I nearly missed out on this book for the same reason I miss out on a lot of books, movies and music: If too many people like something, part of me starts to think it must suck. I don’t know why, but if more than three people, or any one person on television, recommend something I start rolling my eyes. Maybe it’s because I think that if something appeals to everyone it must be so watered-down and vanilla that people with no taste at all can enjoy it. The point is, I’m usually wrong and miss out on cool things. For this reason, I heard about A Confederacy of Dunces long before I read it. A friend demanded I read Confederacy repeatedly, and after finally reading it, I’m ashamed to say how long he badgered me before his recommendation took. So if you haven’t read this book for the same reason, do yourself a favor and get a copy. You won’t be sorry.

This book is hard to categorize, or even sum up, which may be why it’s hard to recommend. It’s nearly plotless, and the main character, Ignatious Rielly, is one of the most obnoxious characters in literature. Here’s a brief except from the opening scene, where a police officer asks the conspicuous and elephantine Ignatious for identification at a shopping mall. To which Ignatious replies:

“Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capitol of the civilized world?” Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. “This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, Antichrists, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall discuss the crime problem with you, but don’t make the mistake of bothering me.”

This short exchange tells us everything about the character, and this book. Ignatius has a ready list of “degenerates” -everyone from Antichrists to litterbugs and lesbians- a group in which, although he repeats it moments before beating the same police officer with a roll of sheet music and lute string, he does not recognize himself. It is his arrogance and self-delusion which drive this novel and, ironically, what makes him so sympathetic.

Describing the attraction of watching someone like Reilly is as difficult as describing the novel. A Confederacy of Dunces is a throw-back, the same as its protagonist: There is no real plot-arc, no meta-fictional devices, and it is not tied to any celebrities or historical event (except perhaps, now, the cannon of pre-Katrina New Orleans literature, the same as The Moviegoer, whose author saved this novel from oblivion). Trying to apply the Heroe’s Journey Template to this novel would be as absurd as Ignatious -which, along with the curse, might explain why it has never been filmed. It is a picturesque series of events, loosely connected, involving charters so weird in their own unique ways each seems entirely real. Reilly is the first character we meet, but his supporting cast often steals the show, and upstaging a giant, bellowing, arrogant anachronism is no easy task.

I think anyone who recommends this book does so urgently, as I do, and so the mania can seem off-putting. So here’s a link to the book on Amazon. Please don’t buy it there. Instead, go into the “Look Inside” function and browse the first few pages, then buy it at a local book store when you can’t stop reading. Do it right now. Before you miss out on something cool.

Author: Michael Rubens

2009, Pantheon

Best ebook deal: Barnes & Noble

Filed under: Sci-Fi, Humor

Rubens’s biggest credit in his “About the Author” note is as a writer and producer on The Daily Show. So the conceit is clear: this will be a funny TV guy writing a funny sci-fi novel.

There are two ways this can go. The author can use the wide boundaries of the genre as an excuse to take wild risks with the plot and characters, and so short-circuit the usual novelistic learning curve. Or he could be a funny person who thinks that writing a novel is easy, and doesn’t put nearly enough work into it. Unfortunately, Yrnameer is the latter, and Rubens turns in an uninspired, shapeless mishmash.

The premise is derivative to the least—it reads like a compilation of sci-fi’s greatest hits. The plot is barely there. The characters are two-dimensional. And, possibly worst of all, it’s just not that funny. There’s evidence of a humorous mind at work, but there’s a big difference between being funny on TV or in person, and being funny in a novel.

Rubens’s humor is ill-suited for the novel form, and it seems that he is, too.

The first thing I noticed about Yrnameer is the staggering amount of borrowing it does from other books and movies. I’m a casual sci-fi fan at best, but I had no trouble sourcing most of the major elements.

The hero, Cole, is a much less charming version of Han Solo from Star Wars: he’s the put-upon, unwilling helper of a noble cause. The universe is hypercommercialized to the point that corporations have naming rights over even planets—this is little more than a curiosity, it has no bearing on the story other than the fact that “Yrnameer” is short for “Your Name Here,” meaning the titular planet hasn’t yet been named after a company.

Then there’s a host of smaller details that are no less derivative. Guns are called Firesticks (in Army of Darkness, a shotgun, famously, is called a “boomstick”). Space stations rotate to simulate gravity (from 2001: A Space Odyssey). There’s a town in need of a sheriff (that one’s actually from westerns—almost all of them). Everyone says “farg” instead of “fuck,” an echo of Battlestar Galactica’s fictional cussword “frak” (this is an odd one, since Rubens doesn’t have to get around the FCC). And pretty much everything else, especially Rubens’s funny sci-fi style, is cribbed from Douglas Adams. For instance:

Later on, a tumbleweeg, looking for all intents and purposes like a large ball of dried twigs, was carried by the wind past the scribbles. Huh, thought the tumbleweeg, whose name was Reg, that looks like a pretty viable solution to the Riemann hypothesis. I really should mention this to someone, thought Reg, and then the wind blew him away and he forgot about it, as he had a tendency to do.

That’s actually one of Rubens’s better paragraphs, and it still pales in comparison to the real Adams, not least because tumbleweegs, Reg, and the Riemann hypothesis all have absolutely nothing to do with the story.

I don’t mean to say that all this borrowing is intentional, and any one, or even three, of these examples would be forgivable. But the ratio of derivation to originality is so high that it points to a severe lack of imagination, which is the bread and butter of the funny sci-fi novel.

Another big problem is that there’s not enough plot. Cole’s mission for the novel’s first two-thirds is far too easy (take this package to the planet Yrnameer) made even easier by the fact that Cole’s ship has a “bendbox,” which will warp them straight to their destination. To stretch out the story, Rubens has to force complications—bendbox malfunctions, mostly, followed by episodic adventures at this or that ship or station.

Additionally, Cole is a hapless, helpless hero, forever getting into trouble and then being saved not by his own doing, but by a jammed gun or the equivalent. It gets tiresome very, very quickly.

At one point Cole himself even says, “’Why can’t any of this just be easy?’” Well, because if anything was ever easy, the novel would be over.

Rubens’s writing doesn’t help, either. He often lets his narrator explain nuances that he can’t be bothered to put into his characters’ dialogue or actions. Such as, “‘Sorry,’ she said, her tone intimating she wasn’t.” That’s an amateurish cop-out that deflates any sense there might be that these are real people communicating in a real way.

Once Cole and his skeptical clients reach Yrnameer, as the title tells us they will, they find it in need of a sheriff to save it from bandits. Cole instantly, arbitrarily grows a motivation for why he wants to do it. This second plot is actually much better than the first, relatively speaking, and features Cole actually doing something.

But it can’t save the novel from Rubens’s flaws as a novelist. Even a silly, funny, sci-fi novel takes a lot of work, and evidently that was a whole lot more than Rubens was willing to put in.

Similar books: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, by Douglas Adams; the MythAdventures series, by Robert Asprin (for a slightly younger audience); and The Road to Mars, by Eric Idle

Author: Nick Hornby

2009, Riverhead

Best ebook deal: Barnes & Noble

Filed under: Literary, Humor

Top Five Nick Hornby Novels

5. How to Be Good

4. High Fidelity

3. Juliet, Naked

2. A Long Way Down

1. About a Boy

OK, that was pretty cheesy. But there’s something about Hornby that invites a certain kind of earnest, jocular cheesiness.

Juliet, Naked will be made into a movie at some point, and I’m guessing it will star Robert Downey Jr. and Kate Winslet, if they can tweak the female lead slightly younger.

As a novel, it’s a fairly straightforward romantic comedy, with a relatively ludicrous premise. But Hornby has a talent for taking relatively ludicrous premises and plumbing their depths until he hits something good. He commits to his characters and his plot points, and, most importantly, he has a preternatural talent for making stories about relationships compelling and fresh.

The plot of Juliet, Naked goes like this: Annie and Duncan are a couple who’ve been together—quite unhappily—for 15 years. Duncan runs a fan website for an American singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe, who hasn’t made a record in roughly twenty years, since his biggest hit, Juliet. Annie likes Juliet, but doesn’t share Duncan’s obsession with Crowe.

When an acoustic version of Juliet (dubbed “Juliet, Naked”) is released, Duncan reviews it quite positively. Annie is inspired to review it as well, and finds it what it is: the rough, unpolished first draft of a great album.

Tucker Crowe emails Annie in response to her review, and they begin a correspondence that causes everybody to reevaluate their lives and their relationships.

This is kind of a classic Hornby setup. You’ve got a bunch of relatively stock elements (unhappy people leading unsatisfying lives, mostly) and then one bizarre gimmick. Really, that’s the classic setup of most comic novels, especially those of the romantic variety.

The difference is that Hornby is the best comic novelist around. Even though the premise is gimmicky, and the plot points aren’t terribly original (neither are they trying to be), I was hooked by a third of the way through and I found myself rooting for these characters.

The funny thing is that I rooted for all of them, not just the ones I like. To borrow one of Hornby’s metaphors, the characters are puzzle pieces fitted together in (perhaps too obviously) the wrong ways. So maybe I rooted for them simply out of a sense of pattern recognition, that these things belong in a different order. Whatever the reason though, this book is more compelling and more charming than most.

Hornby’s not the most brilliant phraseman in the land, and his metaphors are often (and often admittedly) labored. But he’s a quite sound writer, and I mean that more kindly than it might sound. He sets himself difficult tasks, but he’s never beaten by them. He creates believable geniuses and bores, and when he stretches out the plot (the whole third quarter is relatively beside the point), he’s got humor to buoy the story along.

In sum, Juliet, Naked is a captivating, entertaining novel featuring familiar motifs and situations that never feel stale.

Similar books: How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby

Authors: Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith

2009, Quirk

Best ebook deal: Sony eBook Store

Filed under Literary, Horror, Humor

From the discussion guide appended to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:

Some scholars believe that the zombies were a last-minute addition to the novel, requested by the publisher in a shameless attempt to boost sales. Others argue that the hordes of living dead are integral to Jane Austen’s plot and social commentary. What do you think? Can you imagine what this novel might be like without the violent zombie mayhem?

If you’re at all familiar with Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice, you will immediately upon beginning Pride and Prejudice and Zombies notice that this is really that same book just…modified. It’s not a rewrite, just a reworking. What is really astounding about the Zombies edition is how well Grahame-Smith manages to implement the gory horror aspects, and indeed and entirely new setting, atmosphere, and fictional historical context while remaining true to the source material.

For the most part, the additions presented in this edition actually feel organic to the original story. At times the Shaolin and ninja references can feel a tad silly, but Grahame-Smith tweaks the world enough to keep the modified material from seeming as if it was merely stapled to a public domain text and reinforced with duct tape. (For instance, the Bennett sisters’ training in zombie defense at a Chinese Shaolin temple is seen as a cheap, bourgeoisie substitute for the more refined choice of a Japanese sensei’s martial arts tutelage.)

Not every sentence or paragraph is modified in this edition; much of Austen’s original text remains untouched. Wholly new sentences and paragraphs do now appear amidst familiar scenes. But most of the changes are implemented slight tweaks to the pre-existing text. Take the introduction to Mr. Darcy (who is, by the way, more a dreamy badass now than ever before):

His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mein–and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having slaughtered more than a thousand unmentionables since the fall of Cambridge.

There are, of course, some more substantial plot alterations which add to the cohesiveness of this novel as a standalone work. For example, in Zombies when Charlotte marries Mr. Collins she is already half transformed by the mysterious zombie plague, though he doesn’t realize. Later in the book, Mr. Darcy takes “particular pleasure in beating Mr. Wickham lame.”

The book is splattered with cool etch-like sketches like this.

However–back to the study question at hand–these plot alterations, rather than non-sequitur or aberrant to the original work, are a boost to the biting social commentary that so defines the original work. Zombie fiction tends to have a deeper sociological or satirical slant than many other similar genres do. Perhaps it is by its very nature that it weds so well with Austen’s masterpiece. It is, undeniably, a gimmick slapped onto a literary classic, yet rather than mock the original itself, it mocks the same things as its source material.

And let’s not forget the all new, gore-splattered scenes that punctuate every fifty pages or so. They are awesome, especially to be appreciated by any readers with a penchant for zombies. Each time I came upon one I reveled in dorky, gory fun.

Other books: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (Austen & Winters), Grendel (Gardner), A Night at the Movies, or You Must Remember This (Coover)

Author: Christopher Moore

HarperCollins, 2008

Best ebook deal: Public library

Christopher Moore writes “comic novels,” which gives me pause. I love funny books, but I rarely read comic novels, because they always seem to ignore every other aspect of fiction on their quest toward cracking a joke every five sentences. Mainstream dramatic books, in my experience, can weave humor in with their story; they can create a melody of narrative, where comic novels usually lapse into a low, constant drone.

Fool reads, for the most part, like just such a drone. The story is King Lear, told from the point of view of the court jester, called Fool in the play, Pocket in the novel. Moore does his best Shakespeare impression, leaning toward bawdiness and away from drama. And his impression isn’t too bad, actually. If you unfocus a little, it might even pass at certain points. Not, however, the points where Moore can’t resist naming the King of France “Jeff,” or dropping in words like “dude” and “jizm.”

Pocket’s witticisms are often quite artfully turned, but rarely funny, and usually spoiled by Pocket bragging about them. The actual humor comes from other characters, when it comes. As a narrator, Pocket does a quite decent job, but the subject matter of the novel is ultimately a mistake.

The story of Lear is better than most of Moore’s usual wacky fare, but less given to actual humor, and Moore seems to feel he has to be quite faithful to the original. By halfway through, you can feel Moore wilting under the drama, laboring mechanically through the plot, desperately cracking the same sex jokes, fart jokes, gay jokes, and French jokes, over and over.

Occasionally, Moore comes across a gem of genuinely good writing—his best scenes are fabricated, especially those concerning Pocket’s backstory, growing up an orphan in a convent. Unfortunately, as soon as a well-written dramatic passage gets started, you can feel the clock ticking. Moore only has a limited amount of time to waste before he must lurch the narrative back to the central string of jokes, all of which are worn out after the first hundred pages. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead this is not.

However, Moore is a surprisingly good writer. I can’t help but wish that he wasn’t so constantly trying to be funny.

If you like his other books, you’ll find this one uneven, but probably worth the read. If you’re a skeptic, don’t start with this one. Try Lamb instead.

Similar authors: Christopher Buckley, Terry Pratchett, Donald E. Westlake

A really funny book: Light House, by William Monahan

Author: G. Xavier Robillard

Harper, 2009

Best eBook Deal: HarperCollins

Captain Freedom: A Superhero’s Quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves is a social satire written in the tradition of George Saunders and Kurt Vonnegut, amongst others. Freedom takes cuts at most every aspect of American society–if you ever find yourself unsure of just what Robillard’s angle is at a given point, the chapter titles will help steer you. Ultimately, the book’s undoing is its large scope: it tries to tackle too much and loses focus in the effort.

Vonnegut was a master at pulling back, at separating the narration and the action. And Saunders’s brilliance lies in his staccato zaniness. Robillard takes neither approach, though he should have. Captain Freedom is far too long for what it is, and there is zero respite from the blistering barrage of jokes. Even the funniest jokes by the funniest comedians will lose their humor when strung together like cranberries on a Christmas tree. Unfortunately, the jokes here aren’t really all that funny to begin with.

I pin my hopes on that other medium: celluloid. (No, I’m not talking about the unsightly skin condition.) I shop around scripts for the Captain Freedom movie.

This is a pretty good example of par for Robillard’s joke course. 258 pages of that can become downright grating.

Captain Freedom has its moments, and Robillard is undeniably a clever wit. The book probably would have made an excellent short story or novella, but as a full length novel the humor quickly becomes monotonous. With no breaks in the assault of puns and jokes, what should be a humorous romp reads more like a stumbling bore.

Other books: Deadeye Dick (Vonnegut), Pastoralia (Saunders), Frisco Pigeon Mambo (Payne)