The Editors of McSweeney's

Yuk, comma, yuk yuk, period

The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes will have you laughing at the dead. John Hodgman, in his introduction, says authors and books are funny “because they are sad. They are as sad as zeppelins are, they wish to soar, but they are using a technology that is old, largely forgotten, highly flammable.”

Still, the combustible pages contain some damn funny parodies. Here is Cormac McCarthy writing a letter to the editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican: “A traffic light is needed, and that soon. Or we will continue to inhibit our temporary souls which wait like cowed children at stop signs, as it always was before those signs crept like stalks from the Earth.”

In “Jane Eyre Runs for President,” the candidate complains about the insufferable Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “I curl my fists into tiny balls beneath the interview table.”

The 70+ pieces in the book are a lot funnier than sad.