Customer Reviews

The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure

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If you like well-written, hysterical short stories, Jack Pendarvis's "The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure" is for you, and likely will raise your bar.

The wit is dry and the twists twisty, for sure, but it's tough to piegeonhole the writing, much like a unique and terrific ice cream flavor, which is to say that Pendarvis is an original. The collection is the short story equivalent of the smartest episode of "Saturday Night Live" you've ever seen.

My favorite was "The Pipe," a thirty-or-so-page story of the men guarding the breathing apparatus of a radio personality buried alive for a month as a publicity stunt. I also liked the much briefer mock-publisher's catalogue of new offerings where the editor shares a little too much of his feelings.

I look forward to more or the same from Mr. Pendarvis, or more at all.

Jack Pendarvis has the kind of wit that ambushes you - and then bludgeons you until you can no longer suppress the laughter. This collection of nine stories and a novella mocks bad writing and moronic thought through a complete submersion in each, with protagonists believing in absurd premises (like the dead-beat husband who imagines himself as a famous historian and the unemployed drinking buddies who want to be writers without doing the work.) The subtitle - "Curious stories" - only begins to describe these off-the-wall forays into the hilarity of self-importance.

One of the most developed stories in the collection is "The Pipe" about a DJ buried alive in the desert as a publicity stunt, with a security guard and a paramedic watching over the pipe for signs of distress. The paramedic is more interested in smoking pot and fooling around with women, but the security guard takes his job seriously - to the point of obsession. The story has hints of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and "Waiting for Godot."

The funniest piece is the collection is the title novella, which satirizes amateur writing and unrealistic ambitions. The narrator is the self-described laziest man in South Preston who decides to be a historian: "In fabled times of days of yore, only the 'landed gentry' had time to write and contemplate. In today's modern age, it is the unemployed and the upset who enjoy such luxuries." As he researches the history of probably the blandest place in America, he decides instead to track down a treasure. Peppered with exclamation marks, elaborate dialogue tags, rhetorical questions, clichés, unnecessary adverbs, stilted phrases, and redundancy (see the title), this has to be the funniest send-up of bad writing I've read. Somehow, Pendarvis manages to keep the story moving through ninety pages of (intentionally) dreadful writing.

Many of these stories, including the novella, go on for too long. As a result, these stories, although a hoot to read, often lag in the middle or near the end. Pendarvis's humor, though, is well worth the lapses.

One word of warning: Don't read this collection in a public place unless you want people to stare. When Pendarvis sneaks up on you with one of his offbeat lines, you won't be able to stop yourself from laughing. -- Debbie Lee Wesselmann

I laughed so hard when I read this book, my daughter asked me, "Daddy, what's wrong?"

It's very funny. I think Mr. Pendarvis is out of control in the way Mark Twain was out of control, or Donald Barthelme, or Buster Keaton. Or maybe it's the opposite: they stuck to the rules no matter how absurd. Anyway, I put these four in a class together, and I loved this book.

"The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure" is a collection of "curious stories" by Jack Pendarvis. Some of the offbeat stories just left me scratching my head. But plenty of silly moments had me laughing out loud.

In the funny and memorable "The Pipe," a disc jockey is buried under a field for 46 days as a promotional stunt, and two guys must guard the air pipe that leads from his confined space up to the fresh air. How they react - to their mission, to the unseen disc jockey, and to each other - makes hilarious reading.

I particularly enjoyed the very short "Our Spring Catalog." A publicist putting together a publishing company's catalog starts with the usual staid descriptions of the books, and little by little starts revealing her own thoughts. It's hysterical!
And then there's the 90-page story, "The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure." Oh, my. This is truly bizarre. It comes packaged as a local history "written" by a character named Willie Dobbs, who writes so badly, it's funny. Images don't quite fit, such as "the marvelous stench of boiling hot black coffee which filled the very nostrils of the night." Elements are out of order, politically incorrect comments are made in a politically correct way - "This was at a time when our founding fathers thought nothing of `hitting the town' in face powder, silk stockings, an elaborate `codpiece' and a nice wig. And probably lipstick for all I know." The "author" plays with words, but doesn't use nearly enough punctuation. And oh, how he loves his adverbs: "There he is! I greeted friendlily." "That's not necessary she ululated lyrically."

Oh, that's right, the characters are looking for a treasure, but "Sometimes the treasure we are seeking is not the one we find!" Pendarvis populates his stories with lots of colorful characters, and I think they're all people we've ridden the bus with. Even if you wouldn't want to go home with them, they're fun to watch.

Jack Pendarvis truly grasps the pathetic human condition with an acuity that makes you both pity and abhor his characters all at the same time. Not only did I laugh out loud reading every story, but the 2nd and 3rd time reading them as well. Actually, just thinking about the stories makes me laugh out loud.

This one comes at you from way out in left field. Heck, from out of the ballpark. This is a collection of short stories that often seem to be written by the village high school dropout ... except it's a deliberate choice in writing style and devastatingly funny at times. As it says in one of pieces, a fake review of a fake bodice-ripper, "One sentence made me vomit with excitement." Pendarvis goes places no normal writer would go. A bit of an acquired taste, maybe, but worth it.

What a funny book! Pendarvis' characters are so real they are almost uncomfortable to read! Just like watching someone do something you KNOW is terribly stupid: You want to warn them, you want to look away but yet you keep on watching to see what will happen next.

Very few books make me laugh out loud, but this one did. And unlike the Amazon editorial, I enjoyed "My High, Squeaky Voice". Literary genius? No. But how often do you come across an opening paragraph that reads "People love my high, squeaky voice. What's not to love? It's high and it's squeaky. And it is mine. I love the way God made me."

No pretention here! Just a great belly-laugh of a book!

The writing made me recall a choir director's comments: Purposely singing off key is very difficult, he said, especailly when it's sustained for some length of time. It takes great skill.
A parody on writing does so as well, and this author is a champ. He writes so badly so superbly, it's hilarious; I couldn't stop reading or laughing.
This book should be sold at every writer's workshop and be required reading for the MFA.

I love this book. Pat Walsh let me read the manuscript years ago and I just fell out of my chair. Our Spring Catalogue and About the Contributors are just classic stuff. If you're a writer or a writer wannabe, get this book. If your writing sounds like anything described in these two chapters, please consider putting yourself out of our misery. Pendarvis is a genius.

I enjoyed this book. There are a couple of little pieces in it that I didn't like too much, but I went ahead and gave it a five-star rating anyway because of how much I liked the rest. I mean, it's funny stuff. I will watch Jack Pendarvis very closely and read anything else he puts out.