2007-Eleven: And Other American Comedies [Hardcover]

Frank Cammuso (Author), Hart Seely (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 16, 2000

From the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Slate stagger Frank Cammuso and Hart Seely, restoring a cheerful sanity to our deranged lives and times.

Every now and then, funny writing somehow manages to retain full possession of literary quality. Please see Twain, Heller, Benchley, Parker, Frazier, Geng. And now please see Cammuso and Seely. If you're not some famous person in our hyped, commodified, three-screen (movie, TV, computer), celeb-ridden society, count your blessings. Because if you are, Cammuso and Seely will probably get you sooner or later. They got Martha Stewart--they have her planning gracious plans for her version of the Son of God's final repast: "Jesus has indicated--against my better wishes--that He intends to gird Himself with a towel and wash everybody's feet. So be it. But beforehand, I'll run his terry cloth for five minutes in the dryer, making it toasty and soft." They (fondly) postu-late how Phil Rizzuto might have written a characteristically fractionated version of "Casey at the Bat": "'Fraud!' cried the maddened thousands, and the echo murmured 'Fraud.' / Hey, Murcer! Look! Bea Arthur! Didn't she play Maude?" The Flintstones become the Clintstones, Quentin Tarantino directs The Three Little Pigs, and Dr. Seuss collaborates poetically with Rod Serling.

Even when the targets of these pieces are of the moment, Cammuso and Seely's humor will endure. What's more evanescent than pop-music stardom? Sex, maybe, but not much else. But who won't laugh, even years from now, as Cammuso and Seely--in "Six Degrees of Chuck Berry"--introduce some of the record industry's often interchangeable personages to each other: "Tanya, Enya. Enya, Shania. Shania, Mariah. Mariah, Wynonna. Wynonna, Fiona . . . " Nobody.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reporter Seely and editorial cartoonist Cammuso (both of whom work for the Syracuse Post-Standard) regularly team up to bring their unusual brand of literary humor to the airwaves of NPR and the pages of the New York Times. This slim volume collects 29 of their lampoons, most of which involve a far-fetched premise--radio therapist Dr. Laura Dolittle talking to animals, James Bond confronting a sexual harassment suit, a clothing catalogue penned by David Mamet. In one hilarious essay, the pair imagines Martha Stewart planning the Last Supper: "Whether it's a plague of locusts or a hollandaise that has curdled, you can always expect some last-minute crisis." In another, they cleverly invent a collaboration between The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling and Dr. Seuss, a poem called "And to Think That They Landed on Mulberry Street." (Try reading it aloud.) Their parody of The X-Files (the "Xmas Files")--in which Mulder and Scully investigate the existence of Santa Claus--has already become a cult classic. (X-Files fans have pirated, e-mailed and posted it online, often without giving proper credit to Cammuso and Seely). Perhaps, then, the only flaw in this entertaining collection is in its title: whereas these same X-Files fans would have waited in line for a book titled The Xmas Files, nobody's likely to know what to do with the idea of a 2007-Eleven.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Cammuso and Seely are veteran humorists who have written for Spy, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and other publications. Given these credentials, one may expect their first book, which gathers almost 30 short spoofs, to have a more sophisticated bite. In "The Xmas Files," seriously confused agents Mulder and Scully investigate mysterious nocturnal visits by a powerful otherworldly being. In "Doctor Dosomething," Dr. Laura Doolittle offers tough-talking advice to animals; to a mother goldfish who has eaten her babies, the doctor scolds, "Guppie, listen to me: This is bad. I don't care if you couldn't afford decent child care. For a mom, you are an absolute disgrace." Cammuso and Seely's targets are taken from American pop culture, so this slim volume may not have a very long shelf life--but its safe, silly brand of humor will appeal to a wide audience and can serve as an introduction to spoof and satire. James Klise
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Villard; 1st edition (May 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375504125
• ISBN-13: 978-0375504129
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,994,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 2007 Eleven and Other Amer. Stories, May 16, 2000

By 

Nancy Iacovelli - See all my reviews

This review is from: 2007-Eleven: And Other American Comedies (Hardcover)

If you want a good laugh, without the smut of some comic writer's, you should buy this book. The various short stories are to the point and extremely well written. You will especially love Martha Stewart's plan for the Last Supper. It was a scream!

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Glengarry Glen Plaid" redeems it completely, July 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: 2007-Eleven: And Other American Comedies (Hardcover)

The piece "Glengarry Glen Plaid" is excerpts from the "Land Ho!" catalog as if written by David Mamet. The tone is absolutely perfect, possibly my favorite short piece of writing. The rest of the book is very hit and miss, unfortunately, although I suspect some of the problem is that the rest of it hasn't aged well.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Anything but Comedy, July 13, 2001

By 

Reja (Blue Planet) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 2007-Eleven: And Other American Comedies (Hardcover)

This book is obscenely unfunny. Unfunny of the magnitude only people who get paid professionally could attain. Given, as Amazon had put it, these two fellows' credentials, one would have assumed at least a ModernHumorist.com (another unfunny collection) level of unfunniness. But this beats MH to a bloody pulp. The humour isn't even puerile--at least that would've given it some bit--as it is now, it sits somewhere between the precociousness of Calvin Trillin's cloying self-deprecation and a toilet. It's, well, completely not funny--it couldn't have taken the authors more than a couple of hours and a series of first drafts to come up with this material. And the fact that the publisher deemed this to be market-ready is an insult to the general public's intelligence. For humour--try the Anthology that was just released about a year ago--Mirth of a Nation. In it, you will find a great many authors--Sandra Tsing Loh, David Sedaris, Josh Kornbluth, David Rakoff, and others who actually generate humour. The only thing funny about this book is the sad fact that I purchased it.