Billy Crystal is hitting retiring age next year, and he has big plans to celebrate the era: Publishing a book. Today, the New York publisher Henry Holt and Company announced it worked out an agreement with the 64-year-old to put together a book about aging. Of course, there can be a big downer side to getting older and Crystal wants to talk about the facts as well as toss in some witticisms to make the new book an enjoyable read.
Apparently, the man’s capacity to entertain is pretty high in nonfiction as well as in front of a camera, because The Washington Post is reporting Henry Holt and Company paid somewhere around $4 million dollars for the rights to publish. The piece of literature is currently being edited without a title, because Crystal has one “dirty title” and one “sincere title” in mind. When it hits the market around Crystal’s 65th birthday on March 14 of next year, the book will publish at around 350 pages with really, really large print to make it easy to read.
The new buy is not surprising, since Crystal has dabbled as an author several times in the past, writing two chapter books about his life—including 700 Sundays about the actor’s relationship with his father—as well as two children’s books that are surprisingly touching. Humor is the man’s strong suit, however, and a brand new book celebrating and laughing at aging will likely do well with the baby boomer audience, and with a little luck, stay in print for generations to come.
