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Recommended Light Reading: "The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes"
April 17, 2008

I got home from Charlottesville last night. The first thing I wanted to do when I got out of the car? Read, of course. We all already know I have a problem...

One of my New Dominion Book Shop purchases was The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes, which I'll admit I bought just for the classic Michiko Kakutani piece. But there are other delights to be discovered in this backwards-bound book, including the "Ikea Product or Lord of the Rings Character?" quiz (do you know which "Sultan Hogbo is?), Postcards from James Joyce to His Brother Stan, and John Updike, Television Writer. 

My favorite entries skewer MFA programs and writing workshops. It's not that I have anything against these things per se; it's more that they can so easily devolve into prey for McSweeneyesque humor. Who hasn't heard a critique from a writing group colleague along the lines of this one, "From the Found Notebooks of Members of Homer's Writng Group" by Sean Carman: "Oh, also, had no idea what the whole visit to the Kingdom of the Dead was getting at. Interesting, but seems unrelated to the larger story. I'd cut it. Remember -- this is a story about one man's attempt to get home. Stay focused on that."

And who has not been faced with a writing prompt like Dan Wiencik's? "8. A husband and a wife are meeting in a restaurant to finalize the terms of their impending divorce. Write the scene from the point of view of a busboy snorting cocaine in the restroom."

Every reader, writer, editor, and publishing person deserves to have a copy of this book for the loo. That is a compliment, by the way.

Posted by Bethanne Patrick on April 17, 2008 | Comments (2)