“700 Sundays” by Billy Crystal, a Book Review

Billy Crystal plays the part of Miracle Max in the movie “The Princess Bride”. After helping the Prince recover from death with a magic pill, he and his wife happily wave goodbye. Speaking together under their breath, she asks: “Is he going to make it”. “Hasn’t got a chance”, he replies all the while smiling encouragingly at the departing prince.That little cinematic moment might sum up Billy Crystal’s comedy style. The characters in the long ago, far away fairy tale land could be a steretypical long-married Jewish couple from 1950s USA. In his book, “700 Sundays”, Billy Crystal shares short narratives showing how his sense of humor was shaped by his fun and funny family.

Billy’s father died suddenly of a heart attack when he was 15 years old. At one time, he tells us in the book, he calculated how many Sundays he had spent with his father, hence the books title, “700 Sundays”. It was during Shiva, a traditional Hebrew mourning time, when he learned that, sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. It was for this reason I grabbed “700 Sundays” off the library shelf. Billy Crystal is a laugh a minute and I was in need of some light hearted fun. I especially enjoyed reading about his Aunt in Florida and telephone calls. Some of the teenage guy humor, is guy humor.

700 Sundays” starts with the purchase of a new car and a visit from a real life Mafia man that plowed into it the first day his father proudly drove it home. Like a stand up comic routine the book proceeds rapid fire from his birth in 1948 continuing until September 11, 2001, when people flew planes into tall buildings. He grew up in Long Beach, Long Island and moved to Los Angeles California. Just days before the attack in NYC, he had moved a beloved Aunt and Uncle into an assisted-living facility building two blocks from the World Trade Center buildings. Living 3,000 miles away from loved ones when phone service dies is a scary feeling. Billy was able to communicate via instant-messaging on computers with his daughter who resides in the City.

“700 Sundays” made me laugh, but it also brought tears to my eyes. I learned about Mr. Crystal’s father and Uncle Milt’s connection to Jazz musicians. Billie Holiday took him to his first movie, on a Sunday, he points out. One chapter mentions the 1950s Air Raid Drills and the 1960s Fallout Shelter Craze. Speaking of Nikita Khrushchev brought back forgotten memories of Khrushchev taking his shoe off and banging it on a table during a meeting with the United Nations. Billy does not mention it, but I had instant recall of old headlines: “Nyet, Nyet, Nyet”.

“700 Sundays” has 12 Chapters and contains a lot of info in it’s short 182 pages. It was published in October, 2005 by Time Warner Book Group. It is based on Billy’s Tony Award Winning play of the same name. The book is 5 stars in my book. The only disappointment was the very thing I grabbed the book to get my mind off, smacked me right in the eyes. When no one would record a Billie Holiday song, “Strange Fruit”; because “…nobody wanted to reminded about what was happening in our America of 1939,,,”, Billy’s Uncle Milt recorded it with her. The song was about lynching of black people in the Southern USA states.

Authors Note: “As things change they remain the same.” author unknown. In August, 2006, teenagers hung three nooses on a “Whites Only” tree in Jena, Louisiana the day after a black freshman sat under the tree on school property. The school librarian is reported as saying “I don’t even know what nooses on a tree mean.” When black students peacefully protested, the cities district attorney told them he could “ruin your lives with the stroke of a pen”. In July, 2007, Senator Barack Obama had to turn comments off on his You Tube Channel. Someone left over 50 (I stopped counting) cut and paste messages. About 5 lines typed in ALL CAPS with much use of the F and N words, and saying “…someone should lynch him”.

Additional Reading:
“Jena 6” by Shamontiel
“Sandra Day O’Connor and the KKK” by Alyce Rocco