Hume's Fork

March 15, 2007
This is a wacky novel, even for a satire. It stars a couple of philosophy professors who, on their way to a conference in North Carolina, get sidetracked and wind up bunking with a local family. The book's protagonist is Legare Hume, and the local family is his own: mother, father, and various relatives, including the only two Legare can stand, his sister and her small boy. He has spent most of his life trying to pretend his family doesn't exist, and now he watches, helplessly, as his fellow professor, Saul Grossman, fits right in, instantly seeming to become just one o' the boys. Cooper, a philosophy professor who hails from South Carolina, manages to tell a funny, fast-paced, hugely entertaining story that balances intricate philosophical ideas (the title itself is a pun, though you may need a crash course in logical positivism to get the joke) with outright zaniness (philosophizing wrestlers). Comparisons to John Kennedy Toole's " A Confederacy of Dunces "are not without merit, though Michael Malone's " Handling Sin" is closer to the mark. Its similarity to these contemporary classics aside, Cooper's novel is not at all derivative.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)