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Ian Frazier, our champ in the nearly empty field of "Humorist, Brainy Division," offers up another collection of short pieces. Though not quite the equal of 1986's splendid Dating Your Mom, Coyote V. ACME still leaves almost any other funny book far, far behind. There are occasionally empty sections, but Coyote V. ACME hits more than it misses.
Frazier's talent is like that of a master safecracker: he never leaves any fingerprints. He recreates the tone and tics of a commonplace document--a letter from a bank President, or a legal brief--but ever so slyly lets flickers of absurdity emerge and build. Here's evidence of his style, from the title piece:
"In addition to reducing all Mr. Coyote's careful preparations to naught, the premature detonation of Defendant's product resulted in the following disfigurements to Mr. Coyote:
1. Severe singeing of the hair on the head, neck, and muzzle.
2. Sooty discoloration.
3. Fracture of the left ear at the stem, causing the ear to dangle in the aftershock with a creaking noise."
As with most written humor, the closer you pay attention, the more Frazier's pieces yield. So settle in, and read Coyote V. ACME carefully--you won't be disappointed.
From Publishers Weekly
Frazier's deadpan comic voice was once a staple for New Yorker readers. Two previous book collections resulted: Dating Your Mom (1986), an assembly of very short pieces, and Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody (1987), featuring longer essays and profiles of odd denizens of American culture, a much superior showcase for the author's prodigious narrative and journalistic skills. These later came into full flower in his acclaimed travel volume, Great Plains (1989), and in last year's moving Frazier genealogy, Family. This latest collection, much of it also from the New Yorker, harks back to Mom?short, arch, cynical takes on some of the idiocies of American life: letters from banks crowing about their human services; the habit of highbrow reviewers of insisting that impersonal entities ("Language," "Dublin") in a play or a film are in fact "characters." As usual, Frazier is awfully good, smart and wicked at the same time. "Boswell's Don Johnson," for example, is a hilarious ditty written after the style of the famous biographer, but in this case he is engaged in hagiography of the star of Miami Vice. The title essay, with its exposition, in deadly legalese, of one Wile E. Coyote's complaints against a generic purveyor of explosive devices, shows Frazier's great comic range, however trite the subject. Although this book is not Frazier at full-bore, readers of his generation will find an occasional cultural reference long thought lost, and find themselves oddly beholden to a fellow who can resurrect Billy Joe McCallister from beneath the Tallahatchie Bridge. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Frazier's first collection of humor since Dating Your Mom (LJ 1/86) contains 22 pieces spoofing a wide range of subjects from Wylie Coyote to Joseph Stalin, from aggressive New Yorkers to the all-powerful Internal Revenue Service. The problem is that Frazier's routines too often target trivial issues, e.g., golf, television shows, and advice columns. Moreover, they aren't funny?at least not to one whose sense of humor was honed on Mad magazine, Saturday Night Live, and Fawlty Towers. Reading one of these stories in a magazine at the dentist's office might prove distracting; reading several could eliminate the need for Novocain. Of course, when it comes to a sense of humor, people vary greatly. If you dissolve into a paroxysm of uncontrollable laughter at the sight of a New Yorker cartoon, this book may be for you. For general collections.?William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNYCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
the New York Times Book Review, James Gorman
It's not a good gag here or there that produces irrepressible laughter in the reader ... but the cumulative force of the application of the law to a lawless universe.
From Kirkus Reviews
Fresh from a memoir cum family history (Family, 1994), the author returns to the antic form with which he first made his name. Here is a gathering of his funny stuff culled from the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker and, no kidding, Army Man. Though the collection is not seamless, the 22 short sketches harbor some truly loony stuff. Founded on vaguely recognizable facets of modern American life, Frazier's pieces use to wonderful effect the babble of banking and finance, the cant of showbiz, and with particular style, the language of literature. There's an alternate view of Wuthering Heights (in which ``Cathy died, but not seriously''). There's a short story overflowing with meaningful relationships. (``Now that I am grown, with a husband and a wife and children of my own . . .'' muses the narrator). There's Boswell's life of Don Johnson. And there is a wickedly accurate parody of Bob Hope's golfing reminiscences. Frazier has perfect pitch for language, whether it's litigious, as in the case of Wile E. Coyote v. Acme Company or instructive, as in the tax directive wherein some actual IRS wordage is embedded. Theatrical shtick isn't scanted, either, in a Studs Turkel-ish interview in which a fatuous Comrade Stalin is recalled expounding on the art and practice of stand-up comedy. In his S.J. Perelmanic vein, Frazier is likely to do a send-up on a news item of signal silliness. Though not all the little pieces are of equal quality (one riff that doesn't quite work is a commencement lecture from a scholar possessed by demons), they are all worth reading. And in the time it takes to read the average book just once, this text can be read over and over again--which is not such a bad idea. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Mr. Frazier makes me laugh out loud."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
"Can you imagine Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Co. for all those faulty explosives devices that failed to work in the Road Runner cartoons? What if Boswell did a life of Don Johnson, rather than Samuel Johnson? The writer also pokes fun at Bob Hope's flawed memory about accidents and golfing gems, Stalin's theory of comedy and a bank with a great, new system of notation. It's sophisticated and it's funny."—Bob Trimble, The Dallas Morning News
"Makes Henry Kissinger look like a straight man."—David Mamet
"A few years ago, when the title piece from this collection appeared in The New Yorker, it lit up fax machines all over town . . . Now this masterpiece of the humorous essay spearheads a collection of similar gems."—Time Out New York
"To write ineffable lyrics, page-turning thrillers or profound epics—none of this is easy. But to write something that is truly funny—so funny that your eyes water and you laugh out loud—this may be the hardest and rarest thing of all. Ian Frazier does it with apparent ease."—The Kansas City Star
"Coyote v. Acme should make it clear that Frazier hasn't lost his gift for amusement. If you're in the right mood, it's possible even to scan the contents page without cracking up."—James Marcus, Newsday
"In Coyote v. Acme, a collection of (very) funny pieces, Ian Frazier separates issues ('Young Elvis, Old Elvis') from nonissues ('Old Elvis, Dead Elvis'); contemplates a life-insurance questionnaire for daytime drama characters; and has fun with critics' favorite crutch: positing cities (or mortality, or the English language) as a novel's character."—New York magazine
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