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March 14, 2005
Maybe I Just Misunderstood
But I don't find myself agreeing with the term "hilarious" when it comes to many, many book blurbs.
For example, I just finished The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life this weekend. I loved it. I think it's a fantastic book. I will re-read it, which is high praise indeed from me. But on the cover it is described as "A hilarious novel about coming of age--in your forties."
It's a great book, as I said. The plot is a little predictable, but sometimes you need that in a book. And the protagonist is great, dribbling out bits of information that change the entire picture of what's going on each time he admits something new. Figuring out whether he's going to figure out what's going on is a lot of fun. And while there were sections that I found ironicly tickling, and moments that I had to read to my husband because they were just funny, the book is not what I'd call "hilarious."
To me, hilarious is three clowns performing Macbeth.
Hilarious is my friend Karl clotheslining my friend John in acting class and knocking him onto his butt. Karl's clown was working with the motor anger while John's clown was working with the motor joy and John's leaping back and forth from place to place while Karl tried to find a solution to their problem was really pissing Karl off. So he stuck out his arm while John was in mid-leap and caught him in the chest. Everybody collapsed in belly laughs over that one, including John and Karl who both broke character. It's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Hilarious is my husband rewriting the words to the Thin Lizzy song Little Girl in Bloom to fit the actual intent of the song while honoring the ticky-tacky rhyme scheme. As in, "Little girl in bloom, You're going to lick my big, fat schtoom." Maybe I'm completely sophomoric in my tastes, but that had me shrieking with laughter.
I wanted to be sure I was actually working from the proper definition of "hilarious," so I just now did what anyone with internet access and a brain should do. I looked it up. This is one of the two definitions on dictionary.com:
adj : marked by or causing boisterous merriment or convulsive laughter; "hilarious broad comedy"; "a screaming farce"; "uproarious stories"
That's what I thought hilarious meant. Something that makes you laugh so hard you can't stand up. So either I have an inadequate sense of humor, or the people writing these blurbs need to check their dictionaries.
Vindication.
Posted by sally at March 14, 2005 09:19 AM
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