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A Kinder, Gentler Cynic
Rick Bayan was born and raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he enjoyed
an idyllic suburban childhood -- the perfect background for a lifetime of
cynical disillusionment. He graduated with honors from Rutgers, where he majored in
history. Finding himself unemployable, he picked up a
master's in journalism at the University of Illinois. |
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Rick has held a number of typical jobs for an idealistic liberal arts
graduate, including assistant editor of Rubber Age and managing editor of
Container News. At Time-Life Books he was assigned to write about plumbing
fixtures. He survived seven years as chief copywriter at Barron's Educational
Series, Inc., a proud achievement considering that the annual turnover rate
sometimes topped 100%. His work as advertising copy chief at Day-Timers,
Inc., won six advertising industry awards, none of which ever dampened his
cheerfully morose view of business and life. There he became one of the
world's foremost experts at writing catalog descriptions of personal
organizer page formats and supple leather binders. In 1999, after 14 years at
Day-Timers, Rick called it quits and leaped into the perilous world of
freelance writing.
Rick has authored four books: Words That Sell (1984) and its spawn, More Words That Sell (2003), a pair of popular reference books for people who write advertising;
The Best in Medical Advertising and Graphics (1989), a lavish collection of prizewinning examples, complete with Rick's commentaries; and
The Cynic's Dictionary (1994), a sharply written satirical lexicon that sold about 23,000 copies before an upstart book by the same title appeared on the market. He has also written tons of junk mail and can be held indirectly accountable for the deaths of a few thousand innocent trees.
Rick first broke into print in 1976-77 with a pair of tirades on the plight
of the liberal arts graduate, both of which appeared in National
Review.
Before he succumbed to the corrupting influence of advertising, he wrote a
couple of satirical pieces for The New American Review, a now-defunct journal
of commentary. In 1996 he created The Cynic's Sanctuary, where he dutifully crafted 70 monthly tirades until his sense of humor gave out in December 2002. For two years (2000-02) he also wrote a weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," for Upbeat Online. All his tirades and columns appear in Rick's Notebook.
Mr. Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," finally got himself married in 2001 and now lives in a 100-year-old former livery stable in Philadelphia. In 2004 his wife Anne presented the middle-aged cynic with their first son, Guy (a more elegant name than "Boy," Rick insists).
A full-blooded Armenian and a longtime history buff, Rick one of the few people alive who can do a reasonably
accurate vocal impression of Teddy Roosevelt. He has never read a book by
John Grisham. In fact, he takes a dim view of most contemporary culture and
sometimes wishes he had lived from about 1880 to 1970. But then he'd be dead
and, in all likelihood, less effective as a writer.
Rick is reasonably well-preserved for a man of his advancing years, but he
feels obligated to confess that he can't claim credit for the body of the
statue that appears throughout this site, courtesy of the designers. Only the
face is Rick's; the rest belongs to some anonymous ancient Greek.
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