Whistler's Mother's Son and Other Curiosities

"How do you begin to describe a collection of over 100 short prose pieces of varying length and styles when the only thing they all have in common is weirdness? Maybe you say it features parodies, standardized tests, nursery-rhyme anxieties, fables, riddles, collaborations, conundrums, rescued cliche s, abominations-in-training, dark Americana, existential misdemeanors, misbegotten mysteries, identity crises, optimistic nihilism, formal experimentation, and polyrhythmic prose, with a side of word salad. Maybe you say it runs the stylistic gamut from minimalism to satire to noir to children's tale to abstraction to surrealism. Maybe you say the characters include Hamlet, Gertrude Stein, Amelia Earhart, Fred Flintstone, Mr. Mondrian, a little girl whose mother takes up with a smelly old man, embattled aunties and uncles, a man with two mustaches, and an eternally confused Peter Cherches. Or maybe you just read the book and leave such worries to the very talented copywriter"--