Customer Reviews

The Dick.

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Kurt Vonnegut once described his longfics as "mosaics of jokes". That phrase is a perfect description of THE DICK. It doesn't contain a conventional main plot. It's just a bunch of cartoon gags strung together. It's not the slightest bit realistic. It is, however, a helluva lot funnier than STERN. I almost died when Bruce did the bit about the money-spitting moneylender.

My favorite bit would have been really nasty if it had been written in a realistic context. But because it was written in a cartoon context, it almost gave me a frigging myocardial infarction: "Using his height to full advantage, Gibney had ankle-grabbed second-story voyeurs by the dozen, leaned through transoms to break up many a fag-blackmailing. One day, flushed with success after a series of classic Aggravated Incest pinches, Gibney relaxed a little and told LePeters he came from a family of dicks, but that even though they all still lived together in the same house, somehow it was not as safe and crammed with law enforcement as you would think. Word had gotten around that the house was a pushover, and as a result, Gibney's mom and sister had both been mugged and raped, beaten and buggered with a higher frequency than any other women in the neighborhood. 'They've been screaming to high heaven to us guys to do something about it', said Gibney, 'but what happens is that when I hear Mom scream I assume Pop is taking care of it or one of the guys. Actually they're sacked out in the attic or guzzling beer nuts somewhere, assuming that I'm taking care of it. And all the while some spade is jamming a broomstick up poor Mom's cooze.' Gibney chuckled softly and shrugged his shoulders."

Friedman is a tough talent to pin down. He's a masterful stylist whose humor springs from the collision of the absurd with the mundane. Here, in "The Dick," our deeply unheroic hero Ken LePeters (nee Sussman) wanders desultorily through the life he's made for himself in an unsatisfying job with an unsatisfying wife in an unsatisfying house. Is redemption possible? Maybe, maybe not, but this book is laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end. I've read it many times and it ranks with my favorite Friedmans (along with his short stories, especially "Brazzaville Teenager"). It's true, some of this humor has dated, but not as much as you might think. Funny is funny, and "The Dick" is that.

This is Friedman's best. Unforgettable.

The main character's ironic distance and self-awareness without self-pity are brilliantly realized, and the ending gives perfect satisfaction.

The put-upon protagonist's self-redemption resembles that of WC Field's "dick" -- The Bank Dick. But Friedman has transcended both that story and his own black humor.