A cynic in the world never runs out of material, and Auslander doesn’t always hone or organize it well. But the persistent blackness of the book’s black comedy makes the tiny shafts of light in the latter chapters shine that much brighter.
A dark, daffy chronicle of failure and disappointment ... Auslander grasps one of the first rules of comedy: the callback or internal allusion. He has enough good ones that the banal ones... land with a duller thud. Nonetheless, he commits — another rule of comedy — and lovers of this tradition will submit.
Sad-but-funny ... Auslander writes like a man who uses comedy not as a weapon, but as the only language he knows, and I’m jealous of anyone who hasn’t discovered him yet because, oh, the joys that await you ... The book ends with something that looks like contentment, but I’m optimistic that Auslander will still find sufficient misery to keep his readers laughing.
[Auslander] is juvenile, sarcastic, outrageous and not only one of the funniest but one of the most profoundly moral writers I know ... The voice, the attitude and the perspective are so strong that it does not matter that Auslander basically alights on anything and turns it to gristly grist ... What separates this from impotent seething is glimpses of unexpected kindness and empathy. Sudden laughter breaks like an epiphany.
