Macdonald, breaking from his trademark acerbic style, ended on a surprisingly moving tribute, displaying an emotional side that usually only lurked under the surface of his comedy. In a column from 2017, I argued that what distinguished Macdonald’s comedy was his sensitivity to language, his peculiarly poetic brand of plain talk. A lover of Bob Dylan, Macdonald was also a sponge for influences, borrowing and repurposing figures of speech or unusual words to create funny-sounding sentences. I mean a really true one, because of memory. It’s just no good.”Just because you can’t tell a really true one doesn’t mean that art can’t get closer to the truth.

Source: New York Times September 15, 2021 13:44 UTC