Book – Best Wishes

Author: Richard GloverPublisher: ABC BooksReviewer: Stephen Keim

Richard Glover has been in the humour and entertainment business for a very long time. He has written a weekly humour column for the Sydney Morning Herald since 1985. Since January 1996, he has presented the 3.30-6.30 pm drive segment on 702 ABC Sydney.  This role came to an end in November 2024, after just short of 29 years. He has published 15 books prior to Best Wishes.

The roles of humour columnist and radio presenter include making observations about various curious things about the way we live in society and presenting them in a way that informs and entertains and, in the best case, brings a smile to people’s faces.

Over a career that, in the case of the weekly column, spans nearly 40 years, the adept practitioner of this art collects a heap of material. Much of that material deserves a better fate than lying unappreciated in the dead (albeit digital) files of a newspaper or the even deader audio files of a radio station. It is not easy, however, for a columnist, radio presenter or even an author to design a greatest hits version of their work that will capture the imagination of the reading public.

In order to solve that problem, Glover and his publishers have come up with a most wonderful idea. Best Wishes is the working out of a very clever conceit, namely, that Glover would publish a book of his own very personal wishes about life, the world and everything. The number of wishes settled upon was 365, one for every day of the year. Each wish, some serious, most wistful and all insightful, presents some aspect of life and society which, if changed in accordance with the wish, Glover feels would make the world a slightly more enjoyable and better place.

In this way, Glover provides himself with a framework within which he can deliver any piece of observational writing provided the piece is able to be framed as discussing a desire to change the world. Since the best and most enjoyable writing involves a criticism of some person or thing, including, in some cases, the author, himself, this is not a high bar to be met.

Best Wishes, then, is a collection of 365 essays by Glover on the state of life and the world. Some essays consist of no more than a sentence. Others extend to a few pages. Some of the material is, as Glover states in the Acknowledgements, material that has been published before. Much of it, one suspects, is totally new. And all of it has, no doubt, has been carefully reworked to suit the format in which it now appears.

Glover, as is revealed in his 2015 autobiographical book, Flesh Wounds, had an extraordinary childhood. Both his parents, fulsomely, neglected him. He surprised himself that he managed to achieve what has clearly been a successful and satisfying life. In Best Wishes, that sense of gratitude for the small but important happinesses comes through with many of the essays stressing the extraordinary joy that comes alongside the undeniable challenges associated with life in a family.    

The 365 wishes are organised into 31 short chapters making a book that comes in at a little under 300 pages. The title of the first chapter, A fairer go, indicates two aspects of Glover’s approach to prescribing a better world. Best Wishes is not a political book but, to the extent that political positions are touched upon, Glover is a moderate progressive, perhaps, in a language that was common place in Australian political discussion, he is a moderate “wet”. The first wish is that rich people would pay more tax. It introduces a one page essay in which Glover argues that an effective tax at a very moderate rate on the world’s richest people would make a huge difference to society.

A fairer go also reflects a repeated theme in Best Wishes to the effect that the world would be much better if we were just much nicer to people, accepting differences of opinion as not being the end of the world, accepting people’s undoubted faults but not letting those faults prevent us from recognising the same people’s strengths and virtues. His tenth wish in A fairer go defends young people who continue to live at home arguing that this practice is not only justified by economic forces outside young people’s control and, in any event, has been and remains the practice in most of the world’s societies. The final point is that families get benefits from being able to enjoy one another’s company.

As a comedic writer, Glover appreciates comedic writing. He has been a fan, from a young age, of PG Wodehouse’s works and cites examples of it. He argues that humorous writing has been not given its due in critical discussions of literature. Glover even argues that Marcel Proust has been undervalued because he has only ever been treated as a serious writer. Glover’s retelling of various plotlines from Proust’s work makes a compelling case that Proust was, indeed, a master of chaotic relationship slapstick comedy.

Glover, himself, is a very funny writer. The chapter called A painless pair of shorts lampoons the fashion industry for its various failings including its inability to ever stock clothes of the kind sought by the shopper. The popular sizes sell out, year after year, with the unwanted sizes always being in good supply even until attempts are made to dispose of them by granting huge discounts at sale time. Another failing is the inability of the fashion industry to sell warm clothes in winter and summer clothes in summer. The shopper, stupidly, is always three months late to buy the clothes they actually need to wear now.

A reviving beverage calls out those who go on and on about coffee; the general under appreciation of the virtues of tea; and the changing fashions in the appreciation of wine including the language used to explain and justify those changes.

Best Wishes is very much a book by a person born in 1958. Glover parodies himself and younger generations by lamenting how his favourite stock phrases are no longer understood by twenty-somethings. His examples of young people not understanding phrases such as “we will leave that to Ron” meaning “later on” is related through a very funny anecdote which builds to mythical proportions as misunderstandings are piled higher and higher.

Best Wishes provides the writer with a sense of completeness. Each chapter nicely mixes serious critiques of society with comments on life that may be fairly described as frivolous. His discussions also range through topics that are personal, that provide insights on family life, that deal with the perspective of the consumer across many different aspects of daily life and those of high social and political importance.

As examples of the last of those, chapters include A less avaricious corporate Australia; A politics that is not broken; Media with higher standards; A world that loves the arts; and An ethical church.

Chapter 17: An ethical church consists of one wish. The whole chapter, consisting of four lines, including the title, is all in bold. The wish reads as follows: 198: I wish church readers would treat the victims of their institutions with the fierce protective zeal they have so far reserved for the institutions themselves.

In this way, Glover makes a very serious point about a set of institutions that have continued to fail society in important ways. He also illustrates, in action, his point about literature not being something in which serious writing has sway and comedic writing is some form of second cousin. Best Wishes illustrates that writing that entertains and makes us smile is not non-serious. Indeed, comedy is frequently the most effective way of confronting the issues with which society must deal in order to pursue the Good.