Extravaganza: A Joke Book

by Gordon Lish

Overview

“The creative act par excellence.”—Denis Donoghue

“Extravaganza is the eeriest comic novel of our generation.”—Cynthia Ozick

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781877727054
Publisher:	White Pine Press
Publication date:	01/01/1995
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

Editorial Reviews

``Wholly original in concept and often brilliant in execution, Extravaganza lives up to its title,'' asserted PW . A fictionalized version of the old vaudeville team Smith & Dale tells familiar, Yiddish theater-inflected burlesque routines. But early on the jokes begin to go wrong; characters spew anti-Semitic invective, stories become violent and bizarre. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This is a short book that will have a very short run. Its main characters, two octogenarian Yiddish comedians from the defunct burlesque circuit, trade jokes with little humor and even less originality. And these jokes are the book's sole substance. Smith and Dale may be trying to recapture the comedy of the old vaudevillians, but the sum of their efforts is less resuscitation then bitter autopsy. ``Smith and Dale decide in their minds to sit down and write a book. So could they do it? The answer is no, they couldn't do it. But neither could you, fuckface.'' Is this an authorial challenge? Whatever it is, Extravaganza will certainly disappoint those readers who saw promise in Lish's previous writing. All will agree with the narrator: ``It does not make one bit of difference to anybody to know what it is.''-- Paul E. Hutchinson, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park

Library Journal