June 01, 2004

A random recommendation

Today it dawned on me that I still don't own a copy of perhaps my favorite humor book (certainly it's right up there with Coyote v. Acme and the David Sedaris oeuvre): Ellis Weiner's Decade of the Year. It features, among your more standard humor essays, two complete tours de force. One is a story told entirely in errata, and the other tells a story in the format of a book index. Genius. Naturally, out of print. But therefore available cheap, in case any of you also wish to remedy the problem of lack-of-this-book.

Posted by Francis at 04:02 PM
Comments

I will keep an eye out for this book. What else has Ellis Weiner done?

By the way, you may be interested in taking a look at Danger Blog! I just put up an interview with, and a humor piece by, Ian Frazier.

Posted by: Ed Page at June 2, 2004 09:13 AM

Well, you don't have to keep an eye too wide, there are scads of used copies available -- two of them for a buck -- through that Amazon link above, and if those ever run dry, half.com doubtless has some too. Ellis Weiner is a former National Lampoon editor and Spy contributor; the other book of his I own is National Lampoon's Frank Herbert parody "Doon". I remembered that book cracking me up in high school and it held up pretty well on re-reading, despite the fact that the character names follow Mad magazine-style naming conventions (Kwisatz Haderach = Kumquat Haagendazs, and so forth).

Posted by: Francis at June 2, 2004 10:09 AM

Thanks!

Posted by: Ed Page at June 2, 2004 04:41 PM

Sir:

I've just purchased a copy of "Decade of the Year" off Amazon. Thanks for the recommendation.

You want to hear something wacky? When I was a wee youngin', I greatly enjoyed the novelization of "Howard the Duck." I found it genuinely entertaining. I read it before I saw the movie. Then I saw the movie and was, of course, disappointed. But I did like the book. Now, thanks to the Internet, I find that the novelization of "Howard the Duck" was written by none other than Ellis Weiner! How about that! No wonder it wasn't super crappy!

Posted by: Ed Page at June 20, 2004 02:51 AM