Coyote V. Acme by Ian Frazier Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Coyote V. Acme
Book Review: The only funny part of this book is the table of contents
Summary: 1 Stars
I am amazed people find this book funny. Well crafted, and an excellent mimic of the styles of legalese, Boswell, et. al. But funny - no. It is a veritable "potemkin village" of a humor book, like Mad Magazine written by a bunch of engineers who don't know when to stop but who must carry something to its logical extreme. (I'm an engineer myself). Had there not been reviews from other Amazon.com customers, I would have said the dust jacket reviewers never read the bookBook Review: The title is the best thing about it.
Summary: 1 Stars
I was lured by the title, but sadly this book doesn't deliver. I would describe this book as "barbershop humor." By that I mean that older men who frequent barber shops might like this book. Anyone under 50 should probably stay away.Book Review: Weird as all hell, but...
Summary: 4 Stars
How many things can you say about this book? Until I got around to reading Fight Club, this was easily the strangest book I'd ever read. The title essay is pretty fun (if skewering the conventions of things like legalese makes you laugh; it works for me) but the real humor in the book comes from stretching things to their logical extremes. Where Frazier does that, it's funny. Where he doesn't, it often doesn't quite work (previously mentioned was the Satanist university president, an essay that fails to make sense even in Frazier's cockeyed world view). So we see the traumatic aftereffects of the cancellation of one of the better-known classic sitcoms, part of La Femme Nikita's tax return, the concerns of a life insurance agency that deals with soap opera characters, and the comparison of a woman's laugh to brandy by firelight (really impossible to explain without reading it). There is also juxtaposition of extreme ideas; We see bank bureaucracy not merely run amok but deliberately driven off the rails. We see a mild-mannered Great Gatsby-ish short story suddenly invaded by a German Panzergruppe. We see the poetry of Don Johnson. We see a Martha Stewart-type character named Elsa disposing of incriminating evidence.
This is an excellent book, but with one caveat: it simply is not going to appeal to everyone, no matter how someone might try to sell it. Mr. Frazier's work here reflects a sense of the surreal more extreme than Monty Python, up in the range of Andy Kaufman or Emo Phillips, and that sort of edgy comedy makes your brain hurt. I like it, though.
Book Review: very humorous
Summary: 4 Stars
it's nice to see a book that has varied topics, and has a satanist university president. he's very funny, but sort of dry at times. he uses complex thoughts, which is often hard to find in today's world. overall a good read