These are Herb Caen Days:
San Francisco is playing host to Herb Caen Days until the end of the week, a series of events, presentations, and general meriment to honor the late-columnist of the San Francisco Chronicle. A Pulitizer Prize-winner, Caen wrote nearly 16,000 columns over from just before World War II to just after the explosion of the Internet, when he died of cancer in 1997. Somewhere in there he managed to add the word “beatnik” to the English language.
Though the official celebrations focus on Tourist San Francisco (which I guess were Caen’s favorite parts. Maybe?), hearing about it all has prompted me to find out a little bit more about the man. Sadly, almost all the collected anthologies of his work are out of print, (a crime in a publishing happy town like this one) which just means a trip to the library. And reading the solid week of rememberences his colleagues and friends penned immediately following his death.
Dean, my insurance agent and a lifelong San Franciscan told me when his father first imigrated to the city from East Asia, he learned to speak English by reading Herb Caen’s column. He later tought his young son that the best way to express one’s self in a new language was clearly, simply and honestly, as Herb Caen had always done. I don’t think you can pay a writer a higher compliment than that.
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Dean, my insurance agent and a lifelong San Franciscan told me when his father first imigrated to the city from East Asia, he learned to speak English by reading Herb Caen’s column. He later tought his young son that the best way to express one’s self in a new language was clearly, simply and honestly, as Herb Caen had always done. I don’t think you can pay a writer a higher compliment than that