Page 18 - Boca Club News - February '21

Page 18, Boca Club News

The Arts

Book Review: “Hits & Misses”

By Nils A. Shapiro to last at the wildest more...” After all, they average only about five or six pages
extremes of comedic each. But, like eating potato chips, I couldn’t stop until there
I should make this imagination I had ever were no more left. Here are several examples to explain why:
an annual treat! encountered in any Riding High: The Oatsy Story is told by a horse who has
creative form. One a legitimate complaint. He describes how one night he spent
Exactly one year ago, in the of the 13 stories in hours running all around town, even through brambles, no
February 2020 issue of Boca Club that book, Sellout— matter how tired, while his friend Paul on top of him, was
News, I reviewed in this column a although, at 78 pages scared and kept screaming his head off. And now, he is in a
collection of short stories, “Spoiled in length, I described cage in a glue factory and nobody cares about him, and his
Brats,” by Simon Rich, an author among whose credits are it then as almost a friend, Paul—you know him, Paul Revere—is famous. It
having been a writer for TV’s Saturday Night Live and The novella—I found isn’t fair.
Simpsons. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker especially hilarious Menlo Park, 1891. Thomas Edison’s laboratory was
magazine, has created several TV series, and now has seven and impressive. It located in Menlo Park, New Jersey. In 1891, he invented the
published books to his credit. tells of an immigrant kinetograph, the first “motion picture camera” which he knew
England’s Guardian newspaper calls Simon Rich “the Jew who arrives would change the world and make him famous. He hires a
funniest man in America,” and he has also been described in America from boy, hands him two oblong wooden clubs, tells him to just
as “the Stephen King of comedy writing.” Conan O’Brien Europe, gets a job swing the clubs over his head, films that activity for a few
has simply stated, “My admiration for Rich is rivaled only in a Brooklyn pickle minutes with his new invention and sarcastically titles the
by my jealousy.” factory, marries a girl who becomes pregnant, and one day film Newark Athlete. Then Edison invites the press, screens
As for my reaction to “Spoiled Brats,” the book I he falls into a large vat of brine, the lid closes above him, the film and anticipates their excited reaction and questions.
reviewed a year ago, I laughed out loud from first page and he is not discovered—perfectly preserved—until 100 When the reporters notice the boy, they rush to him—not
years later! What happens to him then becomes the author’s Edison—and ask what it feels like to be an actor, what advice
satirical commentary on our “millennial” generation’s foibles he has for youngsters seeking an acting career, inquire about
and lifestyle trends. his girlfriends, and so on. Simon Rich lives in Los Angeles,
That story has just been made into a film, “An American and knows full well the irony of celebrity worship—actors
Pickle,” starring Seth Rogen in dual roles as both the over all others, including in this fictional case the inventor!
immigrant Jew and the century-later descendant of his wife Dinosaur is about a real dinosaur. You know, the really
who was pregnant at the time of his disappearance. big, green kind with a scaly back, yellow eyes and sharp razor
Rich’s newest collection, “Hits & Misses,” contains 19 teeth. Except this one works as a writer for a TV show, and
stories. Published in 2018, it is every bit as much fun. And, the rest of the staff, humans one-twentieth his size, are really
just as with the others, you can open it to almost any page—at way—and I mean waaaaaaaay younger. The problem is that
the beginning of any story—and find a hit; there are virtually the others keep using words like “woke,” and other terms that
no misses here. In my case, I had an hour or so before dinner he hasn’t caught onto, and he is embarrassed to admit it, so
New Year’s Eve and decided to start reading the first story. In he has to keep looking them up. It’s a “generation gap” thing,
two sittings, by the end of New Year’s Day, I had turned the but when robots enter the picture it all works out at the end,
last of the book’s 230 pages...captivated again by the almost thanks to Simon Rich’s inexhaustible imagination.
inconceivable imagination capable of springing from one There are 16 more like these. Go along for the ride. You
man’s mind! will love it. And when somebody makes a movie out of one
I kept telling myself “just one more story...just one of these stories, you will have read the book first!

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