How to Start Writing (and When to Stop) by Wislawa Szymborska

"My parting with summer springs forth like a white breast from a tunic bound with gems..." Many questions leap to mind: why a breast, why white, why springing, why from a tunic. The remaining poem leaves the questions unanswered. Instead Adam turns up, tempted by a snake--a bold innovation, but unlikely to catch on. Humanity has long since happily blamed it all on Eve."

How to Start Writing (and When to Stop) is a strange little book. Barely 100 pages long, it's a collection of responses to submissions made to the Polish magazine Literary Life, in the column Literary Mailbox. The responses are presented sans context, as the material or questions they're responding to aren't provided or summarized.

One interesting side effect is that this is the rare book where reading the introduction and afterward, a short interview with Szymborska, are more or less required, as they provide the historical and literary context in which the replies were written. Started in 1968 by Szymborska and her friend, author Wlodzimierz Maciag, Literary Mailbox doled out advice to writers who'd sent in various works--poems, stories, even novels--mostly in the form of cutting abut humorous bon mots or, occasionally, a paragraph or two of feedback:

The fear of straight speaking, the constant, painstaking efforts to metaphorize everything, the ceaseless need to prove you're a poet in every line: these anxieties beset every budding bard. They're curable, if caught in time. Your poems thus far resemble strained translations from direct speech into needless complication--we're tempted to ask for the originals on which this fruitless labor was based. For the moment, though, please believe us, a single metaphor organically linked to the poem's original concept is worth more than 1,500 embellishments added ex post. Please send us something new in a few months. 

Reading through them in bulk can be a bit of a dispiriting exercise, as most of the material collected here is fairly negative; but on the other hand, it's often very funny, and the advice given is good, if perhaps not particularly hard to come by: temper your highbrow language, make your work concrete, keep track of your metaphors and don't write poems about spring ("spring no longer exists in poetry"). Szymborska has the least patience, however, for the lazy or arrogant: her coldest replies are toward those who don't to rewrite, who write only about dour things, who demand publication. Perhaps the cruelest cut here is one of the shortest: "Does the enclosed work betray talent? It does."

But the cumulative effect, especially in conjunction with the closing interview, is that of someone who takes poetry, and writing in general, seriously while still recognizing that there is something a touch silly about treating every letter scrawled onto paper as holy writ. But I hope she never finds this review.

The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse

It has been well said of Bertram Wooster by those who know him best that there is a certain resilience in his nature that enables him as a general rule to rise on stepping stones of his dead self in the most unfavourable circumstances. It isn't often that I fail to keep the chin up and the eye sparkling. But as I made my way to the library in pursuance of my dreadful task, I freely admit that Life had pretty well got me down. It was with leaden feet, as the expression is, that I tooled along.

Brent gave me this book when I visited him in December. I'd never read any of Wodehouse's novels, but I know there are people who just can't get enough of them: the novels, the stories, the Jeeves extended universe. What is it that makes them so popular?

The Code of the Woosters was, for better or worse, pretty much like I expected: you have Bertie Wooster, brash and wealthy, always getting into scrapes not necessarily of his own making, and then you have his butler Jeeves, who is as wise as he is straight-buttoned. The novel sets up a ridiculous set of contrivances to enmesh Bertie, and then lets Jeeves devise the solution. I assume that is more or less what all of these novels are like.

In The Code of the Woosters, the farce revolves around a series of comical objects: a silver creamer shaped like a cow, a policeman's stolen helmet, a notebook written by Bertie's friend Gussie Fink-Nottle that's essentially a "burn book." Bertie's uncle covets the cow-creamer owned by his rival Sir Watkyn Bassett, but Bassett is a judge who has convicted Bertie of stealing a policeman's helmet in the past. In this case, it's Bassett's niece Stiffy who wants to pinch the helmet, and she wants Bertie to help, withholding the notebook that Gussie lost, leaving his marriage to Bassett's daughter Madeline in the wind, and--and, well, the plot basically proceeds from there. These MacGuffins are shuffled around in the possession of everyone but Bertie as he tries to navigate the demands of his uncle, his aunt, Sir Watkyn Bassett, his friend Gussie, Madeline, Stiffy, the policeman. It goes on and on.

Is it funny? It is funny. It crackles with comic energy, and the farce unfolds quickly and frenetically. I wasn't prepared for how much the humor depends on Bertie's voice, which is both identifiably patrician and endlessly inventive. Wodehouse really captures a highly mannered form of high manners, zipping through colloquialisms and slang that keep the narrative fresh.

The class politics of these books are interesting, I think. Jeeves makes me uncomfortable, as career servants in British novels and film always do, especially when they're depicted as being so wholly invested in their employer's well-being and happiness, as Jeeves is. But Wodehouse balances this by making Jeeves the wise one; Bertie is a mess but Jeeves is the one who always has the solution. The upper class doesn't come out of The Code of the Woosters looking very good, with their trivial obsessions and flighty characters. Jeeves' steadfastness and practicality are rooted in his position outside the carnival world of the very rich.

I liked The Code of the Woosters. I didn't exactly develop a lifelong addiction, like some people do; in fact, I probably won't read another one of these. I expect, rightly or wrongly, that they mostly all go the same way. But I get why it is that these books have been entertaining people for nearly a century.

Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

“I was trying to think who you reminded me of. Somebody who went about strewing ruin and desolation and breaking up homes which, until he came along, had been happy and peaceful. Attila is the man. It’s amazing. . . . To look at you one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot–certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are a worse scourge than the Black Death. I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against all the underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel as if I had walked into a lamp post.”

An effective farce is often described as being like clockwork. That is, all the wheels and gears are set in motion, one at a time, working independently but also, at the same time, pushing the other parts of the clock to better things. All these disparate pieces—gears, springs, wires—working together cause something to happen—In the case of the clock, to turn the hands; in the case of the farce, to build to a comedic climax. If this is indeed the criteria, then P. G. Wodehouse is undoubtedly the master of the literary farce. Exercising a writing style that is uniquely British and not too far removed from more mannered writers like Jane Austen, Wodehouse moves his characters like chess pieces, timing their interactions so that they all work together to deliver an appropriate payoff.

The dual lynchpins of Wodehouse’s Jeeves series, of which Right Ho, Jeeves is the second, are the narrator, the somewhat dim Bertie Wooster, and his brilliant, unflappable butler, Jeeves. Wooster essentially serves to set the gears in motion, and Jeeves works as sort of a pendulum, to extend the metaphor, making sure that, ultimately, everything runs in proper time.

The setup of Right Ho, Jeeves is simple: Wooster’s demanding Aunt Dahlia demands that he act as presenter at an awards ceremony to be held on her estate, and, in the parallel plotline, Jeeves is acting as counselor to Gussie Fink-Nottle, a newt-obsessed man who, though lacking social skills, has fallen in love with the strange Madeline, and needs Jeeves help to get everything working smoothly. From there, it gets more complicated, as Wooster forcibly takes over Gussie’s counseling, and manages to mess up everything.

I confess, Right Ho, Jeeves took some time to win me over. By their very nature, farces start out mildly amusing and build; with this in mind, the slow beginning wasn’t bad—Wodehouse has a very pleasant, easy-reading style—but it wasn’t really making me laugh much either. However, the build was impeccable, and by the time an inebriated Gussie is decides to use the awards presentation as a platform to drunkenly attack everyone present, I was laughing out loud.

I wouldn’t say Wodehouse is great literature, but I suspect it’s better than I thought it was initially—after all, haven’t we heard that drama is easy, but comedy is hard? It takes a certain sort of skill to write a funny book, and Wodehouse has it.

Ant Farm by Simon Rich

This is Simon Rich's first book. I picked it up after reading his second book, Free-Range Chickens, and laughing myself sick. The style of Ant Farm is the same as Chickens: short, off-the-wall, comedic essays. The topics in Ant Farm range from pen pals to Jesus to time traveling.

From the essay "When Small Talk Goes Wrong"
- Do you have the time?
- Shh! It's 4:26 P.M.!
- Huh?
- (whispering) April twenty-sixth, 4:26 P.M., is an official minute of silence. Congress created it to honor the 426 men who died in the Great Boise Fire. My Father was among those men.
- Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'll stop talking.
- It doesn't matter. The minute has already passed.

Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

This book is a collection of humorous essays. It is hilarious. I love how seamlessly Allen is able to weave together high culture and the profound with the absur: Faulkner and Dostoyevsky and Flanders Mealworm, a fledgling writer selling his soul to Hollywood; the private dick who helps a rich socialite track down a priceless truffle; the scriptwriter who takes a job for an online company that sells prayers. (A prayer for a man wanting his wife to bear him a son: "May the broad lie down in green pastures and drop foals abundantly.")

The ideas for many of these essays came from actual events and items. One of my favorite essays begins with an excerpt from the New York Times Magazine about technologically enabled clothing (shirts that can charge cell phones, pants that can trap offensive scents and release appealing smells, etc.). As someone who is allergic to most of the stuff they treat dress shirts with to make them idiot proof, I found this essay especially funny.

Mere Anarchy was pure entertaining absurdity.

Free-Range Chickens by Simon Rich

I picked this book up on a recommendation from Paul Feig. I don't know the last time that I laughed out loud so much while reading a book. The one downside is that Simon Rich is 25/26 years old, has written for The Harvard Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, and has had two books published. A little depressing.

The books is a collection of essays, some no more than a paragraph or two in length. Often times, they are conversations. Think Bob Newhart for our generation. Here is one of my favorites:


Dalmatians
- Hey, look, the truck's stopping.
- Did they take us to the park this time?
- No . . . it's a fire. Another horrible fire.
- What the hell is wrong with these people?

Kilbrack by Jamie O'Neill

Killbrack is the story of O'Leary Montageu, a badly-scarred, delusional amnesiac who travels to the small Irish town of Kilbrack. He makes the visit with the intention of writing an autobiography of Nancy Valentine, a mysterious author whose self-published memoirs have become the controlling factor of his life. Upon arriving, he discovers that town, its inhabitants and Nancy Valentine herself may not be what he expected.

I looked through this book after I finished it to find a good excerpt for the top of this review, but after a little searching, I realized that the humor and O'Neill's breezy but elegant style don't really lend themselves to short excerpts. The entire book is a cohesive whole, ensemble cast story that's part black comedy, part coming-of-age, part meta-fiction. It's very funny but never in a beat-you-over the head sort of way. O'Neill describes both everyday foibles and O'Leary's delusions with equal skill. The mysteries (Who is Nancy Valentine? Who is O'Leary?) are well-woven into the narrative, but if the book has a weakness, it's that the plot isn't as interesting as the characters and the prose, and, when the book begins winding down and tying up its plotlines, it loses some steam.

Still, it's a quick, literary read, funny and thought-provoking, and it's got a really classy-looking cover. What else can you ask for?

Edit: Upon looking for further information about this book and its author, it looks like Kilbrack is out of print. Too bad.

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

I have had a few people tell me that of Sedaris' books, this is their least favorite. Some described it as "not nearly as good as his other books," or stated that it "mostly sucks." That is very likely the reason that I waited so long to read it. After completing Barrel Fever, I can now say two things: 1.) I have read all of Sedaris' books, and 2.) the people who told me that this book was not good were just wrong.

Barrel Fever is split up into two parts. Short stories make up the first section, which is about three fourths of the book. The last fourth is essays, what have now become the standard fair of Sedaris. While the essays were good, I particularly enjoyed the short stories, especially "Glen's Homophobia Newletter Vol. 3, No. 2," "Don's Story," and "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!"

Published in 1994, Barrel Fever was Sedaris' first book. Naked was the follow-up, and it contained no short stories. Since these stories were obviously completely fictional, they allowed Sedaris to create some interesting characters and situations that he isn't normally able to deal with. I would be interested in why he stopped including short stories in his books.

Barrel Fever did not disappoint in the slightest.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

I got this as an early birthday present. It was good that I received it early, because I would have purchased it on my own before my birthday (July 15, and if you are wondering, no, I still don't have an iPod Touch). I was super excited about this book and had to force myself to read it slowly, so as to not finished it in the first day. I think that I did a fairly good job, managing to spread it out over six days.

As with most of Sedaris's books, Flames covers a wide variety of topics, with essays that deal with various periods in Sedaris's life. It would be stupid for me to try and pick a favorite, but I really enjoyed "In the Waiting Room," in which Sedaris explains why it can be a problem to know so little French that you are reduced to saying yes in response to everything. The phrase Sedaris uses actually translates to, "I am in agreement." Due to his excessive use of this phrase, he finds himself in his underwear in a waiting room that slowly begins to fill with other people, all fully dressed of course.

Each essay is somewhere around fifteen pages in length with a few exceptions, chief among these is the final essay, "The Smoking Section," which was a little over eighty pages. Comprised of journal entries, this essay follows Sedaris all the way to Tokyo on his quest to quit smoking. At the same time that he is trying to break this 30-year habit, Sedaris is attempting to learn Japanese. In true Sedaris fashion, he does not allow his apparent inability to learn Japanese to stop him from pointing out all the English errors that are made by those around him and on local signage. I couldn't stop laughing at all the language-based snafus. One of my favorites was a label Sedaris found on pre-packaged sandwiches in a supermarket close to his apartment. "We have sandwiches which you can enjoy different tastes. So you can find your favorite one from our sandwiches. We hope you can choose the best one for yourself."

I have read everything by Sedaris except for Barrel Fever, which I started last night. His humor has a darkness to it that really appeals to me. One of the blurbs on the back of Flames describes Sedaris as a writer who is "revising our ideas about what's funny." This description is right on the money.

My thoughts on Sedaris's Naked and Barrel Fever

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

In Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell lets you tag along with her as she traipses across the United States, experiencing the various places connected with the assassination of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. There is really nothing to connect these three murders, except for the fact that Robert Todd Linlcon was in close proximity to all three men when they were killed -- prompting Vowell to saddle him with nicknames, such as Jinxy McDeath and Robert "tod" Lincoln. (Tod is the German word for death.) I guess maybe the reason that Vowell chose to group these three murders together is that they were the first three presidential assassinations, but I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that I love Sarah Vowell's writing. She is like a historically minded David Sedaris.

I read Manhunt a couple of years ago, so a lot of the interesting, relatively-unknown facts that Vowell presented about Lincoln's assassination were not new to me. However, the section about James Garfield was full of stuff that I had never heard. Really interesting stuff. For instance, Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau, was most likely criminally insane. To start with, he claimed that God told him to kill the president. His trial was like a circus, with Guiteau repeatedly interrupting everyone from the prosecutor, to the judge, to his own attorney. At one point he stated, "No one wants to shoot or hang me save a few cranks, who are so ignorant they can hardly read or write. High-toned people are saying, 'Well, if the Lord did it, let it go.'" You gotta admit, it's a strong defense.

Four days before his execution, Guiteau wrote a bizarre little play, in which God Almighty damns to hell those who sided against Guiteau. When God asks President Arthur why he did not pardon Guiteau, Arthur says that he thought that a pardon would cost him the presidential nomination in 1884. God's response: "No excuse, you ingrate! Go to hell. Heat up Mr. Devil!" Guiteau was also part of Oneida, some weird, religious, free love commune in upstate New York for a number of years -- now simply known for its dinnerware. Nearly everything about Guiteau was humorously bizarre. As Vowell says, "Except for the dead-serious details of his assassinating President Garfield and being in all likelihood clinically insane, Charles Guiteau might be the funniest man in American History."

Assassination Vacation is equal parts travelogue and history lesson. Vowell has a good grasp on American history, and an equally strong grasp on humor. She provides a unique perspective on a wide variety of events, as she invites you to accompany her on these trips that she takes with accommodating friends and family members. A great book.

Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me, edited by Ben Karlin

Even after a lifetime of learning experiences, you will never understand the first thing about women. Do not delude yourself about this. Guys who claim to understand everything about women are like Kansas school boards that claim to understand everything about the creation of the world--interesting from a sociological perspective maybe, but still, totally full of shit.
- from "Things More Majestic and Terrible Than You Could Ever Imagine" by Todd Hanson

If guys are never going to understand women, then why read a book such as this--written by guys about women. Well, if there is any truth to the adage that you learn from your mistakes, it stands to reason that you may be able to learn something from the mistakes of others. And this book is essentially a litany of mistakes made by usually well-intentioned men during the course of their relationships.

An important distinction should be made here: this is by no means a self-help book. It is in no way a serious book about relationships. Books like that are full of crap (see italicized opening paragraph). So what makes this book different? Well, contributors to this anthology include, Nick Hornby, Stephen Colbert, Bob Odenkirk, Patton Oswalt, Andy Richter, A. J. Jacobs, Will Forte...are you detecting a pattern here?

The themes of many of these essays are completely anathema to the themes of books that offer relationship advice. Such as Andy Selsberg's "A Grudge Can Be Art," in which he discovers that holding a grudge for years and years may very well be the best way to deal with some failed relationships. Some of the essays simply allow you to commiserate with their authors, such as Will Forte's "Beware of Math Tutors Who Ride Motorcycles," in which a college-aged Forte loses his girlfriend to a (you guessed it) motorcycle-riding math tutor, during finals week no less. You can't help but feel for the guy as he describes trying to stay up all night cramming for a history exam, constantly getting up to check the street to see if the tutor's motorcycle has returned to its spot. (In a cruel twist, the tutor lived right across the street from Will.) In "I Still Like Jessica," Rodney Rothman, a former head writer for The Late Show with David Letterman and Undeclared, finds out that the first girl to dump him doesn't even remember going out with him, much less kissing him. Talk about soul-crushing.

While most of these essays are of the standard humorous memoir style (think David Sedaris or Paul Feig) others are transcripts from phone conversations, reprintings of love letters with commentary, lists of mistakes made, and side-by-side comparisons of relationships. One of my favorites was "You Can Encapsulate Feelings of Regret, Panic, and Desperation in a Two-and-a-Half-Minute Pop Song" by Adam Schlesinger. Schlesinger is the bassist for Fountains of Wayne. In this essay, he breaks down "Baby I've Changed," a song he wrote for the Fountains of Wayne album Out of State Plates. The lyrics to the song are on one page, while the adjacent page contains detailed footnotes that provide definitions and further insight into the song's lyrics. One of my favorites:
"And I won't tell you that your hair looks gray⁸...
...8. When in a relationship, it is important to phrase physical observations about your partner in a positive manner. Instead of pointing out that some of her hair is gray, for example, our protagonist could have complimented her on the fact that most of her hair is not gray."

Bottom line: the book is funny. The contributors are professional comedians and humorists, many of them accomplished comedic writers. Read this book for a good laugh, and who knows...you just might learn something while you're at it.

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

The Big Over Easy delivered what I was expecting from the terrible Basket Case, namely a Discworld-like parody of the detective genre. Rather than parodying the genre by attempting to make a run of the mill muder case comical, TBOE (as it will henceforth be known) satirizes classic noir literature by setting the case in a fictional world where literary characters live lives that are both similar and dissimilar to their famous fictional ones.

The synopsis of TBOE is as follows: Jack Spratt (who still eats no fat) is head of the struggling Nursury Crime Division of the Reading Police Department. The NCD is struggling because, in Reading, departments must not only solve cases but also solve them in such a way that they'll make good reading in the various detective periodicals. Enter Mary Mary, the repetitively-monikered writer assigned to the NCD to record Spratt's cases. As soon as she is assigned to the division, Humpty Dumpty dies under suspicious circumstances, and the rest of the book follows Spratt as he works his way through the labyrinthine plot against Humpty.

There was a lot to like about TBOE. It was clever, and several bits made me laugh out loud, especially the bits at the beginning of each chapter from various fictional papers, with headlines such as "Identical Twin Plot Device Outlawed" and "Butler Did Do it Shocker!" The characters have habit fitting with their famed situations (Humpty Dumpty enjoys sitting on walls), and also attributes that are intentionally ludicrous (Humpty was also quite a ladies man, and had an affair with Rapunzel). The plot itself was clever and satirized the twisting narrative of much pulp noir very well, and Jack Spratt was a very likable character.

On the other hand, the writing was sometimes a little sloppy, probably because this is a rewrite of Fforde's first unpublished novel, and the exact setup of the literary universe is a little confusing. What is Prometheus doing in the same story as the three little pigs, for instance? it's also explained that the nursery characters don't really what they are, and, although Jack is aware that his cases are based on nursery rhyme, he seems unaware that he and Mary Mary are also part of that world.

Overall, however, I enjoyed this book and found it pretty funny and a quick read. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Discworld or Douglas Adams, although the concensus seems to be that it's Forde's weakest book. I guess we'll see. I'm planning on reading The Eyre Affair later this year.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynn Truss

I was in SC visiting Liz, and I was with her at her office with no internet and nothing to read. I enjoy punctuation as much as the next guy, so I picked up Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. If collections of essays don't lend themselves to reviewing, humorous punctuation handbooks lend themselves to it even less so, so I don't know how much I have to say about it. Lynn Truss is a pretty funny writer, and she had a lot of good one liners. Most of the grammatical rules, I already knew, although the evolution of certain punctuating characters was interesting, and I'm still hoping the interrobang will pass into popular usage.

I sort of like the panda bear with a gun on the front cover too. I'd read a book about him.

I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This! by Bob Newhart

Bob Newhart is an incredibly funny person, not to mention successful. (Don’t know who he is? Check him out on IMDb.) His 1960 debut comedy album, The Button-Down Mind, sold more than a million copies, and supposedly outsold every album made by the Beatles in that decade. At that time there were a lot of guys still doing “take my wife, please” but Newhart and a group of younger comedians were carving out a niche as comedic storytellers. But even that fails to accurately describe Newhart’s act. He would present one side of a conversation, often on the phone. It may not sound all that funny, but it was…and is.

For example, in “The Submarine Commander” Newhart addresses the audience as if they were members of the crew, saying, “I’d like to congratulate you men on the teamwork we displayed. We cut a full two minutes off the previous record of four minutes and twenty-nine seconds in surfacing and firing at the target and resubmerging. I just want to congratulate you men on the team work. At the same time, I don’t want to in any way slight the men that we had to leave on deck. I think they had a lot to do with the two minutes we cut off the record, and I doubt if any of us will soon forget their somewhat stunned expressions as we watched them through the periscope.”

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

This book is essentially a memoir. Beginning with his early childhood, Newhart jumps around from one seminal event to the next, ending pretty much in the present. It was really interesting to see how long it took for Newhart to get his big break, and all the weird stuff he had to do to get by while waiting for this to happen. Newhart’s wry sense of humor comes through in the material, even when dealing with serious topics – which is not all that often.

I bought the paperback edition, so I was surprised at the number of simple typos, word omissions, and silly grammatical mistakes. It never ceases to amaze me how some things make it to press with so many basic errors. Some editor at Hyperion really dropped the ball. Besides these minor nuisances, the book was an enjoyable read, and often made me laugh out loud.

Newhart was the voice of Bernard in The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. What more do you need to know? (That was a rhetorical question.)

Thud! by Terry Pratchett

There's really no need to go into much detail about this book. It's a Discworld book, he second one I've reviewed this year, and it was funny, entertaining,and fairly well-plotted, although neihter the plot or the satire are handled as well as in some of his other books.

This is probably the worst review since Chihuahuas.

Naked by David Sedaris

A few years back I caught David Sedaris on The Late Show. Letterman asked him if he would like to read an excerpt from his then-current book, Me Talk Pretty One Day. It was the first ever reading on The Late Show. I forget the passage that Sedaris read, but I remember thinking that it was really funny and deciding that I would read the book. From there I hopped around his bibliography, with no particular design or order.

While I remember enjoying Me Talk Pretty One Day – it was good enough to make me want to read more by Sedaris – it is not my favorite of his. Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim are vying for that position. Invariably, the essays that I find the most enjoyable are the ones that involve Sedaris childhood, and as a logical extension, his family. And essays of this nature are in abundance in both Naked and Dress Your Family. The interaction between young Sedaris and his siblings, especially Amy and Lisa, never fails to make me laugh.

In the essay “True Detective”, Sedaris describes how his mom and his older sister, Lisa, would watch detective shows on TV and then try to put what they had learned from these boobtube gumshoes to use, attempting to solve real crimes they came across in the local paper. “‘We know that the girl was held at knifepoint on the second floor of her house,’ Lisa said, tapping the pencil against her forehead. ‘So probably the person who robbed her was…not in a…wheelchair.’” Sedaris describes the fictional detective world that his sister and mother were so enamored with as, “a world of obvious suspects. Looking for the axe murderer? Try the emotionally disturbed lumberjack loitering near the tool shed behind the victim’s house. Who kidnapped the guidance counselor? Perhaps it’s the thirty-year-old tenth-grader with the gym bag full of bloody rope.”

Although I find Sedaris’ essays hilarious, I would not necessarily describe them as laugh-out-loud funny. There is a difference between Sedaris’ writing and that of Michael J. Nelson, and even Paul Feig. The humor in Sedaris’ essays builds slowly. Sedaris doesn’t rely on jokes or oneliners, but rather uses his cunning wit and vocabulary to describe the situations that he gets himself into. “Painfully humorous” is an apt way to describe his style. Sedaris mines humor in fairly serious situations such as, a horribly racist speech given by one of his grade school teachers when it was announced that their school would be integrated, a prostitute being beaten up a few days before Christmas, and even his mother’s death.

Sedaris is a excellent writer and a top-shelf humorist. I hope that he releases another book before I read Barrel Fever, thus exhausting his current oeuvre.

Superstud by Paul Fieg

I read Superstud during the same car trip in which I read Notes From the Underground. That was a huge mistake. Paul Fieg's experiences with the fairer sex had so much in common with Notes' existential angst that I occasionally forgot which book I was reading. Superstud was funnier though.

Humor books are difficult to review, so I'll just say that Superstud is quite funny and sometimes quite poignant, not unlike Paul Fieg's crowning accomplishment, Freaks and Geeks. It's a collection of essays connected only by the fact that they a) happened to the same person and b) are told her in chronological order. From the world's worst not-a-date to an REO Speedwagon concert to Michigan's mostly blatantly racist girlfriend, all the stories are funny and strangely relatable. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Fieg's other book, Kick Me, but it's still worth the read if you're into that sort of thing.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Well, I read this book about a week before Kelly posted it, and seeing as it's a colection of essays, his review sums them up pretty well. I agree with him on pretty much every point, including that 'Six to Eight Black Men' is the funniest essay in the book. A close runner up is 'Blood Work,' wherein Sedaris the housecleaner is mistaken for Sedaris, the erotic housecleaner. Hilarity, of course, ensues.

Of all of Sedaris' books I've read (which is everything but Me Talk Pretty One Day), this one was the funniest and most consisent. So if you like David Sedaris, read it. If you don't, read something else.