Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason

February 7, 2011
Sacks (coauthor of Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk) offers 54 short humor pieces, including 25 written in collaboration with fellow humor writers Todd Levin, Scott Jacobson, Bob Powers, Jason Roeder, Scott Rothman, Will Tracy, Ted Travelstead, and Teddy Wayne. The essays, many of which were published in McSweeney's and the New Yorker, is a selection of contemporary social satires, such as signs a college is not very prestigious ("Marching band uses only handclaps") and a bridegroom on Twitter ("Attempting to fist-bump rabbi"). The essays include icebreakers to avoid ("This party reminds me of 9/11"); a director's commentary on the DVD rerelease of a 1990 bar mitzvah video; and a rejection letter to Anne Frank: "Unfortunately, we receive so many unsolicited teenage diaries composed in European attics that it is impossible to publish each one." Highlighting this often hilarious book are Yu's many illustrations, such as the inclusion of Pynchon's muted post horn, and Sancton's 10 drawings depicting "Everyday Tantric Positions" as well as an eight-page pantomime comic strip from Esquire about frustrating Ikea assembly instructions.

December 15, 2010

A comical collection of essays, illustrations and one-liners.

Humor writer and Vanity Fair staffer Sacks (And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft, 2009, etc.) opens with a warning: "The vast majority of these short humor pieces—or the random list, the occasional illustration, other effluvia—have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is no overarching theme, no recurring characters, nothing that links one piece to another." It's an accurate assessment. The collection veers in various directions, many of the pieces involving the author taking on personas to match the lunacy of the prose. One of the more successful personas is Rhon Penny ("silent h"), a wanna-be writer soliciting literary giants for blurbs and collaborative projects: "My publisher/mother tells me a top-notch blurb can mean the difference between Harry Potter-type sales and Harry Stottleberg-type sales (a guy who lives in our building)." Equally enjoyable are Sacks' lists—e.g., "Signs Your College Is Not Very Prestigious," which include, "Has NCAA's only cockfighting program" and, "Provost walks around campus with a Burmese python around his neck." His list "Reasons You're Still Single" includes such gems as "Perform yoga in parks" and "Carry an NPR Fresh Air tote bag." Much of Sacks' humor hinges on the reader's willingness to take leaps, to laugh about what is not said, or what is implied. In "When Making Love To Me: What Every Woman Needs To Know," the author writes, "Love me for who I am and not for what I just did to your armpit." While Sacks' odd-ball humor is often irreverent, it is never irrelevant. There appears to be some strange care taken in every piece.

An enjoyable collection of zaniness best read in small doses.

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