Rating: 
Summary: Wanted: Sense of humor
Review: Coyote v. Acme is brilliant conceptual humor that is accessible to everyone -- the only prerequisite for enjoying this book is a good sense of humor. You don't need a fancy degree to get these pieces at their most basic level -- just a keen awareness of the absurd and an appreciation of good writing. When all is said and done, you don't judge this book -- it judges YOU!
Rating: 
Summary: Bitingly funny and deeply disturbing.
Review: Frazier writes like a college professor bitten by a rabid dog (and that's a good thing). Some of the pieces -- "Brandy by Firelight" and "Where the Bodies are Buried" particularly -- take a seemingly small conceit or idea and stretch it until it screams for mercy, laughing all the way; meanwhile, others like "Stalin's Chuckle" have a Woody Allen-esque feel of history revised to be funnier. Highly recommended
Rating: 
Summary: Severe disappointment from this otherwise talented writer
Review: Having read other essays by this author in my Atlantic Monthly I looked forward to enjoying Coyote vs Acme. Alas, I found little to laugh at and much to be confused by. I returned the book to the store to get it out of my library. Maybe somebody else can figure it out. Sigh...
Rating:
Summary: Weird as all hell, but...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The only funny part of this book is the table of contents
Review: 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 book
Rating: 
Summary: Well, OK, . . .
Review: I enjoy watching coyote v. roadrunner cartoons, and thought I would enjoy this. Now I think the two may be mutually exclusive. Firstly, the coyote story is only one of several pieces in this little book. Secondly, I haven't read them all, but having read several, I'm not interested in the rest. Why did this guy think that people who like slapstick comedy would like this stuff? BTW, I graduated with a BA in English, covered with honors, and I'm currently a PhD candidate, so I don't think I'm too dumb to "get it". The humor in these stories just isn't evident to everyone. If it finds your funny bone, congratulations. It missed mine completely.
Rating: 
Summary: Kind of sad, really
Review: I first encountered Ian Frazier through "Dating Your Mom," which is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Then I read "Great Plains" and "Family," both of which are excellent but rather melancholy books. I don't know if it's me or him, but reading "Coyote vs. Acme" I couldn't help thinking that Frazier wasn't really laughing most of the time, so I wasn't laughing much either. The title story and a couple of others were pretty funny, but I would recommend "Dating Your Mom" for more laughs and his other books to correct your overly optimistic view of human nature.
Rating:
Summary: The title is the best thing about it.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A title for my review
Review: I'm talking about this book. Not me. Other reviewers (see directly below me) have implied -- no, declared -- that if you give this book lukewarm reviews, you have no sense of humor. I have found that if, for example, you think Woody Allen's 3 books are hilarious, you will be greatly disappointed by this book. If you think that "Where's the beef?" line was hilarious, you may or may not be disappointed by this book. I don't really know. I always change the channel when commercials come on. What I do know is that this book contains 2 very funny pieces: "Stalin's Chuckle" and "Child of War." And one embarrassingly bad one: "The Afternoon of June 8, 1991." The ones in between I will leave for all those TV people to judge. The ones who have such apparently bad senses of humor....but who am I -- or more importantly, the reviewer below me -- to judge other peoples' senses of humor. If you laugh, then you laugh, there's nothing right or wrong about it. Jeesh.
Rating:
Summary: Humor on the level of TV commercials is right
Review: I'm talking about this book. Not me. Other reviewers (see directly below me) have implied -- no, declared -- that if you give this book lukewarm reviews, you have no sense of humor. I have found that if, for example, you think Woody Allen's 3 books are hilarious, you will be greatly disappointed by this book. If you think that "Where's the beef?" line was hilarious, you may or may not be disappointed by this book. I don't really know. I always change the channel when commercials come on. What I do know is that this book contains 2 very funny pieces: "Stalin's Chuckle" and "Child of War." And one embarrassingly bad one: "The Afternoon of June 8, 1991." The ones in between I will leave for all those TV people to judge. The ones who have such apparently bad senses of humor....but who am I -- or more importantly, the reviewer below me -- to judge other peoples' senses of humor. If you laugh, then you laugh, there's nothing right or wrong about it. Jeesh.
|
