Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Paul Dinello (Author), Stephen Colbert (Author), Todd Oldham (Photographer) "My resume was the foot in the door that the rest of my body so desperately needed..." (more)
Key Phrases: used auto parts, Fleet Hollinger, Bulkwaller Dam, Hoyt Gein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Wigfield is in peril. The Bulkwaller Dam, which towers over the tiny town, is scheduled to be destroyed which would in turn wipe out Wigfield. Journalist Russell Hokes travels there to profile the brave and honest citizens who are struggling to save their community. Well, sort of. Actually, Wigfield is not so much a town as a series of ramshackle strip clubs and used-auto-parts stores, lacking any kind of civic infrastructure whatsoever. And its people are not so much "brave and honest" as "brutal," "homicidal," and "lacking any redeeming virtue whatsoever." Similarly, to call Hokes, who narrates his own struggles to gather accumulate 50,000 words, a "journalist" is at best an exaggeration and at worst an abomination against the institution of journalism itself.

The world of Wigfield, as concocted by the brilliant Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, and Amy Sedaris (creators of the Comedy Central series Strangers with Candy), is somewhat reminiscent of the slice-of-life small-town humor of Christopher Guest's Waiting for Guffman. But instead of putting on a musical, as the Guffman folks did, the people of Wigfield busy themselves trying to acquire government handouts and stabbing each other to death. When the government rebuffs their efforts, based on the fact that they're not technically a town, they come up with a plan to get paid anyway. Wigfield's residents (as played by Colbert, Dinello, and Sedaris) are portrayed in a series of compellingly grotesque portraits by renowned designer and photographer Todd Oldham. The humor of the book--much like the town's mentality--is dense, as nearly every sentence contains one or several grimly hilarious references. Fans of feel-good whimsy are advised to navigate toward lighter fare but social pariahs, disgraced journalists, brooding malcontented sociopaths, and anyone who enjoys dark, twisted, and profoundly funny writing will find a home in Wigfield. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly

The authors are well-known comedians. The photographer is a famous designer. The result is unlike anything the genre of humorous fiction has seen before. The book tells, sort of, the story of Wigfield, a small town that realizes it's in danger when the government wants to destroy a local dam in order to protect the local salmon population. Faced with imminent flood, the town solicits Russell Hokes, a self-centered hack journalist, who hopes to capture the undying spirit of the all-American small town. Wigfield, alas, is very far from living up to the bucolic image it intends to foster, and as the dam draws nearer to destruction, so does Wigfield's self-created myth. The plot unfolds as a series of interviews Hokes conducts with local residents, accompanied by droll, surreal photographs by Oldham. In the end, Hokes succeeds in his goal, which is, as he notes in his attached r‚sum‚, to "write a book, other than the ones that I have already written, so that I may use my words like a sword of swift justice in service of the truth, but in an easy-to-read, highly marketable way." He does so, however, not by creating a Capraesque tribute to smalltown America, but by unwittingly exposing the bumbling foolery beneath its surface. The book is one of those rare works of satire that combine creative form, uproariously funny text and a painfully sharp underpinning of social criticism.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1 edition (May 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786868120
• ISBN-13: 978-0786868124
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #551,776 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the funniest audiobooks I've heard, July 7, 2004

By	Matthew Henry (ANN ARBOR, MI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Wigfield (Audio CD)

If you like Stephen Colbert's work on the Daily Show and Harvey Birdman, you'll love this audiobook. He does most of the narration. The writing is clever and the voices are great. This is one of the funniest audiobooks I've ever heard, and I've heard all of the David Sedaris books. I rent a fair number of audiobooks, and this is the first one that I wanted to purchase after I heard it.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laughing all the way to Bismarck, December 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Wigfield (Audio CD)

I bought the audio CD of this book to have something to pass the time on a 4-day solo moving adventure. I couldn't have asked for a better book to listen to while I drove through Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois! The wit and comedic timing is superb, and the book, while wonderfully written, couldn't have been read by a better team. They do innumerable voices for their characters and just the plain quick wit of the story caused me to laugh all the way down I-90.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Catch this metaphorical tiger by the tail and hold on, November 29, 2004

By	R. Treynor (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Wigfield (Audio CD)

An insane story, made up mainly of character sketches. The audio version is superior to the written format primarily due to the superior performances by the authors.
You do miss out in seeing photos of Stephen Colbert in drag, however, so you may want to skim through the hardcover version the next time you're at the book store.
If you're a fan of Tom Bodet or Garrison Keillor, you'll enjoy this spoof on their type of storytelling.