Customer Reviews

Me: by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Every now and then, a writer discovers the perfect subject for his talents. That's the case with this book. I think Keillor must have written this book about as fast as his fingers could fly over the keyboard, because the nature of the subject matter allowed him--no, really encouraged him--to just throw caution to the winds and charge at his subject with gleeful energy. Keillor in the past has had trouble finding the right sort of persona to voice his sometimes acerbic observations on the Midwestern character. No such problem here. Like the real Jesse Ventura, Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente is a self-invented man. Like Ventura, Jimmy is a cartoon. He is much too large to be a real human being. His voice is not human. His behavior is cartoonish, over-the-top and extreme. He inhabits a world full of cartoon characters (the other professional wrestlers), all of whom stand for strange and spooky little corners of the human imagination. The "sport" of wrestling is a cartoon of good and evil, misdeeds and retribution. Jimmy Valente's war, Vietnam, was a cartoon version of an ordinary war.

In other words, everything about Jimmy Valente is bigger than life, and that gives Keillor full license to let his imagination run riot. He never had to worry about being excessively colorful or bizarre, because his subject is so cartoonish that "anything goes."

The result is a laugh riot, and clearly Keillor has no nasty agenda with respect to the extremely odd but oddly likable man who currently is his governor. One of the fun little jokes Keillor has is his inclusion of dialogue between Jimmy and his ghost-writer, Garrison Keillor. In those exchanges, Jimmy usually puts down his amanuensis with trenchant humor and a clear sense of who he is.

I have not enjoyed everything Garrison Keillor has written, although I've enjoyed most of it. This book is just a treat. Read it when you've got someone around so you can can read to them some of the more outrageous lines.

Garrison Keillor's is a master of comparrison. He creates excellent word pictures with hyperboles and ellaborate similes and metaphors. For me, Garrison's writing style is a model. As for the content of the book, Garrison creatively and colorfully portrays the Governor without overly criticizing the Governor.

This is nowhere close to the quality of "Lake Wobegon Days" but worth a read, nevertheless. While it is very witty and clever in many places, at other times it really drags and often becomes so silly as to be unbelievable even as the fantasized life of Jimmy "Big Boy" Valente. I think Mr. Keillor rushed this one to the publisher when it could have used some polish and revision.

I about fell off my exercise machine laughing while reading this book. Since the rest of the media seems unable to accurately profile to substance of Jesse Ventura, this book fills the void in the form of fiction.

Readers who try to judge this book with a partisan mindset will miss the point of the book entirely, and so would do well to not buy it. Others will find it a hoot, because what Keillor is satirizing is not so much one individual (as colorful as he may be) as the American political process, which has become the world's best example of performance art.

For my money, this book was worth it just for Jimmy Valente's reference to the current Supreme Court Justice as "Bill ('The Robe') Rehnquist."

I've always thought that Garrison Keillor was a bit too folksy for me, but I have a new appreciation of his wit and humor. This book is a quick read and makes a great weekend escape. No, it is not a literary masterpeice for all time, but it's not supposed to be. It's merely a satire on one of the popular personalities of the day. I often laughed out loud. Don't bother reading this book if you take politics or Minnesota too seriously or if you simply have no sense of humor.

This is our favorite tape--wish it was on CD! We first listened to it on a road trip and nearly drove off the road laughing. A real HOOT!

This is a LOT of fun. An obvious satire on Jesse Ventura--from wrestler to movie actor ("Predator" was about it, basically) to governor of Minnesota--"Me" has a ball spoofing big tough muscleheads who, of course, always join the military and always in a special forces type unit (We learned to pee straight up), and always musclehead their way to the top, or a reasonable facsimile therof (at least for them).

Keillor is whip-smart in putting this together; his own character, as such, is the guy who's ghost-writing the book for Big Boy Jimmy Valente, who cautions the "Ghost" not to use fancy words like "pellucid", so of course in the very next paragraph of the actual narrative itself that's exactly what the "Ghost" does. There's a vast amount of chuckling and snickering to be had in reading this; it's enough fun to keep your mind off the tax stimulus check you either never got or else got much less of than you thought you would.

See Big Boy claw his way up from teenage weakling to a macho guy who can press 300 pounds. (Heck, if I had THAT much laundry, I'd send it all out to the dry cleaner for pressing). See Big Boy go from unsung war hero to political hotshot in a few easy, uh, steps. See yourself snorting with derisive glee as you move your way through these hilarious pages. And you will, believe me.

Very nifty, very funny, and worth the 3 bucks I paid for it at my local used book store. A real hoot.

Me:By Jimmy Valente is one a Keillor's funniest books to date. He takes an obvious non-fictional character and makes him into this hilarious haughty person that still can warm the reader's heart. I loved it and hope you read it soon.

I've just about finished reading this book, which I picked up in London while traveling a few weeks ago. I was looking for something light to carry and easy to read, and this book was exactly what I needed.

I decided to write a review because it looks like some of the other reviewers lacked a sense of humor in the reviews they provided. Some of us see Jesse Ventura's successful election to the Minnesota Govenorship as a funny example of US politics. Garrison simply makes an already funny event even better.