Customer Reviews

One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Journalist

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Paul Krassner is an American satirist whose observations have won him awards from as unlikely a contrasting set of resources as Playboy and the Feminist Party Media Workshop. His controversial satirical observations have won him acclaim and condemnation around the world, and he's been described by the FBI as a 'raving nut'. ONE HAND JERKING: REPORTS FROM AN INVESTIGATIVE SATIRIST offers up the best of his sometimes-indecent exposures, tackling subjects from international politics to social concerns with a deadly eye for irony and an occasional Lenny-Bruce-style shocker. Highly recommended for any tired of the usual boring social commentary.

I certainly like part of this book, but I am not going to tell you which part, and this book does not have an index, so it won't be easy to look up which part about Lenny Bruce I like, but "The Ballad of Lenny the Lawyer" listed in the Contents is not it. It took so long for Lenny Bruce to get a pardon from New York, where he was convicted of obscenity for a performance at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, that it must have been December 2003 before sufficient hypocrisy had built up so a New York governor could announce a pardon based on "the precious freedoms we are fighting for as we continue to wage the war on terrorism." (p. 111). Anyone who is familiar with Paul Krassner will not be surprised that Lenny Bruce shows up again 43 pages later in a section called "The War On Indecency." So much that I believe gets confirmed in a book like this that I won't describe it any further.

This book is a collection of Krassner's writings for <EM>High Times</EM>, the <EM>New York Press</EM>, and <EM>AVN Online</EM>, along with a few others. I've read a lot of Krassner's work, and there was a lot here that was quite familiar--many of the stories are ones he has told elsewhere. If you've already read his autobiography, <EM>Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut</EM>; his <EM>Murder at the Conspiracy Convention</EM> and <EM>Sex, Drugs, and the Twinkie Murders</EM>, there will only be a little that's new here.

The book is unfortunately poorly edited, with numerous uncorrected typos which should have been spotted even by automated spellchecking.