STUFF & NONSENSE

A dumb, crass, smarmy, absurdist United States of America is lampooned in White’s droll collection of comic pieces.

The author sends up many fat target balloons in these mostly brief literary japes. They include a fire-breathing letter to a mayor (“Did you earn a master’s degree in mismanagement from Moron U?”) from an unlikely constituent; a memo to employees from a cost-cutting CEO who announces that the dental plan will only cover the upper front teeth; a news article about a controversial real-estate development to be named “Morning Wood”; a courtroom drama in which a puritanical judge and a conniving reporter team up to get a porn shop proprietor prosecuted for obscenity but badly miscalculate their community’s standards of decency; a list of twisted book titles that includes Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask Your Teen; and a mordant account of a doctor’s visit that ends with a prostate exam. The last half of the book takes the form of a faux guidebook to the 50 states, informing readers that Florida’s official motto is “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” White’s writing features hilariously incongruous mismatches of content and language (“Elderly w/f suspect allegedly enticed complainants into said gingerbread dwelling,” reports a police blotter account of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale) and whip-smart parodies of stale tropes with punchlines that pirouette on a dime (“In a recent horoscope,” confesses a newspaper corrections column, “the guest astrologer mistakenly advised everybody born under the sign Sagittarius to don helmets and hide in their closets until the Rapture occurs or they are contacted by the government, preferably ours. That advice was intended for Leos.”) Percolating throughout the collection is a vision of a nation that glories in its own banality and blight (“Today, Alaska is a popular destination for tourists, who enjoy watching glaciers melt while sipping tropical cocktails on the decks of massive cruise ships that maneuver around oil slicks and stranded polar bears on drifting icebergs.”) The result is a wittily jaundiced take on modern life.

Captivating fluff, full of funny curveballs and wicked jibes.