Wigfield

Wigfield is the anti-Lake Wobegon--a desolate home to strip joints, junkyards, and enough soil contaminants to turn newborns into mutants. So naturally, it's the place where clueless journalist Russell Hokes lands when researching the dying American small town in an effort to reach 50,000 words and satisfy a suspicious publisher. The three Comedy Central veterans serve up a full town of oddball characters, showing off their excellent voice skills. The audio version takes on the guise of a genuine essay (such as the recent "If I Live to Be 100"), setting up the listener more easily for laughs. Those who aren't turned off by unrelenting bleakness will find lots of genuine laughs. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 28, 2003
The authors are well-known comedians. The photographer is a famous designer. The result is unlike anything the genre of humorous fiction has seen before. The book tells, sort of, the story of Wigfield, a small town that realizes it's in danger when the government wants to destroy a local dam in order to protect the local salmon population. Faced with imminent flood, the town solicits Russell Hokes, a self-centered hack journalist, who hopes to capture the undying spirit of the all-American small town. Wigfield, alas, is very far from living up to the bucolic image it intends to foster, and as the dam draws nearer to destruction, so does Wigfield's self-created myth. The plot unfolds as a series of interviews Hokes conducts with local residents, accompanied by droll, surreal photographs by Oldham. In the end, Hokes succeeds in his goal, which is, as he notes in his attached résumé, to "write a book, other than the ones that I have already written, so that I may use my words like a sword of swift justice in service of the truth, but in an easy-to-read, highly marketable way." He does so, however, not by creating a Capraesque tribute to smalltown America, but by unwittingly exposing the bumbling foolery beneath its surface. The book is one of those rare works of satire that combine creative form, uproariously funny text and a painfully sharp underpinning of social criticism. (May)Forecast:Sedaris, Dinello and Colbert have been appearing together on stage since they met at Chicago's Second City. The book will be cross-promoted with their performances (if only they were doing readings, too!), and will likely get plenty of media attention, particularly in the alternative press.