My first novel, furtl, was a 2014 Kirkus Reviews book of the year selection. The absurd near future of that book became not-so-absurd one year later – a xenophobic reality show president rose to power by exploiting social networks and sowing division. OOF: An Online Outrage Fiesta for the Ages was released in mid-2021. Not a sequel. But it does seek to provide similar catharsis for readers who can’t seem to shake their belief that It. Can. Always. Get. Stupider.
By Strobe Witherspoon
Award-winning novelist and cultural critic Strobe Witherspoon interrogates his own profession. It goes terribly. Strobe Witherspoon just sold his latest satirical novel for a lot of money. The book in question, FLOTUS: A Memoir, is a fictitious autobiography about a former first lady of the United States reflecting on years of misery at the hands of her much older POTUS husband. When a chapter is leaked in advance of the book's publication, an Online Outrage Fiesta (OOF) ensues via news outlets, blogs, Twitter, troll farms, and everything in between. Witherspoon has his life placed under a microscope. Family secrets are exposed. Now, an anthology has been put together to document Witherspoon’s downfall—and settle the score.
OOF explores the
role of satire in a society lurching from one ridiculous crisis to the next,
where media outlets rely on clicks to stay alive and everything is filtered
through a lens of anger and misinformation.
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By Jonathan Swift
The standard bearer of idiotic journeys. This eighteenth-century
funhouse mirror displays the underbelly of the human condition from many absurd
angles, including but not limited to xenophobic violence, intellectual hubris,
and false idol worship.
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By Joseph Heller
War brings out the dumb in all of us. This book hits home for anyone that’s horrified by the alteration and weaponization of the English language from those holding power. The high-stakes bureaucratic incompetence and illogical war-time decision-making birthed its own special kind of paradox – the Catch-22 – that unfortunately never goes out of fashion.
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By Douglas Adams
I use the word absurd a lot. Never has its usage been more appropriate
than for this book. A [absurd] sendup of science fiction convention filled
with [absurd] characters doing [absurd] things all across multiple [absurd]
universes that somehow all makes sense in the end, particularly since none of
it makes any sense. It’s, you guessed it, ridiculous.
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By Paul Beatty
The Sellout is a satirical treatise on the lengths humans will go to reject, deny, or literally erase, injustice. It skewers any pretense of a post-racial America, telling the story of a small town in California that brings back segregation and slavery. The outlandish uproar that ensues reveals the deep division that persists in America and the discomfort in addressing it.
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By Julie Schumacher
Intellectuals are dumb. Particularly when they are navigating their own
insecurity and ambition. Told through a series of ill-advised and awkwardly personal
letters to various scholastic and literary entities, this book shines a comic
light on the world of petty, festering academic grievance.
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