Lamentations of the Father: Essays » (First Edition)

Ian Frazier is the author of seven works of nonfiction and two collections of humor. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

When The Atlantic Monthly celebrated its 150th anniversary by publishing excerpts from the best writing ever to appear in the magazine, in the category of the humorous essay it chose only four pieces—one by Mark Twain, one by James Thurber, one by Kurt Vonnegut, and Ian Frazier’s 1997 essay “Lamentations of the Father.” The title piece of this new collection has had an ongoing life in anthologies, in radio performances, in audio recordings, on the Internet, and in photocopies held by hamburger magnets on the doors of people’s refrigerators. The august company in which The Atlantic put Frazier gives an idea of where on the literary spectrum his humorous pieces lie. Frazier’s work is funny and elegant and poetic and of the highest literary aspiration, all at the same time. More serious than a “gag” writer, funnier than most essayists of equal accomplishment, Frazier is of a classical originality. This collection, a companion to his previous humor collections Dating Your Mom (1985) and Coyote v. Acme (1996), contains thirty-three pieces gathered from the last thirteen years.

Past winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor; author of the nonfiction bestsellers Great Plains, Family, and On the Rez; contributor to The New Yorker, Outside, and other magazines, Frazier is the greatest writer of our (or indeed of any) age.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Ian Frazier has a gimlet eye and a brain pickled in the juices of S. J. Perelman, Robert Benchley, and Art Buchwald. As one of America s best living humorists, Frazier can effortlessly turn a newspaper clipping about the greenhouse effect into biting political satire: President Bush has called for a decade of additional research on global warming, but needs more time to decide which decade it will be, assistants to the president announced today. So far, 2060-2070 looks nice, said one insider, though other decades have not been ruled out. In his new collection of humorous essays, Lamentations of the Father, Frazier squints his eye at such topics as middle-age memory loss, an updated version of Laura Ingalls Wilder ( Little House off the Highway ), class notes from an alumni newsletter ( Jim Carmichael writes that he happened to see Marc Weinstein in the Salt Lake City airport not long ago and pretended not to recognize him ), and how to operate a motel room shower curtain. Lamentations of the Father is not as consistently funny as Frazier s earlier Coyote v. Acme (despite trying to strike lightning twice with the similar Th-Th-That s Not All, Folks ), and some of the essays lie on these pages like lead ingots, proving that humor is the trickiest of tightrope walks for a writer. However, when Frazier s rapier wit is sharpest -- as in the book s title piece and two others that summon the ghost of Erma Bombeck, A Cursing Mommy Christmas and The Cursing Mommy Cookbook -- there is no one who can make you laugh louder on a crowded subway than our generation s Thurber. --David Abrams

Kisses All Around 3

Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father 8

Tomorrow's Bird 14

Little House off the Highway 19

Th-Th-That's Not All, Folks 25

My Wife Liz 30

Walking Tour 35

The American Persuasion 45

Techno-Thriller 51

The Cursing Mommy Cookbook 57

Veni, Vidi, Vici, Etc. 60

Kidproof 65

The Not-So-Public Enemy 72

Unbowed 78

The New Poetry 82

Researchers Say 88

Warmer, Warmer 93

A Cursing Mommy Christmas 99

Come Back, Suckers! 103

From Across the Pond 107

Everlasting 112

Class Notes 117

Back in the U.S.A. 122

He, the Murderer 127

No. Please, No 132

If Memory Doesn't Serve 136

Kid Court 144

Here to Tell You 149

Chinese Arithmetic 154

Square One 158

Pensees d'Automne 164

Caught 171

Thin Enough 177

Downpaging 182

How to Operate the Shower Curtain 187

What I Am 191