Uneven, but more hits than misses.
Stand-up comedian and character actor Black debuts with an amusing collection of essays.
For years the author has augmented his stand-up career with a variety of roles in film (most notably in Wet Hot American Summer) and television, including great work on the criminally short-lived MTV sketch show, The State. Many of these roles have honed his unique ability to deliver dry, often hyperbolic jabs at, well, seemingly anything that pops into his head. In his first book, those topics include David Sedaris (“It’s important to understand that when you read the words ‘David Sedaris’ and ‘suck it,’ they are not actually directed at David Sedaris the person, but more at the idea of David Sedaris”; shopkeeping (“A shoppe is a place where business is conducted, yes, but it’s also a place where friendships are formed, trust earned, scented candles smelled”); Socratic reasoning (the hilarious “Using the Socratic Method to Determine What It Would Take for Me to Voluntarily Eat Dog Shit for the Rest of My Life”); and his own writing talent (“Acceptance Speech I Plan to Give Upon Receiving Some Kind of Important Literary Prize for Writing this Book”). Black also includes plenty of adolescent humor of the sexual and scatological nature, including “This Is How I Party” (“to win…means showing up alone, but going home with the HOTTEST girl who is the LEAST conscious”), “How to Approach the Sensitive Question: Anal?” and “Why I Used a Day-Glo Marker to Color My Dick Yellow.” As can be expected in a collection of 50 short essays, there are some misfires, including a couple lame stabs at offbeat erotic fiction and a few half-formed pieces like “Now We Will Join Forces, You and I” and “Stan the Oracle.” But the best entries, like his take on the “Infinite Monkey Probability Theorem,” are mini comic gems: “Upon closer examination, however, I realized that what I was reading was not Hamlet, but the second act of Your Five Gallants, by the lesser Elizabethan playwright Thomas Middleton. So frustrating!!!”
Uneven, but more hits than misses.Pub Date: July 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6405-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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