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Alice Hornbaker: A lot of writers want to know how they can write funny for money. There is an expert in the field, Erma Bombeck, who turns out a syndicated column, “At Wit's End,” for more than 420 newspapers coast to coast.

In 1963, Erma was a bored housewife. Her journalistic career seemed at a standstill. She had three healthy children and a husband, Bill, who sympathized with her yearning to break the routine of housewifery. He told her, “A woman who sends out her oven to be cleaned every four years can't be all bad.” He urged her to write again. Erma finally did. For $3 a week, she turned out a column for the Kettering-Oakwood Times, a weekly in the suburb of Centerville, Ohio. It was called Zone 59. Erma said of that experience, “Everyone thought Zone 59 was my age and kept asking me to write about irritability during menopause.”

A couple of years later, the Dayton, Ohio, Journal Herald, where Erma had worked from 1949 to 1953, asked her to write two columns a week for them at $25 a throw. Three weeks later, she was being syndicated by Newsday. She's now into her eighth year as a syndicated columnist, and her new contract with Publishers-Hall (Syndicate) runs to 1980. Her three times a week, “At Wit's End,” has a readership of nearly 40 million people. Life Magazine once called Erma Bombeck “the Socrates of the ironing board.” Her famous contemporary American humor has appeared in such national magazines as Good Housekeeping, where she writes a column; Reader's Digest; and a multitude of others. Not only does she write columns, but she authors books, she appears on network TV, and she travels on the lecture circuit.

I want to talk to you a little today because we have a lot of writers listening in to us and they're very interested in knowing how to write funny for money. We want to take Erma Bombeck a part a little bit and find out what her technique is in writing humor. First of all, how do you go about writing humor? Do you have a natural flair for it? Do you think it's something you can learn or study? How do you feel about writing humor?

Erma Bombeck: Well, you really can't afford the luxury of sweet inspiration when you're writing three times a week and you're programmed and you have editors waiting for it. It's not like you're sitting there waiting for a bolt to hit you and then you think, “Oh, that is hysterical,” and then you go and sit down and grind it out. You write on a schedule, and that's the tricky part about writing humor on demand. I psych myself up for it in that I don't read the morning newspaper or any paper because I get in such a fit of depression that I can't even sit up straight in a chair (laughing). I usually go in pretty fresh in the morning. I'm a morning person, and I sit down around 8:30 after the kids have all cleared out. I don't touch a dish. I just let the egg get hard on the plate, and I don't make any beds. I don't do any dusting, any flushing, anything.

I just go in and start. Usually I have a topic, something that's been going around in my head, and then I sit down and get started on it.

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Alice Hornbaker: You say you have a topic. Is it something that you have read about or just thought about or is it themed? Something inspired before? Television? What?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, it could be that, or it could be … I think in humor, more than anything else, in order to be believed, I think you have to draw very heavily from your own experiences, and I write in first person. It has to be believable that this type of thing could happen to me, and so I draw from any experience I've had. I went to a style show recently and I had not been to a style show in maybe eight years and I looked at these women with the concave stomachs walking around on the runway and it occurred to me at that moment, “Good grief, no wonder my clothes look lousy on me because I don't know how to walk.” In order to model clothes and have them look well, you obviously have to walk like you've just gotten out of bed from a hernia operation and you have to slink and bend at a 90-degree angle, right?

The stomach has to be projected out, and I was doing it all wrong. That was fodder for a column, of course. I thought, “Now, that's something that I’d not done before,” and that type of thing buoys me up if I haven't done anything with it before.

Alice Hornbaker: I see. Do you actually jot that down?

Erma Bombeck: Sure. Oh, yes.

Alice Hornbaker: Because I know how fleeting these ideas are.

Erma Bombeck: True, true.

Alice Hornbaker: Although it inspired you at the moment, if you don't have either a recorder or notes, you're in trouble.

Erma Bombeck: I live off of notes. I have them scratched on the back of my checks, and I'm going over to the bank saying, “Pardon me, do you have number 1687 there made out to a garbage collector?” I read off the back. But I write them on everything.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you have trouble with your own handwriting?

Erma Bombeck: Miserable, just miserable. I thought, “What is she talking about? What does she know?”

Alice Hornbaker: I want to go back for just a moment to your history. You went to high school in Dayton, Ohio. Is that correct?

Erma Bombeck: Right, right.

Alice Hornbaker: I think it was a vocational high school, if I remember.

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Erma Bombeck: It was. My husband said that we made license plates, but that is not true. We did things with our hands, but that wasn't it. It was a vocational school, and I had every intention of being an underpaid secretary. I thought that's where I was going to spend my life because I couldn't afford to go to college, but all that changed.

Alice Hornbaker: Were you doing any writing when you were in high school?

Erma Bombeck: Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Alice Hornbaker: Were you encouraged at all?

Erma Bombeck: Sure. I had this great teacher called J. W. Harris who encouraged me to go to college and stick in there with writing, which I thought was very nice of him. It really got me to thinking maybe I could go to school and maybe I could get into that line of work. That prompted me, at a high school level, I was 16, and I went over to the Dayton Journal Herald and I said, “Do you need a copy girl?” Up until that time they had had men, the copy boys, so whenever they yelled, “Copy boy,” I answered. That was it. I started in just mixing paste and getting cigarettes for everybody, that sort of important job.

Alice Hornbaker: Important job?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, right, at a high level. Then one day, Shirley Temple came to town and she was 16 years old and so was I and that's all they needed. They sent me out to do a story on Shirley Temple and that was my first interview.

Alice Hornbaker: Really?

Erma Bombeck: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alice Hornbaker: How did it go? Do you remember?

Erma Bombeck: She's done very well (laughter). Despite the interview. …I loved it. I thought, “My, golly! This is a whole new world out here. If you can't do, then you can be around people who do,” and it was sort of a vicarious thing. I thought, “Oh, this has got to be the most amazing craft in the world, to be able to take a blank sheet of paper and put it in your typewriter and create something that would either make people laugh or cry depending on what you said about them.” I thought it was great.

Alice Hornbaker: You were, at this time, you said 16. Now, you worked for a year, didn't you, before you went on to college?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah. I worked to get money to go to school. I went to Ohio University for about a semester and ran out of money, so you can see how well I saved. 38 bucks


doesn’t go (far). Then came back and finished up at the University of Dayton, major in English.

Alice Hornbaker: I see. Then immediately, what year was that that you were out at the University of Dayton? Is that when you went on to the newspaper to work in '49?

Erma Bombeck: That would have been in … Yeah, '49 I graduated.

Alice Hornbaker: '49?

Erma Bombeck: Right.

Alice Hornbaker: Were you also married in 1949?


Alice Hornbaker: That's what I thought.

Erma Bombeck: I didn't mess around. I had the white dress, you know? Why waste?

Alice Hornbaker: No. Before, going back just a moment, your mother was working all the time when you were small.


Alice Hornbaker: Your father died when you were quite young, I understand. Did she inspire you? Is she this type of personality, sort of an up personality? Did she show you humor in situations?

Erma Bombeck: I don't know. She has a great sense of humor.

Alice Hornbaker: Does she?

Erma Bombeck: Oh, she really does, but I don't know that she encouraged … At this stage of the game, you don't encourage young girls to go into journalism.

Alice Hornbaker: No.

Erma Bombeck: It wasn't the era for it. It's still sin city.

Alice Hornbaker: I remember that.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah.

Alice Hornbaker: They discouraged us all the way along through college.


Erma Bombeck: Right. That's true. That's true, because newspapers just were not fit for people. They used a language that was not used by ladies and this sort of thing, so they really discouraged anyone going into newspapering.

Alice Hornbaker: But you went on the women's page, I gather.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, sure.

Alice Hornbaker: That's what I could recall.

Erma Bombeck: That's right.

Alice Hornbaker: You were reporting and so forth in interviews until '53, right?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, true.

Alice Hornbaker: That's when you wrote for the paper. Okay, now in '53 you left the paper, had Betsy, your first child, and from that point on, and you had two sons following, and for 10 years there you didn't do any writing. Or did you do any writing?

Erma Bombeck: Oh, sure. Yeah, sure. You know how you dabble around and stuff. You try to find something that you can do from your home and be an absolute sensation and say you had a career, but still get the meals on the table and still make the beds and your laundry has to smell good and all those wonderful things. For a year, I was editor of the Dayton Shopping News, and I did a little column for that. Then I did public relations for the YWCA for five years, all from my home on that little telephone.

Alice Hornbaker: Was that a volunteer job or was it a paid job?

Erma Bombeck: No, it was a paid job.

Alice Hornbaker: Paid job?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, and I loved it. I really enjoyed it because I believed in the product. Then I walked off the street one day and went into a suburban weekly called the Kettering-Oakwood Times and said, “You need a humor writer.” I just happened to be available, and, golly, I got the job.

Alice Hornbaker: Did they ask you for some samples of your work?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah.

Alice Hornbaker: Did they?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, and the samples, amazingly enough, were pretty much what I'm doing now. They're almost right down the line. Journalism teachers were always


saying, “Write about what you know,” and I don't know of any situation where I have followed this more closely than in my own experience, because this is it. This is my turf, this is where I live.

Alice Hornbaker: Now, they said, “Okay, you can write a column for the tremendous sum of $3,” or what did they say?

Erma Bombeck: And I was overpaid (laughing).

Alice Hornbaker: Sorry about that. How long did you continue there?

Erma Bombeck: A year.

Alice Hornbaker: A year?

Erma Bombeck: Yes.

Alice Hornbaker: Then did the Journal Herald come to you and ask you to do this column for them?

Erma Bombeck: We say the Journal Herald, (but) actually it was Glen Thompson, who was the executive editor. He saw the column in the suburban paper, which I think is very significant because I think suburban papers are a great showcase. There's no doubt about it. They’re read by an awful lot of people, and if there's something there, I think they’re going to see it.

Alice Hornbaker: That’s very interesting.

Erma Bombeck: It really is. It’s a great showcase.

Alice Hornbaker: A lot of people do ignore the secondary markets.

Erma Bombeck: You want to start very large, but I think with suburban newspapers the readership is fantastic, and there are more of them coming up. People talk about the death of the metropolitan paper. For every death in the city, there may be five that start out in the suburbs and they’re good papers. You make no apologies for them because they’re good and they’re strong and they’re read. That's important.

Alice Hornbaker: I think that’s great. They are very much read.

Erma Bombeck: They really are.

Alice Hornbaker: People can tell you right now the last time what was said in it.

Erma Bombeck: That's right.


Alice Hornbaker: For some reason, they seem to want to read them.

Erma Bombeck: I think a lot of them have a lot of style, and I think they’re getting better. Used to be that I think that they were maybe owned by people who just wanted something to dabble around. Now I think there are a lot of professionals who are running suburban papers, and it shows.

Alice Hornbaker: I think that’s quite true. And you’re right, at one time they were just a simply business and it was a sideline to bring the paper out.

Erma Bombeck: True, but they’re very professional and they look good.

Alice Hornbaker: Now you mentioned that, when you started doing this column for the Journal Herald, he asked you to do this, and it was just within three weeks when he went after a syndication.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, that’s the most incredible part.

Alice Hornbaker: Tell us a little bit about that.

Erma Bombeck: I feel like a dodo. I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. I’m sitting out there still picking lint off the refrigerator and getting my little deadlines each week. I got this letter that he had sent to a syndicate, and then I got a copy of the letter they had sent back to him, and they’re carrying on this big correspondence, and here I am sitting here like a putz doing nothing. The last one I got said, “Let’s see samples.” Again, you start working on the backlog, which a syndicate has to have in order to sell.

Alice Hornbaker: What type of backlog?

Erma Bombeck: I did 12 samples on a variety of topics, all the same length and all very professional.

Alice Hornbaker: What length did they ask you to do?

Erma Bombeck: 450 words.

Alice Hornbaker: 450 words?

Erma Bombeck: Right, which is not really a long column as you know it, but it’s a perfect length because it gives you a chance to zero into something very small. You don’t have to talk about car pools, the whole spectrum. You can talk about the one kid who throws up if you want to. Who would want to? But you can zero right in on something very small. The thing about 450 words and the thing I love about this length is that in the first paragraph, you tell exactly what you’re going to talk about. Then you’ve got 400 words to get in and get out and make your point. I think a lot of columns, period, are probably overwritten and are too long,


especially with humor. I think it can exhaust people, or you can labor it, or you can talk them to death. I think this is wrong. Zap in and zap out.

Alice Hornbaker: I think you’re right, particularly for humor.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, right.

Alice Hornbaker: Now, in this interim, when they decided that they were going to syndicate the column, were they talking in what terms? So how many papers when you first started out?

Erma Bombeck: You start with one.

Alice Hornbaker: Just one?

Erma Bombeck: You bet, and you build. Yeah, you've got a future going for you.

Alice Hornbaker: But they're working for you at this point? They sell it?

Erma Bombeck: Yes, right. They have salesmen who are attached to a syndicate and they go out with their little portfolios and it's strictly a door-to-door job. You knock on the door, you go in, and you say, “Hey, have I got a girl for you.” (Laughter) Alright, can’t refuse. They open up the portfolio and they say, “Now, look this over and would you like to try her beginning next week?” I think the first year, this was (with the) Newsday syndicate, we got something like 38 papers, which I was absolutely amazed. I was eating ground chuck now, things were looking up, and then the second year and the third year … Let me see. No, I can take you through the first five years. That's a little easier because I don’t have yearly figures, but at the end of five years, we had around 200 papers.

Then I switched to Publishers-Hall Syndicate, and then in the last three years it’s up to 420, which I think is staggering.

Alice Hornbaker: Yes, it is.

Erma Bombeck: Yes, unbelievable.

Alice Hornbaker: We're talking about 30, 40 million readership. A lot of people reading that every … Three times a week.

Erma Bombeck: It’s sort spooky when you think about it. I don’t think about it. I just think about my mother sitting out there reading it.

Alice Hornbaker: I’m sure she does. Can you tell us a little bit about the operation of a syndicate? Now, you have a contact with him, is that correct?

Erma Bombeck: Yes.


Alice Hornbaker: That runs over a stated period of time?

Erma Bombeck: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alice Hornbaker: Now how many columns must you deliver? Or do you deliver them on a six-month basis, three-month basis, on a yearly basis? What's the backlog you have to work on?

Erma Bombeck: I don’t know. I’m not good in math, you know that, if you’ve seen my checkbook. Let’s see, what’s three times 52 weeks a year? 120, 142, I think, 146, whatever. Anyway, I’m down for three columns a week for 52 weeks out of the year. My contract goes through 1980. For my part of the bargain, I’m to deliver 450 words, preferably hysterical. My copy is to be on time. I’m talking as a professional now because this is not a little part-time job; it's something that you need the discipline and you make the time for. It’s not whenever you’re going to work it in. In exchange for this, they sell the column and distribute it and they do all the bookkeeping and return to me the percentage off of it.

Alice Hornbaker: I remember you said once in an article, I think for Matrix Magazine, that the syndicate, your syndicate that handles your column has approximately 3,000 applicants, people who have ideas, who are trying to sell them, and maybe they buy one new column every four years.

Erma Bombeck: Yes, yes.

Alice Hornbaker: This means maybe one out of 12,000…

Erma Bombeck: Right. It sounds very discouraging, but I think the bright thing to look at is the fact that they are always looking. They are sincere about this. A syndicate is only as alive as its material. Now you can’t just ride along year after year with the same contributors. You have to have new blood. Comic strips, new comic strips, you've got to have new ones turning over all the time. You love Dick Tracy and Joe Palooka, but you've got to be realistic and keep injecting new ones, right- now type strips. Our syndicate has one called Funky Winkerbean, which is a fairly new strip and he's doing fantastic, comes from Cleveland.

Alice Hornbaker: Really?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, yeah. A school teacher, a school teacher, and he has a great success story. Here he is, he's teaching school and he has this idea for a right-now strip, and he sends it into a syndicate and he's one of the thousands who surfaces. I think they’re always looking for talent like this, and they need it. They need it to survive as much as papers need it to survive.

Alice Hornbaker: You say then they really are looking for ideas, right?


Erma Bombeck: They're looking for ideas. Talent, for a better word — either in what I do, which is called text, or the strips.

Alice Hornbaker: I see.

Erma Bombeck: They’re really on the lookout all the time, and the same way with magazines. I know Good Housekeeping reads everything that comes in. Doubleday, who does my books, reads every single manuscript that comes in. Now that impresses me a lot.

Alice Hornbaker: Yes it does, because (as you) say they’re searching all the time.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah. I've been on the other end of it. I've been one of these sitting out there thinking, “Who reads these?” Anybody?” (laughter)

Alice Hornbaker: No, it doesn't really work that way, you’re quite right.

Erma Bombeck: (I) used to spit on the signatures all the time to make sure they were there.

Alice Hornbaker: Throw coffee on them.

Erma Bombeck: You bet.

Alice Hornbaker: In your set up, how many columns do you write at one time to deliver to the syndicate?

Erma Bombeck: I have a fantastically good, good day if I can do one and a half.

Alice Hornbaker: One and a half.

Erma Bombeck: That really doesn't sound like very much, does it? Except that I like to work them over and I like to polish, and I like to hone them, and I don’t want to let go of them even when I let go. That’s my insecurity. I have a lot of it. I want to hang on until I’m absolutely sure that I have said it all in the way I want to say it. Even after eight years, I'm going into my ninth, I still labor over them, and I anguish over them, and I mother them, and I give birth to them, and they’re important to me. They really are.

Alice Hornbaker: Say if you in one day perhaps do one full column and a half of another one, do you have enough of a backlog that you can work, say, three or four weeks on columns before you have to deliver some more?

Erma Bombeck: No, no.

Alice Hornbaker: Can't do it? Okay.

Erma Bombeck: That’s a luxury, too. No. Every Friday, I have to put three in the mail.



Erma Bombeck: I write three weeks ahead so that one set of columns will be on an editor’s desk and she will be processing them. One will be in the mail ready to go, and one will be being released by me. We keep the mail going pretty good.

Alice Hornbaker: I see. You mentioned once in a story that you do occasionally have editors write to you and tell you, because of your verbiage or a certain way you put something, they get a little upset.


Alice Hornbaker: You mentioned one woman editor who was upset because you used the word bathroom?

Erma Bombeck: Yes. (laughing)

Alice Hornbaker: And you wrote to an editor. … How did that come out?

Erma Bombeck: I don’t usually interfere with things like that. I figure the dudes are buying, and they certainly have a right to say what is in the paper. But I came to the defense of this one, because I think I’m very sensitive to things that are in bad taste or things that might offend people.

I’m sensitive to it because I feel when you write humor, if people are out there being offended, they’re not laughing. That’s not what I’m in business for, that’s not the name of my game.

I was really whipped up about this because I felt that maybe this was a new area that I was getting into. People have written before about house and children and home, but I felt that up to this time, maybe they hadn’t really told the truth the way things really were. I wrote the woman telling her that my bathroom was clinical to me, and that I spend an awful lot of time there.

I had grown up in one, and my children had grown up in them. I was either on my knees in there, or I was polishing or doing something, and that I had spent time in there, like when I thought I was there alone, there would be a Popeye movie flashed on my chest, and that I realized it was part of a mob scene. This room means nothing to me except a place where you raise kids. Very basic and was not meant to really shock anyone, and, by golly, they’re still buying the column.

Alice Hornbaker: Good.

Erma Bombeck: Isn't that amazing?

Alice Hornbaker: You sold her?


Erma Bombeck: Yes, I thought. … She went out and bought a bathroom that very day.

Alice Hornbaker: How do you test drive, or do you ever test drive ideas with members of your family or friends?

Erma Bombeck: No.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you discuss them at all?

Erma Bombeck: That’s why we have a good, happy 25-year-old marriage because when I get on my knees and I claw at my husband and say, “Please, give me criticism,” he has the good sense not to do it. He realizes I don’t really want that, and I don’t. (laughter)

Alice Hornbaker: You don’t. What about ideas? I’m sure your family situation inspires you occasionally, or more than occasionally …

Erma Bombeck: Sure.

Alice Hornbaker: And your children, too, as far as that's concerned, but what about on the outside? Do you get fan mail, perhaps, that feeds you any ideas?

Erma Bombeck: Sometimes. I know that Ann and Abby probably, of course, get a lot of mail, which they react to. My mail is a little different. They don’t want advice for their problems. They are not asking me what to do with their nylon net. They don’t really care. My type of mail is a sharing sort of a thing. My mail is where you get the great, big, long legal tablet or the yellow tablet that children use in school and the yellow crayon, which is the only thing they can find in the sofa cushions to write with. They’re sitting down, and it’s late at night, and the kids are in bed, and they’ve just finished the ironing, and it’s 2 in the morning, and they want to share something, or they want to unload. It’s like a therapy session by mail.

Most of my mail is from people who just want to tell you, “You think you had a day, lady? Listen to mine,” and I do.

Alice Hornbaker: I wondered if you would get that kind of attention.

Erma Bombeck: Sure, yeah.

Alice Hornbaker: And you’re supposed to. …It’s like, “Gee, there’s the universality there” and they would want to identify and say, “I had that experience.”

Erma Bombeck: It is. It's a disbelief that anyone could put up with some of the things that they put up and survive it. That’s the amazing thing, that they’re going to make it.

Alice Hornbaker: The beauty of surviving with humor…



Alice Hornbaker: Some just merely survive.

Erma Bombeck: Right. It doesn’t cure it, you understand.

Alice Hornbaker: Your children now are in their late teens and one has reached 20. How do you feel that their growing up is going to change, or is it going to change your column in any aspect as far as your themes are concerned?

Erma Bombeck: I don’t know, it might. I think the column has changed over the last eight or nine years. Certainly, some of the changes have had to do with a lot of women out in the labor market. Some of it has had to do with attitudes, and I certainly have changed. I hope I have. I would hate to think that I was one of these people who were so set in any, any, any direction that I could not… switch around and change my mind about something, which I have done a lot of. A lot of columns that I wrote back in the beginning are considered pretty sexist now. In fact, some man brought me to task the other day. I did a column about balancing my checkbook, or not balancing it, and he said, “Don’t talk about that, about women being stupid about their checkbooks.” And I said, “I’m not talking about all women, I'm talking about myself. I've always been stupid, and I’m still stupid about it.”

But it's changed, and I don’t know what direction it’s going to take. I have an awfully good memory now about toilet training, which obviously, the 15-year-old has been toilet trained for a few months. I think I’ll rely a lot on memory, and then I think I’ll just play it by ear. I don’t write just about domestic things. It’s life’s frustrations, the human condition that drives you crazy — getting in long lines at the bank and that sort. My favorite line — getting behind two priests in church and thinking it was going to be a quick confession and then finding out they were the Berrigan brothers. I think there are certain areas, frustrations that you can get into, where you don’t have to rely on families, or they change and I'll go with it, but I haven't thought that far ahead.

Alice Hornbaker: How about the humor itself? Do you think that perhaps there is an era of humor and what may be funny 10 years ago is not funny now, and there are things funny now that perhaps weren't funny then?

Erma Bombeck: Some humor stands out better than others. (For instance,) Fred Allen, whom I consider really great. You can go over some of Fred Allen’s old tapes, and some of his stuff stands out very well. Now, (Robert) Benchley, who happens to be my very favorite humorist because he made fun of himself, and there's such a gentleness to that. I like it. It’s a kind thing. I’ve always admired him tremendously.

Alice Hornbaker: There's probably a universality of humor, too, as well as an individuality.


Erma Bombeck: Right. Some holds up better than others.

Alice Hornbaker: Sure. Now let’s go back to some of the people you admire, that probably you have studied or listened to tapes. Let’s talk about a few of those people you really like. Who would they be?

Erma Bombeck: Let's see. I like (indistinguable). He never liked women humorists at all. If we had been seated side by side at a dinner table, he'd have probably changed his seat. No, I'm kidding. A lot of men are really turned off by women who have a sense of humor.

Alice Hornbaker: Why do they find us …

Erma Bombeck: I don’t know why. Of course, Benchley, my all-time favorite, I like Jean Kerr. I don’t know her at all except through her books, but I like her way with dialogue. She just has a way of saying things that is absolutely unbeatable. I like H. Allen Smith, and, of course, I love the early books of Max Shulman. Maybe it was my time when I was in college and he was at the University of Minnesota, and I identified greatly with it.

These are all different types of humor that I’m talking about, and that may seem a little strange. I like Milton Berle walking on the side of his shoes. I like the pie on the face. I like Don Rickles, and this is another kind of humor. I don’t see Don Rickles as being vicious at all. I don’t see that in him.

Alice Hornbaker: You don’t?

Erma Bombeck: No, and I know people either love or they hate him. I don’t see that at all. I think there's such a desperate need for it (humor) that I guess I’m just willing to put a smile on my face and ride with most of it.

Alice Hornbaker: Do, you think that perhaps studying humor helps people write humor? Is it a prerequisite, or is there such a thing as a prerequisite?

Erma Bombeck: Sure there is, and I think in order to write well, you have to read. I don’t see how you can get around that. People are always afraid that if they read humor, or they read great works of literature, that they’re going to steal. That’s not possible. People get all hung up on style and stealing style, baloney. I don’t think you can steal style. I think style is something that is so personal and that is so you that you have a particular way of saying things. When you set it down, and you set it down often enough, it comes out and it’s you. That’s what style is all about. It’s a natural thing. If people would quit getting so hung up about it and just let it happen, a part of them would emerge. I think every single person in this world has a way of saying something and it’s very unique and it belongs only to you like a fingerprint. I think it just comes out and if you don’t worry about it, that’s when it comes out and projects itself.


Alice Hornbaker: Do you think that perhaps someone who is starting out now and wants to be a humor writer — perhaps working at the suburban newspaper level or trying to get in through that route — that reading humor all the time is a big help to them?

Erma Bombeck: I think so. I think so.

Alice Hornbaker: You have to immerse yourself into the specialty perhaps that you're interested in. Or did you immerse yourself?

Erma Bombeck: The thing about humor, I never really…dissected it and beat it to death with a stick. It has to do I think with an attitude. It’s a positive attitude that you have toward things, and it’s the old story if someone gave you a…full of manure, you'd run through it in your bare feet saying, “I know there's a pony here somewhere,” because that’s the way the humorists are. They look for things all the time. This brings us to something else, the types of humor there are and the way you project it. I like exaggeration.

Alice Hornbaker: You do?

Erma Bombeck: I love it. I use it a lot. Some people use shock treatments. I like the exaggerated form of humor because I think it’s really insane. It’s so silly and so obvious to people.

Alice Hornbaker: You just take an idea and just blow it up out of proportion, so to speak?

Erma Bombeck: Right, and I like the identity approach, too, where you get something so close to home. Like you have the children who look at one another and say, “Make him stop looking at me.” This is a big trauma in their lives. You can use these little tools of making people laugh at themselves.

Alice Hornbaker: Now let’s look at humor and sensitivity, people’s sensitivities. What’s funny to one person perhaps is not funny to another. Do you, as a writer of humor, find it difficult to separate these and find subjects that perhaps you won’t touch too close to home and make someone a little unhappy with, or how do you determine? Do you watch the words you use? Are you particularly aware of that? Do you have some censorship for yourself, sort of forbidden topics or forbidden words?

Erma Bombeck: If you put down every topic that was going to offend someone, we would have to move out of this room to make room for all the three by five cards. Yeah, I’m really aware of it. … If they’re not sitting there laughing or crying, (you) don’t want to (offend someone). On the other hand, you just can't cut your own teeth. It’s just not right. You have to work within some kind of context. You always get the very sensitive reader when you’re talking about rotten children. You will get a person who will write and say, “You’re lucky your child is still around because mine is gone now.” Then of course you die, and you realize that


you hit them on a bad day or something. Now I don’t know that I have any boundaries set up, except good taste. There are just some things that aren’t really funny.

Wars are not funny. That's a big setback. Some things just do not lend themselves at all. But I’ve seen Mike Nichols and Elaine May do one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen on funerals. I’m sorry, but funerals are sometimes funny. They just really are. If you have good, strong humor and good identification, such as they have, you can pull it off. You really can.

Alice Hornbaker: I think what you touched on, taste, is a very important one, and good taste. Anything that's well done is acceptable if you show the humor in a situation. As a matter of fact, you get people to laugh at themselves. I think that’s important.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah. You talked about language. Of course, you respect language because I feel that a lot of people are offended by bad language, including myself. We never do that, especially in family newspapers. My lecture is that a child could (read them). I’ve never understood why a lot of nightclub comedians have felt that they had to resort to bedroom humor in order to have their act. It’s just not necessary.

Alice Hornbaker: You also do books?

Erma Bombeck: Yes.

Alice Hornbaker: You have done, I think three to date and a new one out right now from Doubleday, right?

Erma Bombeck: All three are from Doubleday.

Alice Hornbaker: All three?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah.

Alice Hornbaker: Okay. Starting with the one that …

Erma Bombeck: They've got to keep doing it until they get it right.

Alice Hornbaker: First one was the name of your column, right?

Erma Bombeck: At Wit's End, yeah.

Alice Hornbaker: Right. Then you did another one with (Family Circus cartoonist) Bil Keane?

Erma Bombeck: Yes.

Alice Hornbaker: What was that called?


Erma Bombeck: Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own! We did a thing on teenagers.

Alice Hornbaker: Right. He did the illustrations for that?


Alice Hornbaker: Now your third one just came out. Was it last year or … ?

Erma Bombeck: Came out last August.

Alice Hornbaker: In August?

Erma Bombeck: August of '73. I Lost Everything in the Postnatal Depression, which has to be the worst title I've ever heard in my life.

Alice Hornbaker: Speaking of titles, did they title that?

Erma Bombeck: I admire people. They make up a title…and they come and say, “Listen to this title. Is this a book?” They lay it on you and you say, “That is one fantastic title.” And then they say, “Well, I’m going to write that book some day, too, when the kids are grown and I get my cabin,” which they don’t have. The incredible part about (writing a book is that) I do all these things, and then we’re right down the line and they say, “You've got to put a name on this.” “I don’t have a name, I don’t want to put one. I don’t have anything good. I’m not creative enough to even put a title on my own book. This was a desperate thing that we did.

Alice Hornbaker: You allowed Doubleday then to put the name on your book?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah. I gave them about three or four, and this is the one we came up with.


Erma Bombeck: And I go through my life explaining what it means.

Alice Hornbaker: That would be another column.


Alice Hornbaker: Did Doubleday originally come to you with the idea of putting your columns into a book?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah. I know I’ve been really very lucky because when the column went into syndication, it opened up all kinds of doors. I think you find this happens. Once you get one showcase for your work, well then you get offers from other people. That’s how the lectures evolved, that’s how Good Housekeeping evolved, that’s how the books (evolved), and you just sort of grow as you go along.


Alice Hornbaker: The magazines, do they come to you now and ask you on assignment-type basis that they would like (a piece)?


Alice Hornbaker: Do they get specific or do they say, “I would just like to have a column from you. Just write something for us.”

Erma Bombeck: No. Well, contractually, I’m bound to Good Housekeeping. I cannot write for another ladies’ magazine. That binds me there, but Reader’s Digest has asked if I come up with an idea, to submit it and they would like to see some more stuff.

Alice Hornbaker: You can't get much better than that.

Erma Bombeck: No, you really can’t. No. I’m really proud of that.

Alice Hornbaker: What about the lecture circuit? Is this something you do for fun, or is this something that feels important to promote your (work)?

Erma Bombeck: I just love pain (laughing).

Erma Bombeck: No, I really enjoy the lectures, and I think it’s important to get out because I could sit in that little room and live and die and not know what people were thinking or what was going on. It's more than an ego trip. It’s a stimulation for me to get out and meet women from all over this country and to realize what they’re thinking about. I think sometimes this is what happens, and I’m going to be very critical now of editors who sit in New York, whether of books or of syndicates or whatever. They sit in a little part of New York and they look out this little dreary window, if they are of the status to have a window, and they really don’t know what’s going on, where the people are. As far as I’m concerned, this is where the people are.

We’re out here and we’re in Cincinnati and we’re in Cleveland and we’re in New Orleans and we’re in little towns in Pennsylvania and in California and we're all over the place. And we're people, and we’re really pretty normal when you get down to it. Sometimes, I feel that they (editors) lose sight of this, and they really don’t know what it is we want to read.

Alice Hornbaker: Really, in addition to being a delightful speaker and they like booking you, you’re helping yourself because you’re staying in touch.

Erma Bombeck: It does a lot for me. It really stimulates me and I like to know what the women like. I like to know what they hate, what they’re talking about, and how their views have changed. I think that’s important to keep up with that. I really do.

Alice Hornbaker: Have you noticed that there has been a (change)?


Erma Bombeck: Yes, oh, yes.

Alice Hornbaker: … through the column…

Erma Bombeck: Just by what they're reading, sure.

Alice Hornbaker: And there’re a lot more women working today than before.


Alice Hornbaker: And smaller families, that type of thing. I'm sure they’re very articulate about telling you what is going on.

Erma Bombeck: They are. I think some of the views that their children are bringing home, they’re beginning to make some changes with that. It’s really good for me. I enjoy it.

Alice Hornbaker: How much lecturing do you do a year?

Erma Bombeck: It depends. This year I’ve been on book tours. I've had some kind of schedule since August, but normally I only do about 20 a year.

Alice Hornbaker: I see. Let’s talk a little bit about book promotion.

Erma Bombeck: Why? You really are going to depress me today, aren’t you? (laughing)

Alice Hornbaker: Doubleday just comes to you and says, “Wouldn't it be nice…

Erma Bombeck: Oh dear. Everything you have heard about book tours has been absolutely true. They're real backbreakers, they are kidney crushers, you get these headaches that rise for about two weeks. You go to cities and you just inundate them with your book. You’re just going, going, going, talking, talking, talking, drinking 18,000 cups of coffee, not getting any sleep, standing up, answering ridiculous questions and giving even more ridiculous answers. I don’t know if there's any better way to sell a book. I really don’t know. I wrote at one point and said, “Listen, I’m going to start selling the book now from door to door and I’m going to add vanilla to my line and just hope that the book outsells the vanilla.” It’s really a tough way to sell a book.

Alice Hornbaker: Is it usually about a two-week, three-week type of thing?

Erma Bombeck: It's as long as you want it to be. (Indistinguishable) went on one for about four months.

Alice Hornbaker: That must have been fantastic.


Erma Bombeck: I think they found him wondering around incoherent, completely out of his gourd. But no one really appreciates it unless you have been on one. After a while you just get the crazies. You really don’t know what you're saying

Alice Hornbaker: I would imagine you have to go alone and you're hitting maybe two or three cities a week.

Erma Bombeck: No, no. I went on one once where I hit 15 cities in 14 days. By the time I got to Seattle, I was telling everyone I was Joyce Brothers. …I was really, really out of my mind. I would get on talk shows and they would say, “Will you tell us about your book?” And I'd say, “What book?” (laughing)… I was really out of it. I was exhausted. You meet a lot of great people along the way, but, boy, it’s a hard way to sell a book.

Alice Hornbaker: I imagine you get fodder for your column? You've got to get something out of it.

Erma Bombeck: You have to.

Alice Hornbaker: How about a program, say of the caliber of the national influence of Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show? I think that you went on that one time, and you did a bit on that afterward. Does it sell books?

Erma Bombeck: Sure. Sure, it does. I'm positive that it does. The more exposure you have, and of course you reach different audiences with different shares — Mike Douglas audience (with) housewives, Carson Show later with a more sophisticated audience maybe, or at least someone who can stay awake. Of course, local talk shows are just great. I’m sure it sells books. It just simply has to. I’m an old person. I’m not young anymore. At this one luncheon, I saw Dorothy Gish who was starting off on her tour. She's in her 70s, and I thought, “How in the world?”

Alice Hornbaker: What is she going to do?

Erma Bombeck: I don’t know, but I’m sure she held up very well. Did a great job.

Alice Hornbaker: When you come back after a tour like this, does this give you enough ammunition perhaps for three months of column or something?

Erma Bombeck: No, not that many.

Alice Hornbaker: Not that many?

Erma Bombeck: No. I wish it did. No.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you go back home immediately and start knocking them out?


Erma Bombeck: Sure. You really don’t have any choice. I had to write over the weekend because I had to write ahead because of my time, and Buchwald does the same thing. When he goes out on lectures, he has to write ahead.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you take your typewriter with you?

Erma Bombeck: No, we write ahead. I don’t write well on the road at all. You’re busy and you’re doing other things and you’re tired. I really write better at home in my little surroundings.

Alice Hornbaker: Tell me what your surroundings are at home?

Erma Bombeck: It’s part of our garage. I used to write from my bedroom, and this is the truth. I was working on the first book, and my husband had put a big, long board up with some makeshift legs. Then one night I turned and I said, “You know, Bill, I have lost chapter two of my book and I found out I had been sleeping with it.” I said, “I really have to have more room.” Physically, we just weren’t set up for that. We had too many kids and too many things sitting around. It wasn’t until this house that I actually got a room of my own. It’s part of the garage that we finished off and it’s my corner back there. I really enjoy it. It’s like a bonus.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you have all your books and material there?

Erma Bombeck: I don’t use many books. I have a 49-cent dictionary and I figure if it isn’t in there, you know, I don’t know the meaning of the word anyway. I didn’t know what mystique was until I was going through it.

Alice Hornbaker: What time do you go out there in the morning?

Erma Bombeck: 8:30 in the morning.

Alice Hornbaker: How long will you stay there at times?

Erma Bombeck: I'll stay there until two o'clock.

Alice Hornbaker: You discipline yourself for that?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah. It’s pure discipline. I think a lot of housewives think, “Ah, listen, I’m going in there and I’m going to set my life down” because it’s funny, too, and I don’t doubt that for a minute. But I think if you’re going to be really brutally honest with yourself, it takes more discipline than you can ever imagine it takes. I’ve taken my typewriter to the hospital with me for kidney infections. I have taken it on camping trips, and the sand has gotten in the keys. It is just like the most fierce habit you can imagine. You can’t get it off your back. It is there, and it stares at you like a conscience. I really don’t want to discourage anyone because Lord knows we need a lot of humor, but it really it is discipline. It just is. It’s


discipline when you've got a headache. It’s discipline when someone dies. It’s discipline when you don’t want to write.

It’s discipline when you think the world is really falling apart at the seams, but that's how it is.

That’s what it’s all about, and I think that’s when the professionalism takes over. You just write on sheer guts, because every column is not a winner and you learn to live with that. You would like to say, “Oh, I’m not going to let go of this until it’s just the way I want it,” but you can’t do that.

Alice Hornbaker: Not when you’re writing three times a week.

Erma Bombeck: No, no. You’re writing for newspapers, and newspapers are right now.

Alice Hornbaker: What do you say to the idea of perhaps changing your focus in later years? Would you ever go from, say humor, to something else?

Erma Bombeck: Serious things?

Alice Hornbaker: Serious things.

Erma Bombeck: Never.

Alice Hornbaker: No?

Erma Bombeck: No. No, there are too many great people around who can do that sort of thing, and I think that’s a talent. I think that writing in a light theme is something a little bit different. I prefer to stick with it. That’s all I’ve ever written. I couldn’t write a straight news story if I had the who, what, where, when and why right before my eyes. I would blow it.

Alice Hornbaker: How did you do it with the Shirley Temple interview?

Erma Bombeck: You don’t hear me bragging about it, do you?

Alice Hornbaker: You said you were both 16. I think she was married very shortly after. I think she was 17 when she got married.

Erma Bombeck: Some are luckier than others of us. I had to shop a while. (laughing)

Alice Hornbaker: You and other people.

Erma Bombeck: I bought my way into it.


Alice Hornbaker: Supposing on the humor columns that you wanted to branch into perhaps books of another type. Do you think that perhaps you might change over to something like that, or would you always stay in this?

Erma Bombeck: No. The only thing I can ever, ever see, maybe looking at that would really be real attractive to me, of course, would be plays because now we’re talking again about dialogue, and I love dialogue. I think Neil Simon has to be a genius. I really do. His dialogue is great, and I would really love to meet him some time. I just would like to see the person that all this came out of, this one little body. Plays probably would be a natural thing to go to, but then I’m probably underrating that. I think that’s probably very difficult to do. It’s a craft, you don’t know what you’re doing. It would be very tricky.

Alice Hornbaker: Your column you say averaged 450 words. Much of it is in dialogue. You, as a writer, always use dialogue a great deal of the time. Is there some reason for this? Is it natural for you, or do you find that this is a technique that, which it obviously is, that gives readers a hook instantly. People like to read things that are easy to read, and dialogue is easy to read.

Erma Bombeck: I use dialogue for a very good reason. There was a time when I did not use it well at all. When I first began, I was using far too much paragraph after paragraph and I realized I was falling asleep in the middle of my own stuff. I think when you insert dialogue, you can do a couple of things. You can give your character some dimension. You tend to get the visual pictures of the way people look by the way they talk, and you can get a mental picture. You put imaginations to work, and you have certain words coming out of their mouth, especially if they speak in contractions, like “don’t you” or “won’t you,” things of that sort. You can get a lot out of your characters that way. Also, I think they can tell their own stories sometimes better than you can. I use dialogue a lot because I enjoy reading it a whole lot.

I know when I pick up a book and I see dialogue, I just gravitate toward it, because I think that tells a story better.

Alice Hornbaker: You use the first person all the time in your columns.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, pretty much I have to. There's a reason for that. I found a very long time ago that the only people that you could write about and would not get rotten mail on would be maybe Adolf Hitler. Then I think he would probably rise up from wherever he is and write you a letter saying, “I wasn't all that bad.” But when you make fun of yourself and you’re the scapegoat, you’re the mother in the white socks at the supermarket, people will accept that. But they’re a little bit uneasy about having you make fun of them or someone else. I can’t even put a neighbor down that I make up. You get me on it, so pretty much I'm it.


Alice Hornbaker: What about your youngsters? They identify with the people that you put in the column, say that your children are doing this and that? They give you a bad time about that?

Erma Bombeck: No, they never read the column. Never have and probably never will, and that is the truth. No, no, that’s the truth. But a funny thing happened. ASU, Arizona State University, asked permission to adapt the books into a play form and to present it at the university. I said okay. It sounded fine and they really did a great job with it, and I took my children out to see it. At first, they sat there and I didn’t know if they were going to leave at intermission and phone their attorneys, or they were going to ride through the whole thing, but then a funny thing happened. Once they got over the feeling of being very self-conscious because people were looking at them for reactions, they sat back. When they started to do the bit on whose turn it was to do the dishes and stuff like that, I think they really begun to laugh, and they really begun to see themselves and get a big hoot out of it, and they really enjoyed it.

Alice Hornbaker: Exactly, in a different perspective perhaps than I thought of them. Did you say they never read the column?

Erma Bombeck: No, no. Never, never, never.

Alice Hornbaker: The books?

Erma Bombeck: No.


Erma Bombeck: No.

Alice Hornbaker: How about your husband?

Erma Bombeck: I wouldn’t want to give him a quiz (laughing). I don’t want to test the marriage. I suspect he reads some of it but certainly not all, because people will say to him, when we’re out, “Hey, I saw you,” and he will look at them with this blank look on his face, like, “What is she talking about?”

Alice Hornbaker: So they really separate themselves pretty much from it?

Erma Bombeck: I think so. That doesn’t bother me.


Erma Bombeck: It doesn’t bother me a bit.

Alice Hornbaker: Jean Kerr said that for a while her youngsters wouldn't speak to her because at school they were teased about something that she had written into one of her


stories. They felt that the identity was too close to home and they said, “That's not really my mother you know. It's someone else that lives in the house,” and that sort of thing.

Alice Hornbaker: Could we take a minute and look at a couple of the stories that you have written?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah.

Alice Hornbaker: One that came out just this last month for Reader’s Digest, a reprint, of course, from Good Housekeeping. Again, dialogue is the most important technique that you used throughout the material. The idea (behind it) was the husband who has to cope at home when the wife goes away. Now, is this a theme that you decided to just run with? You had this in the back of your mind, or did you deliberately look for a theme?

Erma Bombeck: No, I’m strictly … I guess I should separate this. I am strictly on assignment from Good Housekeeping.


Erma Bombeck: In other words, it’s a regular column every other month for the last five years. They call me up and say, “Hey, you want to go with this?” Or they bounce it off of you and if it doesn’t do anything for you, you say, “Why I couldn’t say three words on that that you'd want to print.” Then if you're really turned off by it, then they will say, “Okay, we had this idea.” (In this case), this was one that they happened to want to go with. Now the problem with writing for magazines is of course you cannot offend any of the advertisers. You can’t step on any toes, so you have a built-in sensitivity right there. With the longer pieces, and these run between 1,200 and 1,500 words, usually I outline them.

Alice Hornbaker: You do?

Erma Bombeck: Now that sounds just terrible, doesn't it? When you’re writing spontaneous humor to outline something, but it is such a large chunk of humor and I’m used to writing tight, short, terse, very close to the typewriter. This is different for me, and I’m really just learning this trade here. This is kind of new.

Alice Hornbaker: Well, magazine (writing) is different, and as you say, you do need to block out a beginning and a middle and an end.

Erma Bombeck: I do the books that way.

Alice Hornbaker: You do this in your books?

Erma Bombeck: I could not stand it, just sit down and say, “I’m going to start the book today.” It has to be in some kind of form, and this one is, and this was very easy to write


because it’s a very old theme. There isn’t much new about it, and the only thing that you could bring new to an old theme would be your own experience and your own dialogue. You have to work on very funny lines.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you ever hear a gag or a joke or something and expand that into a column?

Erma Bombeck: Yeah. There was one. I bet this has been three or four years ago. It started out just as a simple joke, and it was eventually expanded into a column that got a lot of comment. What you’re doing, you’re tricking your reader. You have this little soul in the kitchen saying, “I hate to go to school. Do I really have to go?” and you say, “Yes, you do,” and they say, “Well, they won't like me. I know they won't like me.” “They'll love you,” and it keeps building and building. “Suppose I don’t know where the restroom is and, oh, the lunchroom? I'll never find the lunchroom.” “You'll find it, you'll find it. ” Finally, you hit the end, and the little soul is finally off to school. You turn to your neighbor and your neighbor says, “Couldn’t you just wait for him?” and I say, “Yes,” but after all, he is the principal. Someone has to go the first day, and he has no friends.”

That came from a joke that I think I had heard a couple of years before. I thought it was such a good joke, and it needed expanding. Here's where the surprise ending (comes in). We haven't hit upon that, have we?

Alice Hornbaker: No.

Erma Bombeck: I like zingers at the end. I always like surprises. It's the O. Henry Syndrome.

Alice Hornbaker: Very successful.

Erma Bombeck: Especially with humor. I think you ought to give them a big zap on the end and leave them with something. I really do. That was one of them where you had to wait until the end, and it really wasn’t hilarious all the way through, but you keep building up and you think, “What’s the point of all this?” and then you come to the end and it’s the new principal. But sometimes jokes lend themselves very well to that.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you actually collect any, or is it something kind of spontaneous?

Erma Bombeck: No, no. I just live from day to day (laughter). I really don’t plan that far ahead. I just sort and wait and see what the day (brings). I will tell you what else lends itself to humor — the news stories sometimes.

Alice Hornbaker: Great absurdity.

Erma Bombeck: Oh, yes, yes, and you can just go with them all over the place.


Alice Hornbaker: I know from your column, you do a lot of contemporary (topics). You must do a great deal of reading, not just in the field of humor. You do a lot of reading of newspapers and magazines.

Erma Bombeck: Yes, I love to read. But the type of things I read. I mean it’s ridiculous. I mean I don’t know anything going on in the world today (laughing). What a dimension I have. People say, “Vietnam,” and I’ll say, “you’re kidding!” But then when you get down to these little absurdities (of life), of course I just gobble them all up. And there’s just not as many in the paper as there used to be, which is so upsetting.

Alice Hornbaker: It is. It’s a good market.

Erma Bombeck: It really is. Yes, you’re right.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you have a person that comes to you socially with an idea for a column, and (says) you’ve just got to write about it.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah, and usually it’s something that I’ve written. This sounds terrible but three a week for eight years and I cannot really think of any area that I really haven’t gotten into at one time or another. Yet new situations seem to pop up and you can’t imagine why you didn’t remember them before. I had one that didn’t happen to me until a few years ago, the business with the graduation pictures. No one has ever really come out and said, “What do we do with 200 snapshots of this kid whose hair was too long in the first place?”

Alice Hornbaker: That’s where humor comes in. Many people could say, “I could write humor. It’s very easy to write humor.” And it’s not easy to write humor. They think there are so many things you could laugh about. When you come right down to the discipline of the typewriter and turning it out, there are so many things maybe you could write about, but they’re not all that funny. To find that golden nugget is very difficult sometimes. To be able to see it is a real talent. Which brings me to the question, must you have this inherent talent to write humor? Or do you think you could actually write in another genre and say that eventually you’re going to write humor? Do you think people could train themselves to write humor if they wanted to badly (enough)?

Erma Bombeck: Anything that I’m going to say, it’s going to sound so immodest, but I really think you have to have a leaning toward it. I really do.

Alice Hornbaker: I think I agree with you.

Erma Bombeck: I’m just trying to think of any other thing that could be taught and I just don’t think you can. I think you either see things funny or you don’t. I have had people write and say, “People are laughing but I really don’t get it. I don’t have a sense of humor.” And I think, “Yes you do, you really do,” trying to talk them into it. But I think a lot of people have such inhibitions. When you write humor, you


can’t have any inhibitions. You have to set yourself up and just be as ridiculous and zany (as possible). There is one line in my speech, and it was a long time before I could even bring myself to say it. It was so insane and because it’s not like you, I think people laugh at it. But I tell them I have always wanted, after each book was published, I have always wanted to become one of those wonderful, successful women where I look at my husband in the beach house and say to him, “I’ve overgrown you preppy.” (laughter)

It’s so insane and I don’t know how I remembered to say it. But I think when you write humor, you have to bare your soul to people. You have to get right to the bottom. And I talk about personal things. And sure, I give away most of my personal life and my personal experiences. I do reserve some of it back that you’re never going to hear about, and you’re not going to read about. I do have some limitations to that, self inflicted. But for the greater part, you really have to bare the soul and give it all. You really do.

Alice Hornbaker: People who write more basically have seen it or have this sensitivity.

Erma Bombeck: They’re willing to give that.

Alice Hornbaker: They’re willing to give that to the public.

Erma Bombeck: Right. I can think of emotions out there that I hadn’t realized that I had. The first time I stood up and I said, “I regard children for exactly what they are, a punishment from God for an early marriage.” (laughter) And moreover, I had the right to say it even. But I think a lot of people feel this. And (they) think, “Oh! Good Lord, now she knows.” That’s where the identity comes in.

Alice Hornbaker: I think that’s part of humor. It’s universality.

Erma Bombeck: Yeah.

Alice Hornbaker: To see yourself in what the humorist is saying. Also to poke a little fun at yourself. People can laugh at that, but they don’t particularly want to laugh at themselves. They laugh at themselves through what you’re saying because they see themselves in it. But by you making fun of them, it’s a little easier for them to accept it, I think, sometimes when they read humor. If somebody pokes fun at you directly and you’re quite sensitive about it, it hurts. But if you say, this happened to me today and it’s hilarious and you can see in that situation the same thing happened to me. … I think they call you the Socrates of the ironing board. (laughter)

Erma Bombeck: You hit upon something else in humor that I think is very vital. You’re either a one-liner who just cracks joke or when you get down to real humor, I think you have to start with the premise of the truth, with something very basic. (There’s more than) humor for humor’s sake. I always think there has to be (something) underlying somewhere. Some little philosophy, some little message or


something. And I’m not quite sure how you get in there. I think that’s a part of you that you also part with. I mean you part with the knee slappers, but you always have something else that’s goes in there. I’m not saying it right. I wish I could think of an example where the love for a child comes through, even though you’re putting him down, there has to be some gentleness to it.

Alice Hornbaker: Your attitude towards him. Your identity with your family has always come through in your columns. This great love that you have, even though your children don’t regularly read you. (laughter) They really should. I think they’d be very flattered. We know all the advantages of writing a column. Do you find there is any real disadvantage of being a syndicated columnist? Other than the tight deadlines and knowing you can’t go anywhere because the deadlines are coming up?

Erma Bombeck: I guess that’s the worst of it, the constancy of something you have to do all the time, but then it is in any job. It has taken away a little bit of our anonymity. It couldn’t help but do that, and that’s sort of a new thing for us. For the first couple of years it really wasn’t apparent. Then one summer we went into a Stuckey’s on the way to Florida. We were all sitting at our table and in my usual role, I had varicose veins in the neck yelling at the kids, “Put that down!” and “Wipe off your mouth!” And I was going around the table cutting up everyone’s breakfast. Some woman at the counter turned around and said, “Those are the Bombecks, look at that.” All of a sudden we sort of froze. I felt like, “Oh, Lord! Now we can’t do that. She knows we’re rotten. I know we’re rotten.” That sort of bothers you sometimes, but I think that’s a very small price to pay for all the advantages we have.

Alice Hornbaker: Where you live in Paradise Valley, somewhere near Phoenix, right?

Erma Bombeck: Right, just outside.

Alice Hornbaker: Is that a fairly rural community?

Erma Bombeck: No, we have a lot of houses around us.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you participate in a lot of activities outside of your home?

Erma Bombeck: No, I really don’t get time. I support a lot of things, time permitting. We have a (indistinguishable) organization for drug abuse, and I’m also trying to get some legislation passed. The do-gooder. My husband says I’m like Jane Fonda. Some legislation passed about some non-smoking laws in public places. The March of Dimes, I work on that. That’s about all I really have time for.

Alice Hornbaker: Do you find that when you go out with your husband and your family, too, that everybody knows you’re Erma Bombeck? That they come up to you and perhaps stare and just wait for you to be funny?


Erma Bombeck: Yeah, that happens. The people I do know, know better. They know that there is nothing that is going to come out of this mouth that is going to be worth repeating and there is nothing they’re going to laugh at. I like (Art) Buchwald. He’s one of my favorite people. He said with your friends, you really don’t have to be on. And you don’t. They don’t expect you to be, and you can relax and enjoy them. If you’re funny on paper or you’re funny on the podium, that’s enough. You really don’t have to prove anything to your friends.

Alice Hornbaker: You’re professional at the time (you need to be).

Erma Bombeck: Sure. I think that someone who is on it all the time would really exhaust me. I don’t see how they could do it.

Alice Hornbaker: Did your husband teach in Arizona?

Erma Bombeck: No.

Alice Hornbaker: He wasn’t teaching there.


Alice Hornbaker: Did you find many times that he was asked a lot of times to have you get involved in something he was doing.

Erma Bombeck: No, that doesn’t happen in education. Our lives are really separate. It doesn’t happen there.

Alice Hornbaker: You mentioned at the end of your newest book with Doubleday that you weren’t too excited about youngsters going to horror movies… because they’re so fantastic and so unreal. That’s just exactly what they are, and as a matter of fact, they think that’s pretty funny.

Whereas the real reality of a tragedy would give us all nightmares. Prison, Kent State, the Vietnam War and things of that nature. The only thing we have to counter that is Erma Bombeck.

Erma Bombeck: We’re all in trouble. (laughing)

Alice Hornbaker: But we’re not really. Because as long as there are writers like Erma Bombeck who have a flair for writing and are willing to share with the reading public, we’ll all be able to cope. Because, after all, laughter is still the best medicine around. This is Alice Hornbaker of “The Writer’s Voice.” “The Writer’s Voice” is a subsidiary of Writer's Digest magazine.


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