HATS OFF GENTLEMEN!* DAVID MAMET IS A GENIUS!, The case can be made for this amazing(1) book with three little words: Huzzah for WILSON! Imagine you have been commissioned by the Misanthropological Society of Mars in the year 2006(2) to dissertate about life on the bugbog(3) planet, but find that all life and vestige of civilization have been wiped out by something or another, and that all that remains are some pages of an annoying book called "Misanthropology" (op. cit.). Get the idea? WILSON is not about that at all, but it is an amazingly amusing book; witty, philosophical, likened unto Nabokov's "Pale Fire" (q.v.) because of the footnotes, or unto Mendoza's "Sin Noticias de Gurb" (q.v.) which has no footnotes, but is in Spanish.(4)

(1) Or amusing, as the case may be.(a)
(2) A Martian day is 40 minutes longer than an earth day, and we can presume(b) that earth and Mars have a common 1 A.D. origin. With this info, can you calculate the length of a Martian year?(c)
(3) The planet earth is so described in "Misanthropology: A Florilegium of Bahumbuggery" (q.v.), wherein is posed an unnerving riddle-me-ree, to wit: What do you get if you cross a buzzbug with a diet colt?(d)
(4) Ja ja

(a) Or maybe not
(b) An unwarranted presumption? Who cares? (Dr. Livingstone, I presume)
(c) Based on the information given: no way, Jose[1]
(d) Answer: Buzz Liteyear, or a bugling. (Don't get it? Derive the middle term)[2]

[1] Ha ha. To research Martian years, try Google.
[2] Don't read further unless you give up on the middle term, which follows: A diet colt is a lite yearling. (N'est-ce pas? Now go back and get it.)

* In some versions, AND GENTLELADIES! (too wordy). Trout suggests GENTLEPEOPLE! (doesn't resonate). I say, let it STET. ( )

I picked this book up at a library sale because I liked the cover, but unfortunately I found it unreadable. I forced myself to continue as far as page 50, but I found myself reading the pages over and over again as I just couldn't concentrate.

Way too experimental for my taste.

wow what an awesome idea for a book! "When the Internet-and the collective memory of the twenty-first century-crashes, the past is reassembled from the downloaded memories..." GREAT IDEA. the best thing is... that great idea is still out there for someone else to execute. There's some real brilliance and amazing humor in the first 60 pages i managed to force myself to read. (i plan on finishing this, i guess its a personal dare now). I'll update this review when I do.

the problem with writing an entire book that reads like literary criticism is that it reads like literary criticism. also, if the premise is that a historian is assembling and interpreting these texts in a sort of poorly researched (and therefore HILARIOUS) thesis, why would his "thesis" be composed of incomplete random parts? correct me if i'm wrong here... ( )