Your Literary Jack

A Big Damn Book Signing

“No one I know of has honored a father as gallantly as has Barry Friedman, animating ‘the oddities and wonders of Jack Friedman’ for readers whose misfortune was never to have met him. Jack’s enormous success was to have raised a son who loved him so faithfully, so drolly, and – our reward – so memorably.” — Mark Singer, author of Funny Money and staff writer for The New Yorker

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2023 AT 7 PM

Voluptuous Bagels and Other Concerns: An Evening with Barry Friedman

MAGIC CITY BOOKS (221 E Archer St, Tulsa, OK 74103 — (918) 602-4452)

Magic City Books is thrilled to welcome back our friend Barry Friedman for an in person event celebrating his new book, Jack S*it: Voluptuous Bagels and Other Concerns of Jack Friedman, on Wednesday January 25 at 7:00pm in the Algonquin Room at Magic City Books.

Barry’s father, Jack Friedman became known to many through Barry’s Facebook posts through the years, join us for more stories about the incomparable Jack Friedman.

This event is free and open to the public. 

About Jack S*it

My father, Jack Friedman, CPA (even if he made the diploma himself), and Purple Heart recipient (even if lifted it from the guy in the bed next to him in a Tokyo Army hospital), moved to Las Vegas from Atlantic City when he was 78.

He bought a house at 84. The bank gave him a thirty-year mortgage.

This is that story. The early years-and by early, I mean his 80s. I spent more time with him at this point in his life than any other.

I am a comedian. I had time.

This is the first volume of my conversations, arguments, buffets, and philosophical musings with my father from the years 2004-2014. There was “The Mob,” the survivor’s group of those who buried their spouses, the bowling, the possible death of Bernie, the coupons, the long-suffering Jeannette “who buried two husbands. Did you ever? Two!” And always the toupees, many kept in boxes in the bedroom, garage, and sometimes out on the dinner table.

My father, though in his 80s, thought he looked 40, and had the energy of a twenty-year-old.

“I was 16 two weeks ago, Ba. Where did it all go?”

As he entered his eighth and ninth decades, he couldn’t hear, didn’t listen, had no short-term memory, and mostly didn’t care.

It was the perfect scenario for a son trying to understand his father.

As my sister, whose name he couldn’t always remember, once said about his approach to life, “He’s been like that for as long as I’ve known him.”

I should have started this book sooner.