The most impressive thing about Fondling Your Muse, a book about how to write by one Mr. John Warner, is the subtitle: It includes the term "writerly aspirant." It also includes the word "infallible." One could be easily forgiven for thinking this John Warner character might be able to teach a wannabe writer a thing or two about making better squiggly lines on a piece of paper with a pen. It also makes the claim that he is a published author, and since it's his book about how to write in your hands, there's really no way to dispute that. but when you read up about his credentials on the back of the book, you'll see Warner's credentials as an author are a wee bit limited: My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook by George W. Bush is the only other book he's ever written, and he was a co-author on it. His work has appeared in several publications, plus he edited a humor anthology from McSweeney's called Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans. 

Fondling Your Muse wouldn't be a book if it didn't include blurbs from prominent authors, right? Well, the people blurbed on the back and inside the front cover are all used more than once, and they only give quotes meant to be funny. Then there is a page of praise which includes blurbs from Tom Clancy, Maya Angelou, Anne Lamott, and Toni Morrison. Clancy: "Not really helpful at all." Hm. All four have negative quotes plus stars next to their names. The stars apparently mean those four authors refused to actually give blurbs, and so they had to make up statements based on what those authors would have said. So does Warner really have such a low opinion of his work? Really, what was the point of including this?

Well, as regular readers know, blurbs are merely opinions and not indicative of just what the book is about. Fondling Your Muse is a simple book about how to write better fiction. Or at least that's what it claims to be about. Truthfully, I'm not sure Fondling Your Muse really belongs outside the humor section of your local Barnes and Noble. There is some very good advice about how to write better in this book. But it's so buried into the humor that it takes a professional linguist to separate the humor from the advice. I can understand the importance of being funny in advice books, but Warner goes too far over the top. The result is a book which seems a little bit confused about its purpose. Does Fondling Your Muse want to make us laugh or give us advice?

Fondling Your Muse has a punchline for nearly every paragraph, section, page, and whatever else. It has punchlines at the beginning of every section, at the end of every section, in the examples of good writing that Warner gives us, and in the interludes meant to be motivational. Are you serious, John Warner? The punchlines really weaken the whole book because Warner just doesn't know when to lay off. Every time he begins giving a little bit of advice which you think you might be able to use, Warner goes for the funny bone again. At some points, you can't even tell if Warner is trying to be serious or not. There are sections which deal with creating blurbs for other authors' books and product placement in your own work. Neither of them are very helpful in teaching you how to create or enhance your fiction. 

Throughout Fondling Your Muse, Warner assumes either the idea that you are a snobby, stubborn artiste writer who writes crap about the soul of false depth so he can get laid or that you are a gold digger who will sell out all your ideas as a writer just to make a quick buck. This is just plain annoying. He will take some forms of known advice and just make fun of it, or deny it altogether while giving you a reason which is buried in an avalanche of punchlines and jokes. Potentially helpful sections, like how to write a letter to a publisher, and rendered worthless because of Warner's penchant for going at the funny bone. Serious sections which steer you toward otherwise great advice are ruined by silliness.

I can't defame Fondling Your Muse completely, however. If - and I realize this is a pretty big "if" - you manage to navigate your way around Warner's plethora of punchlines and over-the-top explanation jokes, there is some powerful advice in here if you're looking hard enough. Several of the general ideas Warner gives you are very helpful. The book is actually able to explain how to make a good writer into a better writer and sometimes it is even able to clarify the difference. The explanation of how to write a letter to a publisher is mostly excellent, though after the first few examples Warner starts going over the top again. Once you're able to figure out where Warner is being funny and where he's being serious, Fondling Your Muse really is helpful.

Unfortunately, it just isn't helpful enough. Warner goes over the top with his humor so much that you do have to wonder what his intentions with Fondling Your Muse really are. There is a little bit of great advice in this book, but it gets to be a pain seeing Warner keep leading you on only to cop you out with another silly joke. The humor is so prevalent that there's not much else to write about reviewing it. I really wanted to like Fondling Your Muse, because humor is something that is useful in helping you better understand a subject when you're having trouble. But Fondling Your Muse is all manic humor, all the time. And so I have to agree with the fake Tom Clancy quote Warner blurbs in the beginning: Not really helpful at all.

Recommended: Yes