett.