Dave Barry talks Florida oddities in new book ahead of Palm Springs Speaks lecture

Florida is much more than the butt of a joke. It's a genuinely unique state — that happens to have its fair share of unusual mysteries and crimes.

Leave it to columnist, novelist and humorist Dave Barry to make that weirdness the plot of his latest novel, “Swamp Stories,” about a housewife and a long-lost treasure with many unexpected twists and turns.

The story takes place at the The Skunk Ape Research Headquarters in Ochopee, and is named after a Bigfoot-like creature, a woman who stumbles across an extremely valuable treasure and a group of dangerous individuals who are out to find the same hoard.

“I wanted to do something with the Everglades, the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters and I needed a plot. I came up with this idea of a woman trying to get out of there and the rest was just creating characters and having them get into trouble,” Barry said.

Barry will appear on May 9 at the Palm Springs Cultural Center as part of the Palm Springs Speaks lecture series.

He said many “weird things” happen in the Miami area where he resides, and doesn’t think a single thing that happens in his book, no matter how outlandish, couldn’t happen in real life or be the subject of a viral news story from the state.

“In the book, one of the key plot elements is called the ‘Python Challenge,’ which is a real thing in the state of Florida. We have this problem with Burmese pythons running wild all over the Everglades and getting into civilization. The state created this contest where it invites anybody who wants to come down and kill them. Whoever kills the most or the longest, there are cash prizes,” Barry said.

But even though the “Florida man” phenomenon still makes for good newspaper stories, the state and its governor Ron Desantis have recently been the subject of national headlines about strict abortion laws, relaxed gun laws, new laws targeting LGBTQ residents and a dispute with Walt Disney Co.

“It’s not surprising that the Florida legislature is weird, and our governor is acting weird. What’s strange to us is I think we get singled out,” Barry said. “We are a state that people are paying a lot more attention to, and there’s a lot of criticism. But at the same time, all these people keeping moving here. It’s hard to reconcile these two things. People from New York look down on us and view us as unsophisticated rednecks and whatever, but my neighborhood is filling up with people from New York.”

Heading into last fall’s elections, 393,000 voters from other states had moved to Florida since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, 46% of them registering as Republicans, 23% as Democrats and 29% with no party affiliation, according to L2 Data, which tracks voter and consumer data.

“California’s Governor (Gavin Newsom) constantly says how awful our governor is, but people keep coming here from California at the same time. I’m not trying to sound defensive and do think our governor is acting like a lunatic lately, but it’s an odd thing at the same time. We’re held up to ridicule and we’re like ‘OK, well, that’s great but don’t keep moving here.’”

You either have a sense of humor or you don't

Before Barry was an author, he was a reporter and worked for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pennsylvania where he started writing a humor column. He then became a syndicated columnist during his tenure at the Miami Herald and appeared in 500 newspapers. He's written dozens of fiction and nonfiction books such as "Big Trouble," "I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood," and "Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland."

The secret to Barry's success as a humorist is having a sense of humor. "You either have one or you don't," he said, adding that making it work as a writer requires practice, repetition and learning.

"There are lots of techniques that make some jokes funnier just by the way you present them. A good stand-up comic takes what seems to be normal, straightforward and because of the way he or she times a statement with gestures and expressions he or she uses, it becomes funny. It's the same thing with humor writing. You learn in addition to the basic fundamental joke itself when to add words, take them out, punctuate, have a space, and use capital letters."

There is one type of humor Barry likes to avoid — politics and the culture wars because "no matter what side you take, the other side is going to get really upset."

"The people who are agreeing with you aren't really laughing with you. They're just glad because you scored points against the other team. I try to avoid point-scoring-humor. I try to go for humor that is more universal, like the story in this book. It's not about politics — it's about these kinds of people, some of them are really stupid doing stupid things in this strange place. I look for humor that's accessible to everybody. I think people still like to laugh and want the escape. Unfortunately, so much of humor now is co-opted by politics. It's not that funny anymore and it's more like a weapon."

Outside of writing, Barry is also a member of the on-again, off-again band Rock Bottom Remainders featuring novelists such as Scott Turow, Stephen King, Ridley Pearson, Mitch Alboom, Greg Iles, Roy Blount Jr., "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, Amy Tan, Barbara Kingsolver and others through the years. The band has performed with Bruce Springsteen, the Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn and more, but most of its members will agree that they're a terrible band.

"Our genre is 'hard listening music' but we make such great friends. I'm still friends with everybody who has ever been in the Remainders. It's been a rotating cast over the years, but it's been a wonderful experience for me. I had a lot of fun and met a lot of great people through it, some of whom are actual musicians," Barry said.

Who is the best musician out of all of them? Barry said Iles (guitar), Alboom (keyboard) and Pearson (bass) are the finer performers of the band.

Barry has appeared many times at the Rancho Mirage Writers Festival. He is not listed to appear at the festival in 2024, but mentioned one person who always speaks — Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor and deputy chief of staff to former president George W. Bush. "He's a very easygoing and friendly guy. If you completely disagree with him, you can still have a conversation with him. That's one of the nice things about that kind of event, you run into people of different political and cultural viewpoints. As a rule, everybody just gets along, which is nice," Barry said. Desert Sun reporter Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or on Twitter at @bblueskye.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Dave Barry talks Florida oddities ahead of Palm Springs Speaks lecture