COMEDY HAUL Big Ed Barnhams got some great finds.
  • Danielle Mathias
  • COMEDY HAUL Big Ed Barnham's got some great finds.

BIG ED BARNHAM'S ONE OF A KIND BIG FIND OF THE WEEK—Temple Lentz wrote a delightful preview of Big Ed Barnham's One of a Kind Big Find webseries, which returns to your computer screen next week. If you have no idea who Big Ed is—or if you think I'm talking about Twin Peaks right now—you can catch up on the show here. Temple talked to the man behind Big Ed, comedian Scott Rogers:

Rogers says, "I was stumbling around Rerun, the vintage store in Northeast Portland, and ran across two wooden figures. I immediately knew what their story was, so I spent $8 to buy them and wrote the first episode in my car before leaving the parking lot."

AFTER BIRTH, ELISA ALBERT—I can't even describe how much I loved this book. It combines the best things you can encounter in a book (according to me), which are: 1) SPARE PROSE, 2) a cantankerous female protagonist, 3) plot points that would offend Charles Bukowski:

Shalom Auslander, who's called Albert "[Charles] Bukowski with a vagina and a motherfucker of a hangover," in what can be (charitably) read as an attempt at high praise. If you're looking for a lady Bukowski, though, you have no business reading this book. Because After Birth's frank talk of "surgically evacuating" small humans, the "commonplace violence" of undergoing an involuntary C-section, and its strong undercurrent of undeniably female rage—what Ari describes as "the fucking, the sadness, the dark, the blood, the light"—would almost certainly have left Bukowski squicked out and quaking behind his hangover-sunglasses.

WORLD GONE BY, DENNIS LEHANE—Speaking of loving books, Ned enjoyed the final book in Dennis Lehane's American gangster trilogy:

Lehane's sandbox is at the collision of actual 20th-century American history and the stories surrounding its infamous criminals, a mythology cultivated by years of Hollywood glamorizing. While indulging the escapist nature of these tales (and their inherent bloodiness), Lehane's interweaving of fact and fiction is masterful. Meyer Lansky and Carlos Marcello sit alongside the invented characters in the book, and the depiction of the criminal world at the onset of America's involvement in World War II feels authentic and comprehensively researched. Without overplaying it, Lehane coolly draws a parallel between the lieutenants and soldiers of these underground syndicates and those of the army fighting overseas.

WE ARE PIRATES, DANIEL HANDLER—Courtney, on the other hand, went looking for the pirates promised by Daniel Handler's new book. Instead, she found problems. Like, a lot of problems. Hoo boy:

The winks feel stifling, the switchbacks claustrophobic—and then there's the weird racial ickiness... Take Phil's observation: "There was a look white people shared on the subway, when other people were misbehaving..." Or what's dished out to Manny, a Haitian orderly, whose name is not really Manny: "We talked about this," his retirement-home boss says. "The residents find it easier to remember than anything Jamaican." These lazily tossed grenades feel contextless, working only as cheap motivation to get characters to join the crew. Maybe it's too soon after Handler's disastrous emcee gig to get a clear perspective on We Are Pirates' subtext—as it stands, it leaves a bad taste. It's an uneven novel seeped in as much problematic history as its romanticized marauding namesakes.

Oh dear. Get it together, Handler!