Letters to Wendy's

Rating:
Summary: Wendy's is the latest thing in literature
Review: I have never encountered a book like this before, laid out in such a snippet-like format where each page is a chapter. I also thought it was interesting that there were no page numbers. Apparently, we were supposed to use the dates of these "sayings" as page markers in the event we found ourselves without a bookmark or some other method of remembering our place. I thoroughly enjoyed Wenderoth's willingness to risk offending people in order to deliver on his point that we are all human, despite our proclivities and weaknesses. Good work.

Rating:
Summary: fluorescent ceilings ETC
Review: i read this in the bookstore in one sitting; it is immensely entertaining, & the author has some excellent turns of phrase, plus who has not at one point confessed some horrible secret on a We'd Like to Hear Your Thoughts card, or wanted to do so.

unfortunately some of the letters degenerate into mindless genital-centric bores without any redeeming prose elements, it seems one cannot get away from this in any form of literature. but vague & nebulous social commentary does not belong in reviews so i'll put this tape over my mouth & we'll all be a lot happier.

but for the most part i loved it, very surreal at times & surprisingly perceptive. i am definitely interested in reading more of his work.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting concept.
Review: I was a little put off by the book at first, but after rereading it, I think I like it a lot better.

Rating:
Summary: Mind-Bendingly Beautiful
Review: Letters To Wendy's is an incredible achievement: it manages to blend pornography, philosophy and beauty into one big frosty dessert treat. This book is a "Biggie" in more ways than one: it's big on lyrical beauty, humor, sex and thoughtfulness. It's a hilarious and poignant collection of prose poems. As a colleague pointed out today, who else can make the word "employee" sound so beautiful?

Rating:
Summary: Shocking, Just Shocking
Review: Perhaps a lot of why some people can't wrap their heads around this book is that it's, like I say in my subject header, a work of genius.

The Wenderoth book was published and made the rounds as poetry -- now marketed as fiction, assumedly for sales or to avoid getting sued, it circumnavigates the problem of defining form. In fiction, there would be no debate of subject matter, of sending-up Wendy's, and including details from daily life, porno movies, what have you.

But in the realm of modern American poetry, this book is the most significant series of poems since Berryman's Dream Songs. Simply the act of putting these subjects into poems is revolutionary, but to put it into a larger work makes it genius. There's a certain stamina from reading a book like this, when you know it's a book of poems -- show me someone who read Paterson one day on the beach, or the all the Cantos one afternoon at a cafe. Reading these 20-30 at a time, you feel like this is something that *needs* to have been written, to include philosophy and Biggies and incest jokes in one volume of poems. To speak from the vantage point of a fast-food flaneur who writes better than most poets, but chooses, in the fictive world of the book, to only write to Wendy. A must.

Rating:
Summary: Like Nabokov Eating at Wendy's
Review: This is a brilliantly paced book of hilarious, sad, beautiful and perverted prose poems. It's like Nabokov in that it is simultaneously perverted and erudite. I read almost all of it on the subway this morning and relished the others reading over my shoulder as I read about Frosties, Porn in the morning, Foucault, and spanking Wendy.

Rating:
Summary: This book sucks!
Review: This little book full of little "poems" packs a thunderous punch. Wenderoth manages to incorporate humor, genius, sex, love, pain, disease, etc in an inventive form. Why is this book so great? Because nobody's done it before. Nobody's brave enough to create such literature. This is a new favorite on my shelves of poetry books. It stands out...a blur of genre, a combination of many realms. Absolutely wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: This book is a biggie!
Review: Wenderoth has written a sharp critique of American culture in this volume. It is funny, sad, and kind of deep. For those who have read it and still do not get it, I suggest you think of it as a fast food Dr. Strangelove. For those of you who have not read it, get it today and start reading. You may never go to Wendy's again, and that would not be a bad thing at all. It's the bomb!

Rating:
Summary: wenderoth
Review: wenderoth makes me glad to be a reader, and not just a writer. i thought i wrote well. not anymore. something had to give, and this is it. joe is the real deal. enjoy!!