Apocalypse WOW!: A Memoir for the End of Time
   James Finn Garner
  1997 Cader Books/Simon & Schuster Inc. NY USA
   ISBN: 0684836491


Did Europe go bananas in 999 & did Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce et al - have accurate visions about anything? These & other mind-boggling questions are feverishly posed as the author worries about his assigned place in the scheme of things & his plans for the millennium weekend.

Strictly speaking this little gem should be listed as Humor - however, being a plodding person I forgot to add humor to my category list - so because the millennium as well as the century is upon us - I've stuck it in Nonfiction - Current Events.

If you have not met James Finn Garner's works before - I do recommend them for exercising your grey matter - he makes your mind leap through improbable cerebral hoops! Rather like finding a form of exercise you actually like, Garner puts your brain through its paces & spots you with anagrams, puns & footnotes. While you end up sweating expletives & dingbats - your brain will thank you for its new, svelte shape, having burnt off that thinking-about-serious-things blubber.

With utter uninhibited, irreverent, exuberant, chronic, & hilarious verbosity, James Finn Garner faces those monumental questions that have plagued us now for too long: have we ordered new checks? Will the guarantee on that new appliance be worth anything? Should you bother with a five-year CD? Why all the fuss?

The author sets out to expose this special panic & dog-ears his chapters with suitable sidebars & taut titles: A.D.999: Peasants and Monks Shout, "Give Up da Funk!"; Prophecy: The Heavy Hitters; Dear Diary: My Own Little Prophecy Journal; Strange Days: Pyramids, Death Rays, and Harmonicas; My Search for Enlightenment: All Vibed Up and Nowhere to Go & The Biblical Apocalypse; Fun with Fundamentalism.

Sometimes you just gotta giggle at all this serious panic - the same way you gotta giggle at funerals! Apocalypse WOW! gives you plenty to exercise your funny bones & extracts as much laughing gas from our imperiled paunches as any of the solemn predictions with which we've lately been pelted.

I love Garner's footnotes, his propensity for scribbling in margins & his word games dotted throughout his text. Take it from me, this little book will fracture any staid ideas you might have left about the dignity of this auspicious moment. You will also get to read one of the funniest linguists ever to put paper to pen.

A good read, though not for the easily offended - religiously speaking & a perfect gift as our clocks runneth out!

More from James Finn Garner: Politically Correct Bedtime Stories; Once Upon a More Enlightened Time; Politically Correct Holiday Stories
(11/28/99)

Rebecca