I Don't Like To Complain, But It Is What I'm Best At [Paperback]

I Don't Like to Complain, But . . . is a collection of essays on a variety of topics all of which share two traits: each topic touched or provoked the author in a special way; and in each case this provocation produced an essay that is sure to amuse the reader.

Mere amusement, however, does not appear always, or even most of the time, to be the sole aim of the essaysrather, a morsel of enlightenment should linger after the laughter.? Several of them (MA-L,S,V; Dear Gloria; Knowledge is Boring; The End of Sex) take on certain quirks of modernity: the TV ratings guide, excesses of information and communication, even language itself.? Others (Notes on the Impossible, De Gustibus, Sketchbook) offer glimpses, drawn from the author's years spent in France, of some specialsometimes delightful, sometimes annoyingaspects of life in that often misunderstood country.? Still others simply follow out some telling experience that came the author's wayon the basketball court, in his car, in his living room, on a deserted, sandy beach in the middle of next-to-nowhere.

It does appear that the author has done a bit of reading over the course of his life, as literary and philosophical references from a variety of sources that might be termed classical (Shakespeare, Austen, Locke, Homer) can spring up in the oddest of places, though fortunately they are not so numerous as to become overbearing.? They serve only to add one more perspective on the flow of events in life, and on the direction a particular narrative happens to be taking.? But more deeply imbedded in the writing style than just passing references that might here and there cast a slanting light on people and events, is the inspiration the author has found in writers such as Robert Benchley and Dave Barry (andin addressing the cartoons that are sprinkled among the articlesin the likes of James Thurber and Helen Hokinson).

?From Dave Barry we can see lessons learned on The Fine Art of Digression. Nlc›