Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #390828 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-28
• Released on: 1997-10-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 269 pages

From Amazon.com
A popular columnist for the Washington Post and commentator for ESPN's The Sports Reporters, Kornhesier continues to chew on the big issues that he tackled in Pumping Irony. His monologue-like columns enjoy, to say the least, a good rant. He opines outrageously, for example, on the oxymoronic logic of up-to-the-minute medical "breakthroughs." A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that doctors who have one or two daily drinks are less likely to suffer heart attacks. "Should we," asks Kornheiser, "be concerned that the study was conducted on doctors?"

From the momentous details of Amerika-the-Commercial ("I have the new Michael Jordan Cologne in my office... a sample card that I picked up at Foot Locker.... I sniffed the card, found the odor rather perky, left it on my desk, and thought nothing more about it until my friend Nancy walked in the office and asked me if I'd had the carpet sprayed for scarab-beetle infestation.") to the mock sublime (his 13-year-old daughter going off to summer camp), this irrepressible humorist will give you the stamina to consider the absurdities of angst-ridden modern life.

From Library Journal
Readers looking for something to cheer up their passage through this vale of tears should find it in this collection of humorous columns written for the Washington Post during the 1990s. The qualities that make Kornheiser (Pumping Irony, LJ 10/15/95) a pleasure to read aren't especially easy to define. His methods are by no means unfamiliar, having been used by intelligent humorists since the earliest days of steam. Like his predecessors and contemporaries, he squeezes laughs out of everyday events and situations and has a sharp eye for people's more particular foibles. Selection there is none?any subject will do: baldness, warning signs of fogeyism, visiting his dad, places you can go to smoke a cigar, Hugh Grant, Dennis Rodman. If it is necessary to distinguish Kornheiser from other humorists, one might say that he has satisfactorily mastered the art of pretending not to be trying to be funny; when readers catch authors laughing at their own jokes, their attention will surely flag. These light pieces are the right character and dimensions for a short train journey and don't require a degree of cloistral concentration. For both public and academic libraries.?A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Radio performer, sportswriter, and columnist for the Washington Post, Kornheiser (The Baby Chase, 1983) offers his off- the-cuff takes on events (more or less recent, but mostly less) on the boulevards of modern society and in the purlieus of the District of Columbia. His natural targets: the hype attendant on the famous, the habits of the wealthy, and domestic life in general. Along with a couple of nice pieces about his relatives, the collection of columns presents the standard boomer stuff of current syndicated humorists. With some wit he does riffs on cigars and cars, clothes and kids. He doesn't neglect his gender studies or forget the nostalgia typical of guys who fondly remember their lost hair and view their burgeoning wattles with alarm. It's frequently done with hoary gags that end with punch lines like ``We need the eggs!'' and one-liners in a rhythm perfected long ago by Prof. Henny Youngman. (Rim shots--bada-bing, bada-boom--are articulated to maintain the proper pace). The material, to be candid, isn't timeless. There is snappy comment about Hugh Grant and Tonya Harding and allusions to the likes of Joe Isuzu and John Sununu. The author professes comic carnal admiration for a variety of bodacious babes who may once have been semifamous but are now nowhere to be found. A recurrent thematic element is the big-shot airline passenger ``who did caca doody on the plane's food cart because they wouldn't give him another drink.'' Who can lose interest in material like that? It's all good, clean fun, though nothing remarkable. The jests are likable enough and ephemeral as a Post-it note. Pleasant fooling around by a conventional iconoclast. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.