This is an Amazon review of the book Joe Queenan wrote:
When I first read Joe Queenan, I thought he was about the funniest writer on the planet. He is still very funny and very talented, but his shtick can get just a bit old, and fast.
This book started as an article, and if you can, I would track that article down and save yourself the money and the time it takes to read this very slim yet somehow plodding hatchet job on anything popular for Middle America.
This subject was stinging and hilarious as an article, running the perfect length and not overstaying its venomous welcome.
But as the book drags on, Queenan is so relentless with his targets that the reader feels a backlash coming. Sometimes it seems like the mere mention of "Tony Orlando" or "Phil Collins" is supposed to be enough to make you laugh and understand how disgruntled Queenan is. And simply the word "suck" is used and used again to describe everything Queenan doesn't like. Okay, Joe, we get it. It's a bit tired to read page after page of insulting "middle American huckleberries", etc. I guess if people are not as fortunate, intelligent, or rich as Queenan, they're more or less despicable cretins to be mocked by the admitted "cultural effete".
Another problem is that many of Queenan's references are either already outdated or beyond obvious. The entertainment industry does the job for him when cheap targets like Steve Guttenberg or Joe Piscopo are chewed up and spit out by the industry itself once it has no use for them. The vast majority of figures like this really do wind up just going away, and why? Because the audiences--the middle Americans Queenan loves ripping to make himself sound smarter--disgard their product. Queenan's biggest problem is with crap that poses as art, and he even admits that certain cheese is not so bad, as long as it's aware that it's cheese (as he discovers that Manilow is a good entertainer, if a cheeseball). However, I did find it a bit nauseating when our intrepid author, who has immersed himself in popular culture and become addicted, needs to take a trip to France to cleanse himself and rediscover real beauty and culture. Can you say vomit?
Another on of Clinton's winged monkeys who's jealous that no one buys his books...
Queenan Country : A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country (Hardcover)
by Joe Queenan
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #80,840 in Books
Balsamic Dreams : A Short But Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation (Paperback)
by Joe Queenan
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #189,752 in Books
Red Lobster, White Trash, & the Blue Lagoon : Joe Queenan's America (Paperback)
by Joe Queenan
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #287,235 in Books