Russell Baker, droll columnist and memoirist who twice won Pulitzer, dies at 93
Russell Baker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who for 36 years brought whimsy, irreverence and droll commentary to the Observer column in the New York Times and whose memoir, “Growing Up,” was a bestseller, died Jan. 21 at his home in Leesburg, Va. He was 93.
The cause was complications from a fall, said a son, Allen Baker.
Mr. Baker, who received a Pulitzer for commentary in 1979 and another for his Depression-era memoir four years later, later succeeded Alistair Cooke as the host of public television’s “Masterpiece Theatre” series.
A Virginia-born humorist who blended self-deprecation and wry wit, Mr. Baker wrote in simple, straightforward prose modeled after the effortless grace of E.B. White’s pieces for the New Yorker. Mr. Baker termed his thrice-weekly efforts “a casual column without anything urgent to tell humanity.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/russell-baker-droll-columnist-and-memoirist-who-twice-won-pulitzer-dies-at-93/2019/01/22/89c0d9d4-1ebc-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html?utm_term=.61c9fefe0c20&wpisrc=al_local__alert-local--alert-national&wpmk=1
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