Notes of a Nervous Man [Hardcover]

James Lileks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1991

Dave Barry called him "a wonderfully funny writer." James Lileks, syndicated columnist and charter member of Club Dread and a Fellow of The Order of the Sweaty Palms, takes on the sacred and the profane, from airplanes, bras and taxes to God, death, and hangovers.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of columns by a former writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press , now with the Newhouse News Service in Washington, D.C., consists mainly of humor pieces, although a few are serious and a couple (about Halloween and autumn) border on the elegiac. The first section, "Domestic Life," deals with the multiple traumas of a novice home owner. "The Public World," offers observations on adult education, air fresheners, mayhem in the movies and audience members who comment on it to their companions. "Private Life" discusses incipient baldness and buying a moped. "Journalism" contains pieces on the Minnesota State Fair and, most memorably, New York City--not Lileks' favorite spot on earth by a long shot. The tone is amiable and civilized throughout.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Lileks won the American Society of Newspaper Editors' award for Non-Deadline Writing in 1988 while working for the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch . This collection of syndicated columns shows off his skill as a comic storyteller, despite frequent excesses of contrived premises and situations. Rich in hyperbole and metaphorical indulgence, Lileks occasionally struggles for effect. In a description of flooding his car's engine while attempting to pass a truck on the highway he writes, "The engine sank like a fat man stepping into wet cement. At that moment a car appeared ahead, grille winking in the sun like a jouster's lance." One can't help but imagine Joe Friday's voice narrating a scene from Dragnet . Recommended, nonetheless, for public libraries.
- Joe Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 228 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books; 1st edition (November 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671737015
• ISBN-13: 978-0671737016
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #557,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lileks is Lileks, December 23, 1999

By 

Ramon Kranzkuper (Gainesville, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Notes of a Nervous Man (Hardcover)

James Lileks has been compared to Dave Barry, and in many ways you might find the comparison apt because there is of course an overlap in attitude and "content". Of course "content" is not an issue in either of these great guys' books or columns. Both can write about absolutely abything and make it tear-wrenchingly funny. But that's about it for the comparison. Lileks will strike many as a more seriously funny writer, if you can imagine what that means. Dave Barry can keep you giggling throughout a piece, whereas Lileks is staid for several sentences - then makes an devastating, or devastatingly funny, observation or comparison that seems to come straight from heaven, and it hits straight through everything to, not just the funny bone, but to your very heart and soul! One reviewer for a newspaper said, "Lileks sparkles, he leaps out at you from the page." He was trying to convey the feeling I'm talking about, which is very difficult to do, and which you'll understand only after reading some of Lileks' stuff. There is a personal intensity about this writer that makes a deep impression on you, if humour can be said to make an impression. "Notes of a Nervous Man" is his best book, and a straightforward place to start if you haven't read James Lileks before.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't compare him with Dave Barry - Lileks is Lileks!, December 19, 1999

By 

Ramon Kranzkuper (Gainesville, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Notes of a Nervous Man (Hardcover)

James Lileks has been compared to Dave Barry, but I supposethat is only because of the fact that both are great humorists. As for style and content, is is obvious that there will be some common elements, because what people laugh at is predictable to an extent. The main difference is this: Lileks strikes you as a vastly more INTELLIGENT person, and his lines and observations are very, very INTELLIGENT. Dave may keep you laughing at a giggly tempo throughout, but Lileks... it's different. You're generally staid, and when he shoots off that climactic observation, it strikes you as something so manically funny that it knocks the wind out of you. You laugh as though you'll never laugh again in your life, and there is this urge to compare Lileks to God, to the Sublime, to ... That cannot be said of any other American writer. I would not go so far as to compare Lileks with Wodehouse... but if anyone had to have the title today of an aspiring Wodehouse, it has to be Lileks. There is a scintillating sublimity about him, something holy, something that makes one feel like praying... one feels closer to God after reading some of Lileks' greatest lines, even if such are only five in a whole book. That said, maybe someone wants to know what I'm talking about. The bottomline is this: either you'll find Lileks not very funny, maybe mildly so, maybe someone like Dave Barry but not so funny -- or you'll swear by everything I've said here! Notes of a Nervous Man is among his funniest, but no one can say which is THE funniest, because it's only those occassional zappers that strike you, and those are pretty evenly distributed over all his books so far. He even has a website - (hey hey hey, I'm not a PR agent for him!...