wordwalker's Full Review: Ian Frazier - Coyote V. Acme
"Mr. Wile E. Coyote, a resident of Arizona and contiguous states, does hereby bring suit against the Acme Company, manufacturer and retail distributor of assorted merchandise ... for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company ... relating to product liability."
It's about time, isn't it?!
Side-splittingly, torso-foldingly, ear-danglingly funny: the Opening Statement for the Plaintiff in this crucial consumer lawsuit will have you in stitches. Every dog has its day -- and so, finally, does the world's least-respected coyote, as his attorney seeks "to reaffirm the right of the individual predator to equal protection under the law."
We learn of Mr. Coyote's unfortunate use of the Acme Rocket Sled, in which his purchase "accelerated with such sudden and precipitate force as to stretch Mr. Coyote's forelimbs to a length of fifty feet ... Shortly thereafter, the unchecked progress of the Rocket Sled brought it and Mr. Coyote into collision with the side of a mesa." We read of his mishap with the Acme Rocket Skates, in which he "collided with a roadside billboard so violently as to leave a hole in the shape of his full silhouette." We are even privy to the pathetic medical details resulting from his encounter with the Acme Bomb, including "(f)ull or partial combustion of whiskers, producing kinking, frazzling, and ashy disintegration."
I am overcome by emotion; I can't go on!
(And I swear I left the best parts out!)
COYOTE V. ACME is a collection of twenty-two, er, essays? flights of fancy? -- lunatic pieces by Ian Frazier. The man is mad.
"From the Bank with Your Money on Its Mind" is a letter issued by First Tri-State Bank and Trust concerning its new Money Mover system, which moves money from the accounts of people it belongs to, plus a Statement of Account in which the depositor's apparently vanished funds are carefully explained according to various letter codes, with "HT,PF" standing for "Head Teller, Pocket Funds", "O!S" signifying "Ooops! Sorry" and so on.
"The Afternoon of June 8, 1991" is a commencement speech by a satanist college president, in which microphone feedback features the names of the entire lowerarchy of demons.
"Have You Ever" is an insurance questionnaire issued to soap opera characters. ("Did you ever emerge from a coma as Tab Hunter?")
"Linton's Whatnots" is a peculiarly Victorian take on WUTHERING HEIGHTS.
Frazier's specialty is to take the figurative as the literal, and run with it. "Where the Bodies Are Buried", "Brandy by Firelight" and "Stalin's Chuckle" are based upon unfortunate quotations taken literally. He has a considerable talent for synthesizing and disgorging cliches: "The Last Segment" puts paid to every cult TV show, "Ode to Billy Joe" and Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey" into the bargain. And he can reproduce spiels with the best of them, as shown in "Dial W-H-Y W-O-R-K" -- the "No-Show Jobs Hotline"!
Not everything in the book is for everybody. "Boswell's Life of Don Johnson" will seem inconclusive to some. "Webbing" and "Child of War" would mean little to those who never read bad fiction. "Thanks for the Memory" may offend Bob Hope fans who are extraordinarily patient with or fond of golf, and may offend Bob Hope fans anyway. "Your Face or Mine" recalls a more innocent New York, in which belligerence was said to be the standard attitude; fortunately it is actually somewhat inspiring!
What the world needs now is laughs, sweet laughs. COYOTE V. ACME is an exceedingly precise language-user's view of the misuses of English we so often unthinkingly allow to go past us, a glimpse of television worlds as they would be if the money in them were real, and a guaranteed source of "off-key accordionlike wheezing" guffaws in its classic and inspired title piece. If laughter is the best medicine, Frazier is a pill!
~~ I first encountered "Coyote v. Acme" in THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR, FOURTH ANNUAL COLLECTION, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, which may give you some idea of the scope of their excellent anthology series. The piece originally appeared in The New Yorker.
~~ All cliches and folksy expressions appearing in this absolutely -sodden, -ridden review are intentional. I hope.
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