2007-Eleven: and Other American Comedies

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From the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Slate stagger Frank Cammuso and Hart Seely, restoring a cheerful sanity to our deranged lives and times.

Every now and then, funny writing somehow manages to retain full possession of literary quality. Please see Twain, Heller, Benchley, Parker, Frazier, Geng. And now please see Cammuso and Seely. If you're not some famous person in our hyped, commodified, three-screen , celeb-ridden society, count your blessings. Because if you are, Cammuso and Seely will probably get you sooner or later. They got Martha Stewart--they have her planning gracious plans for her version of the Son of God's final repast: "Jesus has indicated--against my better wishes--that He intends to gird Himself with a towel and wash everybody's feet. So be it. But beforehand, I'll run his terry cloth for five minutes in the dryer, making it toasty and soft." They postu-late how Phil Rizzuto might have written a characteristically fractionated version of "Casey at the Bat": "'Fraud!' cried the maddened thousands, and the echo murmured 'Fraud.' / Hey, Murcer! Look! Bea Arthur! Didn't she play Maude?" The Flintstones become the Clintstones, Quentin Tarantino directs The Three Little Pigs, and Dr. Seuss collaborates poetically with Rod Serling.

Even when the targets of these pieces are of the moment, Cammuso and Seely's humor will endure. What's more evanescent than pop-music stardom? Sex, maybe, but not much else. But who won't laugh, even years from now, as Cammuso and Seely--in "Six Degrees of Chuck Berry"--introduce some of the record industry's often interchangeable personages to each other: "Tanya, Enya. Enya, Shania. Shania, Mariah. Mariah, Wynonna. Wynonna, Fiona . . . " Nobody.

From the Hardcover edition.