I’ve been a fan of Don Novello for a long time, and not just because he was born and raised in my hometown of Lorain, Ohio. I, like many of you, thought he was pretty darn cool before I even knew of his impressive origins. For a long time, I knew him solely as the character he created for Saturday Night Live, Father Guido Sarducci; but I somehow came to learn that he participated in multiple ways in all kinds of funny stuff, and so I had to do some digging to see what I could get my hands on.
In addition to recordings of some pretty hilarious stand-up comedy, what I came up with was The Lazlo Letters, a compilation of correspondence that was first published in 1977, but which contains letters spanning the period from 1973 to 1977. Novello’s idea, which he executed in spectacular fashion, was to write letters to various bigwigs from the world of politics, show business, and big business, playing the part of a loyal follower, concerned citizen, or huge fan, and trying to provoke a response.
The prose and punctuation he uses in his letters, in addition to the rather zany ideas presented by them, suggest that he is somewhat of a dimwit; nonetheless, in the interests of good public relations and nondiscrimination against knuckleheads, many of the folks he wrote to actually wrote back. The staffs of President Nixon and President Ford treated these letters as legitimate, and sent personalized responses back to him. Repeatedly.
The genius of this book doesn’t really lie in its content (although there are some pretty funny exchanges documented by these letters); rather, it lies in what Novello did, how he did it, and when he did it. This started over thirty-five years ago! He was writing on what I guess was a manual typewriter, and mailing letters out for ten cents. The time and effort needed to pull off a hoax like this was incredible. And it didn’t come with the sort of immediate gratification that pranking someone on the Internet can bring. While we take the Internet for granted in this day and age, Novello was working on this at a time when you had to work pretty hard to track down information. Even finding the name and address of someone he wanted to write to must have been a chore.
I applaud Mr. Novello, albeit it a couple of decades later than he deserves, for this effort. And now I think we can safely place him up on the pedestal with the other critically acclaimed writers originally hailing from Lorain, Ohio, such as Toni Morrison and . . . uhm . . . uh . . . let me get back to you on that one.
Books, Comedy | Tim | 
June 28, 2010 9:14 am | 
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