This is just great.  As in – just great
 
It doesn’t require any background, but putting it in context helps the enjoyment, I think.
 
This comes from a wonderful program I accidentally came across on C-SPAN 2 when scrolling through my television’s on-screen guide.  It was a three-hour event on CSPAN-2, and only had about 45 minutes left, but the subject looked interesting, so I thought I’d check it out.  And it was spectacular – I watched the last 45 minutes and set the DVR for one of its repeats.  The event was originally broadcast last April – a three-hour celebration of the 100th anniversary of Simon & Schuster.  All it is, is authors coming on stage and telling anecdotes and stories about writing, each story about 3-4 minutes, and then leaving the stage, and another author comes on.  It was so good, very thoughtful, insightful, and mostly, often really funny.  (One author said, “If I’d know how much I’d be laughing backstage, I’d have prepared something funny, but unfortunately I didn’t.”

I didn’t know most of the authors, but they were all wonderful.  (Okay, almost all.  Awo writer friends “interviewed” each other, and they were a bit much.  But even they were okay.)  I did see a few well-known people – Judith Viorst, Hilary Clinton, Walter Isaacson and Bob Woodward.  And the description of the show mentions Stephen King, Jerry Seinfeld, Judy Blume, John Irving, and Charlamagne tha God.
 
After recording the full event, I’ve watched it all now, and it holds up to how terrific those final 45 minutes are.
 
I don’t expect most people to watch the whole thing, but this one speech was just a total gem.  I was going to just type out some of the author’s best lines, but his delivery is too bone dry to not see him deliver it, since that makes it all the better.  I dearly hoped that there would be a singled-out video of his four-minute presentation, so I did a search on YouTube…and happily there was.
 
In fairness, they aren’t all this good – but in equal fairness, most are in this range of at least being fun and entertaining.
 
And yes, I know I’m raving about this so much that it’s hard to live up to – but I feel confident it will.  The video has 7,400 “Likes” – and zero “Not likes.”  The User Comments are just glowing.
 
I was originally going to write that I don’t know the author, Fredrik Backman (who’s Swedish).  But then I decided to check out his work – and it turns out that I do know of him!!!  He wrote the novel that the wonderful Swedish movie A Man Called Ove is based on, that was nominated for a Foreign-Language Oscar.  It’s funny, sardonic, dramatic, and wistful.  So, that explains his speech!!  The movie got remade in the U.S. with Tom Hanks, as A Man Called Otto, which I’m sure more people here saw.  They did a very good job with the remake (though the original is my preference).  I’ll now have to check out some of his other books.  In fact, I’ve already bought his second novel -- with a glorious title, My Grandmother Says to Tell You She's Sorry.  I'm about two-thirds through, and it's excellent.  Unexpected, thoughtful, inventive and often very funny.
 
If you do decide you want to see the full event – or just scroll through it, it’s available on the C-SPAN website.  I highly recommend it.  And the good thing is, being made up for basically 4-minute speeches, a person can watch it in segments, and just pick up where you left off.  You can find it here.
  
Anyway, here is Fredrik Backman’s speech.  Full of laughs, insightful comments and some extremely clever observations…and a perfect ending line.  It’s only four minutes.  Really, do yourself a favor and watch it -- 

As is well-known, when Broadway songwriters Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, and librettist Joseph Stein wrote Fiddler on the Roof, they based it on stories by Sholem Aleichem. Originally, they were given a novel written by Sholem Aleichem called Wandering Star, but they thought it was too unwieldly for a stage musical.  (I’ve read the book, and it’s very good, but it is indeed expansive and wouldn’t make a manageable musical.  The tale in large part is about a troupe of a family of actors in Russia, and their adventures which carry them to America, with a many-levelled love story.)  But Harnick said that they liked the environment so much that they looked into other stories by Sholem Aleichem, and came across his tales of Tevye’s daughters.  Which, of course, lead to Fiddler on the Roof.

Recently, I read a collection of short stories by Sholem Aleichem (the pen name of Sholom Rabinovitch), and there’s a section devoted solely to stories about Tevye.  A few things leaped out.

First, in one of the non-Tevye stories, there’s a sort of first-person tale where the author ruminates about what he’d do if was wealthy, and it’s titled, “If I Were Rothschild.”  I have to believe that that’s where Sheldon Harnick came up with the idea for “If I Were a Rich Man.”  The wishes are different – Tevye’s in the song are more about things for him and his family, the article is basically larger wishes for the town and wider environs, though the concept overlaps.  For instance, the short story begins, “If I were Rothschild, ah, if I were only Rothschild.”  And one thing he’d do is “provide a new roof for the old synagogue so the rain won’t drip on the heads of the men who come to pray.”  In fact, I think – and I can’t remotely swear to this, though I have a vague recollection – that I read years ago that that’s the original name of the song, but Harnick changed it.  And the change is a better title for the song, giving it a more universal and timeless sense.  But it seems very likely that this is where the idea of the song came from.  As I’ve written in the past, I became email friends with Sheldon Harnick, who passed away last year at age 99.  I’d have loved to have asked, had I read this story first.  But it really does seem near certain – most especially thanks to the second thing that leaped out.  Which is the real revelation here.

[UPDATE:  After writing this article, I came across a video here of Sheldon Harnick talking about writing "If I Were a Rich Man."  And he references that in the Sholem Aleichem stories, Tevye talks about "If I was a Rothschild."  And that he told Jerry Bock, "And your music fits 'If I were a rich man.'"  So, I guess that confirms that!]

In the Tevye section of the collection I was reading, there’s a story called “The Bubble Bursts.”  Tevye has been convinced to make a risky investment with a very distant relative.  It doesn’t work out, the investment goes bust, and he loses it all.  But before it does, when left alone, all sorts of visions passed before him of what life will be like if he becomes rich – “visions so sweet,” he says “that I wished they would never end.”  And Tevye explains:

“I saw a large house with a tin roof right in the middle of town, and inside the house were big rooms and little rooms and pantries full of good things, and around it a yard full of chickens and ducks and geese.  I saw the mistress of the house walking around jingling her keys.  That was my wife, Golde, but what a different Golde from the one I knew.  This one had the face and manner of a rich man’s wife, with a double chin and a neck hung with pearls.  She strutted like a peacock giving herself an air, and yelling at the servants girls….And at the head of the table sat the master of the house, Tevye himself, in a robe and skullcap, and around him sat the foremost householders of the town, fawning on him.  “If you please, Reb Tevye.  Pardon me, Reb Tevye.”

Remarkable.  “If I Were a Rich Man” spills right out of that.

Unlike my guess with the “Rothschild” article's title, there is absolutely no question in mind that Sheldon Harnick read this particular story, and did a masterful job adapting some of Sholem Aleichem into a lyric.  All of which adds to the likelihood that he also read the story, "If I Were Rothschlld," given the overlap of it all.

For those of you who might not remember all the words of the song, here are just a few notable passages –

I'd build a big, tall house with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below.
 
I'd fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks
For the town to see and hear
Squawking just as noisily as they can.

I see my wife, my Goldie, looking like a rich man's wife
With a proper double-chin
Supervising meals to her heart's delight.
I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock
Oy, what a happy mood she's in
Screaming at the servants, day and night.
 
The most important men in town would come to fawn on me.
They would ask me to advise them like a Solomon the Wise:
‘If you please, Reb Tevye’
Pardon me, Reb Tevye’ --
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes.
 
No question at all.  The lyrics absolutely are adapted, in part, from Sholem Aleichem.  And wonderfully and artistically so.

​And so, just as a full reminder, here’s the song.
 ​

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And as a wonderful bonus, this is Sholem Aleichem himself (Sholom Rabinovitch, of course) reciting about a minute of that very story, "Ven ikh bin Rotshild."  Recorded over 100 years ago, I believe in 1902.
​

Jon Stewart made his Monday appearance on The Daily Show, and the main piece he did was a slam on the breathless, hyperbolic coverage of the Trump trial.  I thought his criticism was a bit off -- this, after all, is the first-ever criminal trial of former president, and wall-to-wall coverage is not terribly unreasonable, especially since no TVs are allowed in the courtroom.  However, the perspective on how over-the-top and repetitive  a lot of that coverage is was spot on.  More to the point, it's almost all very funny.

And funniest of all, without giving it away, is some self-awareness on Stewart's part, thoroughly willing to be the butt of some excellent humor.

And as a bonus, here's Stewart's very good interview with Salman Rushdie, about his new book that takes a deep, insightful look at the near-murderous attack on him 18 months ago, and the societal culture where that fits in.  It's a very thoughtful interview, but both Steward and Rushdie are able to bring humor to it.

Live from Connecticut this week, for the ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is author James Patterson.  His conversation with host Peter Sagal deals with his long, wide-ranging career, and is not just interesting but often very funny, especially when dealing with writer feuds.
 
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts around the 18:00 mark.