April 11, 2011 Issue

When was the last time you saw “moviegoers,” “prep,” “colonoscopy,” “woman,” “drinks,” “swears,” and “orgasm” combined in one sentence? I’ll bet never. If you want to read it, turn to Tad Friend’s delightful “Funny Like a Guy,” in this week’s issue, and you’ll find, amidst the rich verbal textures, this miracle of inventive construction: “Studio executives believe that male moviegoers would rather prep for a colonoscopy than experience a woman’s point of view, particularly if that woman drinks or swears or has a great job or an orgasm.” There’s poetry in that! Here’s another example from the same piece: “Though she had arresting cameos in 'Lost in Translation' and 'Brokeback Mountain,' her more usual task in fare like 'The Hot Chick,' has been to perform CPR on such dialogue as 'It’s not every day that your best friend grows a penis' – to be a one-woman rescue team for films that aimed low and crashed before they got there.” That “to perform CPR on such dialogue” is inspired, as is the combination of movie titles, together with the surrealistic quote and “one-woman rescue team.” “Funny Like a Guy” is filled with such assemblages – grammatical equivalents of Joseph Cornell’s miniature boxes of weird, poetic images and oddments. Reading them is bliss!