This is a Book by Demetri Martin

Shout out to Ellen Hoover, who gifted me with a genre she knows I love – the form-shifting, point of view playing, short prose pieces you can enjoy in order, out of order, in one sitting or in twenty. The book travels through definitions, line drawings, full short stories and a variety of other forms I don’t know how to name.  It’s a little uneven, but mostly hilarious.

My favorite piece is “Socrates’ Publicist,” a three page romp through Hollywood and ancient Greek philosophy.  Martin imagines Athens overrun by the Hollywood types who feast on original talent, and turns Socrates into an entertainer ultimately persecuted by authorities for becoming overexposed before an audacious publicity stunt forces him to drink the hemlock.  It’s very funny, but also very smart, and also great satire.

A lot of the pieces are inappropriate for use in school, though I might dare to try some of them if I could swear a bunch of seniors to secrecy.  Alas, I don’t teach creative writing anymore. There is, however, one gem that I could use in Poetry Reading and Writing, a poem that concludes a piece called “Palindromes for Specific Occasions.” This particular poem is given a title longer than those given to poems of the T’ang dynasty, and it threw me for a loop at first.  The first two lines are, “Sexes.  Eh, the sexes./Never even.  Still, it’s DNA.”  Clearly, the first line is palindromic, and the second isn’t.  What’s up with that?  Well, skip to the end of the poem and you find that he has written the first and last lines as palindromes, but they merely frame the palindrome that is the entire poem, which is eighty lines long.  An eighty-line palindrome!  Are you effing kidding me?  Because the poem is mostly about boob and ass, given that it is set in a strip club, I’ll really not ever find an occasion to use it, but you have to admire the mind that can do such a thing.

I’m going to pass the book on to Coach Phill, who teaches creative writing at Harrison, and perhaps when I get it back, I’ll address it again on these very webpages.  Meanwhile, if you’re mature enough to handle really immature yet smart writing; if you liked Simon Rich’s Ant Farm, then you’ll definitely like This is a Book by Demetri Martin.  Gracias, Ellen.