A fiendishly innovative young writer ups the ante on his cult classics Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist with a book so funny that it ought to be a controlled substance. "With his pumped-up prose and steroidal satire . . . You could call him the Quentin Tarantino of cult fiction."--Newsweek.

McCaffery converses with the young, recklessly daring, and furiously productive William Vollmann and with Marianne Hauser, who published her first novel nearly sixty years ago ... with Native American trickster novelist Gerald Vizenor and "guerrilla writer" Harold Jaffe (whose literary technique is to "plant a bomb, sneak away") ... with stark minimalist Lydia Davis and text-and-collage artist Derek Pell ... with muscular pop icon Mark Leyner and proto-punk diva Kathy Acker. They are a diverse lot, shaped by very different literary and personal influences, and addressing divergent readerships.

First published in 2002. This book explores the philosophical, social, and aesthetic implications of twentieth-century America's obsession with eliminating waste. Through interdisciplinary engagement with fiction and popular culture, William Little traces the way this obsession finds expression in powerful social forces (e.g., the drive to consume conspicuously; the Progressive-era campaign to manage scientifically; the current demand to "reduce, reuse, recycle"), and shows how such forces are governed by an idealism that links proper treatment of waste with the promise of salvation.

The main aim of the book has been to include writers, movements, forms of writing and textual strategies, critical ideas, and texts that are significant in relation to postmodernist literature. In addition, important scholars, journals, and cultural processes have been included where these are felt to be relevant to an understanding of postmodernist writing. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Postmodernist Literature and Theater contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on postmodernist writers, the important postmodernist aesthetic practices, significant texts produced throughout the history of postmodernist writing, and important movements and ideas that have created a variety of literary approaches within the form. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the postmodernist literature and theater.

Examines the tendency of post-World War II writers to rewrite earlier narratives by Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, and others.

In this fiendishly original new novel, Mark Leyner is a leather-blazer-wearing, Piranha 793-driving, narcotic-guzzling monster who has potential rivals eliminated by his bionically enhanced bodyguards, has his internal organs tattooed, and eavesdrops on the erotic fantasies of Victoria's Secret models -- which naturally revolve around him. Leyner's jet-propelled roller derby through the cultures of celebrity, cyberpunk, and rabid egotism is exhilaratingly bizarre, exhaustingly funny -- and you'd better hope it's just fiction.

The cockroach could not have scuttled along, almost unchanged, for two hundred and fifty million years – some two hundred and forty-nine before man evolved – unless it was doing something right. It would be fascinating as well as instructive to have access to the cockroach’s own record of its life on earth, to know its point of view on evolution and species domination over the millennia. Such chronicles would perhaps radically alter our perceptions of the dinosaur’s span and importance – and that of our own development and significance. We might learn that throughout all these aeons, the dominant life form has been, if not the cockroach itself, then certainly the insect. Attempts to chronicle the cockroach’s intellectual and emotional life have been made only within the last century when a scientist titled his essay on the cockroach "The Intellectual and Emotional World of the Cockroach", and artists as radically different as Franz Kafka and Don Marquis created equally memorable cockroach protagonists. At least since Classical Greece, authors have brought cockroach characters into the foreground to speak for the weak and downtrodden, the outsiders, those forced to survive on the underside of dominant human cultures. Cockroaches have become the subjects of songs (La Cucaracha), have competed in "roachraces" and have even ended up in recipes. In this accessible, sympathetic and often humorous book, Marion Copeland examines the natural history, symbolism and cultural significance of this poorly understood and much-maligned insect.

Writing humor is subjective and challenging - thankfully, there are many ways to create it. How to Write Funny provides advice, insights and humor from more than twenty writers with a gift for making readers laugh. In a diverse collection of articles and interviews, both classic and new, this esteemed group of writers, including Dave Barry, Bill Bryson and Jennifer Crusie, provides different viewpoints on how humor works on the page, whether in short stories, memoirs, novels or articles. You'll learn the principles and basic forms of comedy, when to break the rules of reason, the importance of being yourself, why you should stop trying to hard to be funny, and how to write for specific genres and audiences. You'll also sit in on a special roundtable discussion featuring P.J. O'Rourke, Mark Leyner, Maggie Estep and James Finn Garner, as well as a one-of-a-kind "how-to" workshop conducted by funny lady and best-selling author Jennifer Crusie. You've got a sense of humor. You've got the will to write. Combining the two, and getting it right, will bring a smile to your face and a chuckle to your readers.

Since the 1960s, academics have theorized that literature is on its way to becoming obsolete or, at the very least, has lost part of its power as an influential medium of social and cultural critique. This work argues against that misconception and maintains that contemporary American literature is not only alive and well but has grown in significant ways that reflect changes in American culture during the last twenty years. In addition, this work argues that beginning in the 1980s, a new, allied generation of American writers, born from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, has emerged, whose hybrid fiction blend distinct elements of previous American literary movements and contain divided social, cultural and ethnic allegiances. The author explores psychological, philosophical, ethnic and technological hybridity. The author also argues for the importance of and need for literature in contemporary America and considers its future possibilities in the realms of the Internet and hypertext. David Foster Wallace, Neal Stephenson, Douglas Coupland, Sherman Alexie, William Vollmann, Michele Serros and Dave Eggers are among the writers whose hybrid fictions are discussed.

Is There a Doctor in the House? Say you’re at a party. You’ve had a martini or three, and you mingle through the crowd, wondering how long you need to stay before going out for pizza. Suddenly you’re introduced to someone new, Dr. Nice Tomeetya. You forget the pizza. Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during an office visit with your own doctor but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. You’re filled with liquid courage . . . now is your chance! If you’ve ever wanted to ask a doctor . . . •How do people in wheelchairs have sex? •Why do I get a killer headache when I suck down my milkshake too fast? •Can I lose my contact lens inside my head forever? •Why does asparagus make my pee smell? •Why do old people grow hair on their ears? •Is the old adage “beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer . . .” really true? . . . then Why Do Men Have Nipples? is the book for you. Compiled by Billy Goldberg, an emergency medicine physician, and Mark Leyner, bestselling author and well-known satirist, Why Do Men Have Nipples? offers real factual and really funny answers to some of the big questions about the oddities of our bodies.