Word: comically
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...this delicious collection of personality flaws, twentysomething sophomore author Michael Chabon contructs a wildly comic, manically paced novel, combining slapstick comedy and a clever satire of academia with an ongoing meditation on the peculiar life of the writer. Chabon's light touch allows him to present the most absurd situations, and the most open sentimentality, without a trace of awkwardness...
While the midnight disease is one of the novel's main preoccupations--it begins with the memory of Vetch, as if everything that follows is an elegy on the dark fate of the write--it is probably the least successful element of what is essentially a comic story. Chabon's strength is his witty, graceful, delicately absurd style, and his attempt to turn his comic creations into bearers of a secret curse does not come off. Grady remains a Rabelaisian "minotaur," too devoted to sex, marijuana and adventure ever to seem suicidal; even James is more quirky than disturbed...
...loving, knowing observation of Grady and his world is the novel's greatest strength. When he does not attempt to philosophize, Chabon pulls off his comic stunts with grace, and we can't help but applaud. Wonder Boys is a successful and clever second novel, and it leaves us looking forward to Chabon's third...
...Tank Girl" is brill. Based on a witty, Brit-y, cool cult comic book, this live-action movie introduces a heroine who could erase bunny bimbo, Jessica Rabbit, with one irreverent stomp of her oversized MC boot. Tank Girl could be the product of a rather revolting orgy involving Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Madonna, and Courtney Love. She's the baby that could be born if Thelma impregnated Louise with a turkey baster. But at the bottom of her cliff, this girl's driving off in her tank, swigging from a Forty and laughing out loud...
Artist Jamie Hewlett and writer Alan Martin were a couple of British blokes who emerged from the subterranean 'zine scene with the chronicles of Tank Girl, whose major pursuits include drinking too much beer, smoking cigarettes and snogging any kangaroo that comes her way. Occasionally in the comic books, she's sent on missions such as delivering colostomy bags to the President, but Hewlett and Martin merely flirt with the concept of plot, reveling instead in irrelevant violence and super-cool style...