The funny papers

Most good books have their moments of comedy -- whether from a wacky character or a funny situation. Nowadays a trend has been creeping into modern writing, where jokes aren't a part of the book -- the book itself is the joke.

Satire and parody are making a return to literature. The same genres that brought you Forbidden Broadway, Hot Shots (Part I and Deux) and the songs of Weird Al Yankovich have come to the written word. Since a goal of the Daily Arts Department is to keep our readers abreast of all things new in the arts world, we would be remiss if we did not highlight this literary trend. To this end here are reviews of a literary satire and parody currently on the shelves:



The Hipster Handbook

Are you cool? Probably not, but there is hope offered in the slim blue volume that is The Hipster Handbook. Filled with drawings and clocking in at fewer than 200 pages, this book is a quick, funny read, perfect for a coffee table or to chuckle over with friends before class.

In case you were wondering, a hipster is "one who possesses the tastes, social attitudes and opinions deemed cool by the cool," as defined by the helpful glossary of slang in the first chapter. Other great definitions include "boggle" for vomit; "deck" for cool, and "flavorless" for heterosexual. The book also provides a guide to the various species of hipster complete with habits, identifying characteristics and sample illustrations.

The book has a tone of patient superiority as it guides the reader through the wiles of the hipster subculture. While it seems to patronize the un-indoctrinated, the people truly getting skewered are the hipsters themselves. The author, Robert Lanham, makes sure to inform the reader, "Underneath all that individualism, hipsters conform like anybody else." And: "Hipsters never admit to being hipsters. They are too cool to broach the subject."

However, the most important thing to know about this book is: IT IS A JOKE! This is key, because if you do not understand this, The Hipster Handbook will seem elitist and divisive, and you'll probably be pretty mad at the end. There are some scary moments when it seems Lanham is being serious, but rest assured they will pass and the satire in the book will once again shine through.

Lanham is not going to hit you over the head with hyperbole. What works is that the author makes all these assertions with a straight face and relies on the common sense of the reader to see the humor. When you get the joke it's really, really funny.



The Satanic Nurses

Less Candide and more Naked Gun on the satire scale, The Satanic Nurses is a literary episode of Saturday Night Live -- some of the jokes are brilliant, some fall flat and some are just mind boggling (for various reasons not excluding stupidity).

Nothing is sacred to author J.B. Miller, who assaults Hemingway, Mamet, and Kerouac as well as a slew of others with his pen. The trick of this book is you have to be fairly well read. While many will understand the parodies of writers like those mentioned above, most people only have a cursory knowledge of modern writers. So while the parody of Tolkein may be a hit, the Irvine Welsh (author of Trainspotting) parody may not.

Moreover, some parodies expect too much of the reader. The Samuel Beckett parody is entirely in French without translation. WHY?! The J.D. Salinger expects you to know about the writer's reclusiveness and the plot of Franny and Zooey. Other parodies expect you to know a lot about the authors themselves as well.

Finally, some of the parodies are just dumb. In the Nabakov parody, Colita succeeds in being gross and creepy (although some may say the same about the original) and the Terry McMillan parody was just not funny. It's 2003, who does Clinton jokes any more?

Where The Satanic Nurses succeeds it does with a flourish; where it fails, it fails miserably. Read it if it's on a coffee table but don't make a point to seek it out.