BOOKS: Lowered Expectations

I think the missing ingredient in better enjoying the two books I read this week is lowered expectations.

For example, the first book was called Heroics for Beginners, by John Moore. It's a comic fantasy; not quite Terry Pratchett, more like Robert Asprin, or Craig Shaw Gardner. Light comic fantasy. How high could my expectations have been?

Well, back in college, I read a book by John Moore called Slay and Rescue, and it was very funny indeed. I decided this author was going to be one to keep an eye on for frequent entertainment. I figured he'd be cranking out two or three books a year, like the above-mentioned Asprin or Gardner. Or Pratchett, even. Instead, he didn't publish another book until Heroics, twelve years later. After twelve years, I thought, this had better be one hell of a book.

It was all right. It's about a prince who has to infiltrate an Evil Overlord's fortress with only the Handbook of Practical Heroics (kind of a Heroes for Dummies) to guide him. It's often hilarious in its deconstruction of the villain's obligations to tradition (he has to learn a menacing laugh, and shake his fists in the air in the pose called "milking the giant cow"), and the roles his lead minion and sexy assistant play (the minion is supposed to be tricked and the assistant seduced by the hero; things go wrong when one hero tricks the assistant and seduces the minion). It's a quick, funny, enjoyable satire of heroic conventions. But I might've liked it more if I hadn't been waiting twelve years for it. Hopefully Moore's next book will be out before 2016.

The other book is Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away. I picked it up at the used bookstore after reading an online review raving about how hilarious Bryson was; further, at the store, the owner (I think) told me Bryson was far better than David Sedaris. (Then again, he also told me, in Comic Book Guy-like earnestness, that Bryson was for smart people and Sedaris was not, even after he had asked me if I liked Sedaris and I had told him yes. That's the new ownership of Ojai's Bart's Books, folks: douchebaggery on parade!)

Bryson is no Sedaris. Bryson is not even Dave Barry. He's neither as incisively brilliant nor as gut-bustingly hilarious as had been suggested to me. But he is smart, and he is funny. He's a comedic travel memoirist, is perhaps the best way to describe him; he's written about the Appalachian Trail, and small-town America, and of course England, where he spent those "20 Years Away". I'm a Stranger Here Myself collects the columns he wrote on his return to the U.S., and is filled with many sharp and funny observations about American life we natives have grown to take for granted, like the surprising (to him) benevolence of Post Office workers toward their customers, or the general over-emphasis on signs and rules. In one passage, he ignores a "Please Wait to Be Seated" sign:

After a couple of minutes, the hostess... came up to me and said in a level tone, "I see you've seated yourself."

"Yup," I replied proudly. "Dressed myself too."

...She sighed. "Well, the server in this section is very busy, so you may have to wait a while for her to get to you."

There was no other customer within fifty feet, but that wasn't the point. The point was that I had disregarded a posted notice and would have to serve a small sentence in purgatory in consequence.

I'm enjoying this book a lot, and will most likely seek out other books by Bryson, but I think I'd have an even higher impression of him if I hadn't had my expectations raised.

Lowered expectations, by the way, are also key to the enjoyment of this blog.