Zombie Spaceship Wasteland

by Patton Oswalt

Now in paperback, from a “multi-faceted, medium-hopping, culture skewering performer” (SPIN), this is a journey through the world of Patton Oswalt, best known for his roles in film (Big Fan and Ratatouille) and television (The King of Queens and The United States of Tara), but also beloved for his ascerbic, highly eloquent, and wildly funny standup comedy.

Prepare yourself for a journey through the world of Patton Oswalt, one of the most creative, insightful, and hysterical voices on the entertain­ment scene today. Widely known for his roles in the films Big Fan and Ratatouille, as well as the television hit The King of Queens, Patton Oswalt—a staple of Comedy Central—has been amusing audiences for decades. Now, with Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, he offers a fascinating look into his most unusual, and lovable, mindscape.

Oswalt combines memoir with uproarious humor, from snow forts to Dungeons & Dragons to gifts from Grandma that had to be explained. He remem­bers his teen summers spent working in a movie Cineplex and his early years doing stand-up. Readers are also treated to several graphic elements, includ­ing a vampire tale for the rest of us and some greeting cards with a special touch. Then there’s the book’s centerpiece, which posits that before all young creative minds have anything to write about, they will home in on one of three story lines: zom­bies, spaceships, or wastelands.

Oswalt chose wastelands, and ever since he has been mining our society’s wasteland for perversion and excess, pop culture and fatty foods, indie rock and single-malt scotch. Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is an inventive account of the evolution of Patton Oswalt’s wildly insightful worldview, sure to indulge his legion of fans and lure many new admirers to his very entertaining “wasteland.”

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Memoir, Comedy, Biography, Essays, Audiobook

267 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2011

About the author

Patton Oswalt is an American stand-up comedian, writer and actor.

His first wife was the late Michelle McNamara.

Reviews

[Kemper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I relate to comedian Patton Oswalt to an almost scary degree. We’re about the same age, we both grew up as nerdy sci-fi/comic fans in areas where there was absolutely nothing cool going on, and we both seem to share a bleak outlook when it comes to people. I loved his routine Text from his My Weakness Is Strong comedy album so much that my wife got a specially made coffee cup for me with the words I HATE on one side and a cartoon of a giant robot destroying a city on the other.*

*(I looked for a free link to that routine to put here but couldn’t find a decent version so you’ll have to take my word that it’s really funny. The cup makes me giggle so much that I can’t use it because I always end up dribbling coffee down my chin the whole time I try to drink from it. So I mostly just stare at it.)

Despite my Patton fandom, I wasn’t sure about checking out this book. Comedians have a bad habit of having some flunky type up their old routines and selling them as hardcovers. (I’m looking at you, Jerry Seinfeld.) So I was a bit worried that this would just be recycled Oswalt. It isn’t, but what it is, is kind of ….odd.

It’s too dark to be truly funny, and too funny to be truly dark. It’s kind of a mash up of biography with bizarre pure humor segments inserted into it. So one part is a moving memoir about Patton’s adventures playing Dungeons & Dragons and how he poured his teenage angst into the game. But then another chapter is a spoof about greeting cards.

Oswalt can turn a phrase, and like his comedy, there’s a disturbing undercurrent to much of this book like sections about his uncle who was mentally unbalanced and spent most of his adult life sitting on a porch drinking coffee and listening to a radio. A long segment about a hellish two week gig at a shitty Canadian comedy club is both extremely funny and painful at the same time.

As individual stories, there’s some pretty good stuff, but it comes across scattershot. It’ll make you laugh and think, but it convinced me that if Oswalt set down and really made a concerted effort that he could come up with a really great book rather than a rambling collection of reflections on his life and jokes about hobo songs.

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is hilarious.

And like the old saying, “It’s funny because it’s true” this is SO funny because it rings true. Patton Oswalt writes about growing up in the eighties, so there’s a connection – but specifically about growing up in the eighties, IN THE SUBURBS and being a “broke ass white kid”.

He and his cheap beer guzzling friends listened to The Doors and Zeppelin and then REM and U2, and it’s just funny. This is written as a series of loosely connected vignettes, all funny, some also introspective and thought provoking.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Needing a little break from all the "serious" books I've been reading lately, I picked up Patton Oswalt's "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland".

If you've ever seen an episode of King of Queens, watched Comedy Central, or have seen the films "Ratatouille", "Failure to Launch" or "Young Adult", then you know who Patton Oswalt is. A very funny comedian and, apparently, a pretty decent writer.

I was expecting one of those pointless comedy books that, apparently, all stand-up comedians are required by law to write, even if they can barely write a lick. (I'm talking about you, Jeff Foxworthy. You may be a redneck if your core audience only knows how to use your book as a doorstop...)

I was somewhat surprised how intelligent and well-written Oswalt's book is. Of course, Oswalt personally won me over on the first page, in which he talks about the joys of reading he discovered as a child. He continued to win me over by naming some of his favorite writers growing up---Beverly Cleary, Daniel Pinkwater, H.P. Lovecraft, Harlan Ellison. Here was a kindred f***ing spirit.

Not only could I relate to him on a physical level (I myself am a short, somewhat chubby, and not altogether that good-looking nerd from the Midwest who was socially awkward in high school with my face constantly buried in a book) but I can also relate to him on an emotional, mental, and spiritual level.

This guy reads Harlan Ellison (my favorite writer of all-time!) but not only that, HARLAN ELLISON ACTUALLY WROTE A F***ING BLURB ON THE BACK OF HIS BOOK! HOW COOL IS THAT! If a brain can get a hard-on, I had one.

Basically a collection of short stories, essays, and indescribable humor pieces, Oswalt clearly takes his writing seriously while still having fun. The best piece is also perhaps his more serious one, a story titled "The Victory Tour", in which Oswald tells a not-so-funny tale of an experience he had early in his stand-up career, involving a sleazy night-club owner in a small Canadian backwater town where the inhabitants wouldn't recognize good comedy if it took a dump in their beer.

If you like to read these types of break-the-mold, not-easily-categorizable comedy books, you will probably enjoy it. If you're like me, and enjoy good writing which also happens to be pretty darn funny, check out this book.

[Harmony Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the back of this book, there is a blurb from Dave Eggers. He says that this is the book that finally proves Patton Oswalt is a writer as well as a comedian. This will go down in history as one of the many, many things that Dave Eggers is wrong about.

I am a lightweight comedy nerd, and I have nothing but respect for Patton Oswalt. He's definitely one of the best established comics working today. But stand-up comedy is a way, way different art form then writing. The idea behind this book was apparently to just give Patton a bunch of ways to go crazy with the written world, and it's scattershot success rate is the result. The autobiographical pieces about growing up in a small Virginia suburb in desperate search of culture? Awesome. Funny. Kind of touching. More please. Patton's feel-good comedy wine list? No. Stupid. Bad writing. Cut it out. I appreciate the willingness to experiment and have fun, but this book needed to be edited by someone who could point him towards the things that worked and convince him to abandon the things that didnt. Also, there's a lot of clip-art in this book. and REM lyrics. I'm guessing page count was an issue for him?

Overall, this book convinced me that Patton Oswalt needs to write a really really good blog, and release a comedy album, and do anything else that will purge him of the need to write books. Or, option B, take a year off from everything else and write a really, REALLY good book. Your call, Patton.

[Krok Zero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm, is it time to write a review of Patton Oswalt's book? I expected to put the book down upon finishing it and eagerly race to Goodreads to pen a five-star hosannah extolling the multifaceted brilliance of Mr. Oswalt's first official literary endeavor, but the reality is that I was slightly disappointed by the totality of the (occasionally masterful, always amusing) text. So this review is a little more muted in its enthusiasm than the one I hoped to write but you'd still be crazy not to read this book.

If you don't know who Patton Oswalt is, you are a cultural illiterate and I will politely request that you remove yourself from my Goodreads "friend" list and/or never send me a friend request.* He is a stand-up comedian and actor by trade, but to his fans he is so much more than that — a cultural guru and dispenser of strange, wonderful wisdom. I would follow Patton anywhere. Like many Goodreaders, Patton is an unrelenting culture junkie; his aesthetic discernment, his taste in film & literature & comics & music (& comedy), defines him as much as any of his (hilarious) stand-up routines. He proved himself to be a terrific writer long before this book existed or was even planned to exist — one need look no further than the fussy language-based constructions of his stand-up to know this, though one could look slightly further to the online missives he has written for his website and old myspace blog. So the question was not "did a comedian write a decent book?"; the question was "did a unique genius write an awesome book or an epochal masterpiece?" And the answer is the former. Alas.

The book isn't quite a memoir and it isn't quite an essay collection. The best way I can think to describe it is a book split between autobiographical essays and shorter, more impersonal humor pieces. It's kind of like if Jonathan Lethem's The Disappointment Artist was spliced with some jokey little book you'd find in the humor section. By far the best chapter in the book is the first piece, "Ticket Booth," about Patton's time working at a shitty multiplex in his suburban Virginia hometown. This piece is absolutely everything I wanted from a Patton Oswalt book and if the entire book were in a similar vein I would probably have loved it to an unreasonable degree. It is about Patton's nascent engagement with the world via art, and cultivating empathy for the local fuck-ups he was just beginning to realize he needed to leave behind, and a young man's dawning awareness of the world outside himself, and so many complicated things that I can't translate here — all tied to a very entertaining narrative about an endearing cast of characters, and written in elegant, massively insightful prose even better than I expected from Patton.

Unfortunately, nothing else in the book even approaches the greatness of "Ticket Booth." It's clear to me that Patton spent more time and effort on this piece than on the rest, because the other chapters read basically like his online writing (in fact, at least one of the chapters was previously posted on his myspace blog). Which is not such a terrible thing! It's all very funny and entertaining, because it all comes from Patton's fabulously skewed perspective, and some of the other memoirish pieces flirt with the high personal insights of "Ticket Booth." My second favorite piece is probably "A History of America from 1988 to 1996 As Recounted by the Three Types of Comedians I Opened for While Working Clubs on the Road," in which Patton finds the humanity in a trio of untalented comedians, placing humor side by side with poignance.

In the book, Patton reveals that his original ambition as a young man was not to be a comedian but to be a writer — a novelist, eventually. Because of this tidbit, I feel confident in assuming that Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (the title isn't the geek-bait you may be thinking; all is explained in the titular essay) is the beginning of something, not a one-off. So I still believe a true Oswaltian masterpiece is forthcoming. Possibly he won't do his best literary work until he starts writing fiction. Until then, enjoy this.




*Not really. But consider yourself judged harshly.

[Mark Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had numerous friends recommend this book to me, and apparently they know me pretty well, because I loved it and thought it was hilarious from beginning to end.

If I might digress for a brief rant, however (and this is nothing against Patton Oswalt or this book), I just want to lodge a complaint to no one in particular about the sheer amount of energy writers of my generation spend analyzing the pop culture of our youth. About 70% of this book is about legos, Dungeons & Dragons, movie tropes and 80's pop music.

Again, Patton Oswalt does this masterfully and usually ties his meditations into more universal themes, so I'm not having a go at him, but I think that to a nauseating degree pop culture has become the lingua franca of our generation because it's all we have in terms of common experience. Other generations went through major social upheavals together, like the Vietnam War, World War II, the Great Depression, etc. The common bond of my generation is Star Wars, video games and the Simpsons.

My dad survived the Blitz as a boy and even as a little kid, I had the sense that it gave him a gravitas, a street cred, that I would never possess. In that sense, we are victims of our own historical luck. Compared to people of my parents' and grandparents' generations, we're housecats. Earlier generations were shaped and moved by actual experiences and threats to their existence. We, conversely, were molded by the pop culture created by these earlier generations, which they often crafted as commentary on their direct experiences.

As such, the pop culture generated by Gen Xers like myself usually amounts to little more than commentary on their commentary. For instance, we all remember watching the sitcom MASH. MASH was written and conceived by people who'd lived through (and possibly fought in) a war. It's their commentary on the experience of war. For someone of my generation, our experience of war IS MASH.

Superhero movies filmed in the 70s and 80s were often about the imminent threat of nuclear war, as experienced by those who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, or about the lawlessness and social upheaval in America during the Vietnam War. The superhero movies that are made today, from Iron Man to the lamentable Superman Returns, when they reference major world events of today, it always seems to be as a dry, non-experienced and flat backdrop, or it's consciously trying to update the superhero movie experience of our youth. Usually in a way that feels better crafted, less wooden, but ultimately soulless because it really doesn't draw on any source of inspiration other than the previous entries in the franchise it's trying to top.

Perhaps the good thing, maybe the only good thing, that will come out of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and our latter day version of the Great Depression is that when the people who have viscerally experienced these tragedies during their formative years are finally handed the reigns, they won't feel as much need to use our pop culture as the source of inspiration for their pop culture.

Thus concludes my rant. That said, I highly recommend Zombie Wasteland Spaceship. Oswalt's meditations on pop culture's influence on his youth really are top notch, and there is a really beautiful chapter on his uncle's life and death which I felt compelled to immediately re-read upon finishing it. This book is not a target of my feelings about pop culture-inspired pop culture, it merely set me to thinking about it. God, now I feel like I've really blown this book review. Time for a burrito break.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Patton Oswald is a unique person. I enjoy his stand up and most of his acting work, he is a funny and gifted person. I jumped on this book as soon as I knew of its existence and for better or worse, the results were slightly mixed. Overall the book is weird and different, but there is patches where I was honestly thinking, no, I'm not reading that.

The structure of the book is all over the place and if you know Patton, not physically of course, unless you're one of the super lucky people out there, you know how his brain works. He is quick witted and you can see his brain at play here. I find myself in the Patton world when it comes to projects. I tend to be doing fifty things on the side and my hobbies outweigh most of the available time I have. If you had to explain Patton, you would just hand them this book.

Why the 3.5?

The opening was fun and offered some insight into his life, but I found a lot of the book a little overbearing. I liked some, I didn't like others and considered some of the pages wasted. I was hoping for a funny, original and insightful bio. Maybe I'm being too hard here and the book was never meant to fulfil this void, I don't know. If you are expecting some insight to the life he has, you will be disappointed. This is still an interesting book and I would still read more from Patton as he is still one of the funniest comedians out there.

[MissAliceM · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't believe how disappointed I am in this book. I love Patton Oswalt. He is one of my favorite comedians and I usually find him witty, insightful and just plain hilarious. Usually when he goes off on a tangent, he pulls it right back to his original point in a clever and humorous manner. I don't know what went wrong with this book. I think he tried to cram too many styles into a slim volume. Did he want to write a straight-up memoir? Did he want to write a few "comedic riffs"? OK, either of those are fine. I just think it would have been better if he didn't try to do both in the same book. The memoir sections are overwritten, especially the one in the "voice" of Patton's 10-year-old self. It just seems like he is trying too hard to be a Writer with a capital W. Then to follow up the memoir chapters with total non-sequitors that are supposed to be what? Essays? Comedy? I don't know. I just know that they aren't funny and don't provoke any thought and I really looked forward to the end of all of them. I find this extremely disappointing. I actually like Patton a little less after reading this terrible mishmash of jumbled-up writing. So sad. I know Patton is smart, witty and hilarious. Too bad that just does not translate to the printed page.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Patton, but this book is a mess.

[Nicholas Karpuk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I still have a book to read by Tom Lennon and Ben Garant, but after that I may halt my purchases of books by comedians I enjoy.

Patton Oswalt seemed like a safer bet compared to most comedians. He seemed so narrative in his stand up that I thought it might be safe to delve into his writing. Unlike Eugene Mirman, whose abstract style was wretched for long-form work, I thought Patton could hold it together.

Well, yes and no.

This book does indeed contain chapters that form a complete thought. The narrative holds together, and at no point did I stop reading. That has to a count for something. It's probably why I still gave it more than 1 star.

But holy god is this a naval-gazing piece of self-indulgent garbage. There's far too much about his boring, nerdy childhood, and as a person who had a boring nerdy childhood, I have the perspective to tell you just how uninteresting that is. I know some authors have the capacity to find great stories in mundane circumstances, but Oswalt is not one of them. He's not Sarah Vowell or David Sedaris, he just doesn't have the knack.

And the first half of the book is mostly made up of childhood and teenage ruminations about all the pop culture crap he enjoyed. I hate to break this to all of you, but the junk you consume doesn't mean all that much. If you generate great writing based on it, or inspired by it, then that's great, but it's not because of what you consummed, it's because of your skill and perspective.

What's more galling are the chapters in between, which almost seem added on a note of insecurity. Whimsical subjects like the origins of holidays and the meaninings of hobo songs would seem fun if the jokes weren't so far removed from reality that they actually became surreal. That kind of John Hodgeman humor is perhaps a little outside of Oswalt's skill set, and it comes off as too abstract to really generate a ton of laughs. Mostly it feels like a comedian worried that his unfunny biography won't hold your interest.

And he'd be right. Most childhoods are roughly the same and generally quite dull unless you infuse them with your wit and personality. The latter half of the book improves once it starts discussing his adult career, because that's more uniquely him, but it ends just when it feels like it should really start delving into the heart of the matter.

Sometimes I think comedians, no matter how eloquent, should still hire ghostwriters because they don't seem to ever invest the time necessary to not half-ass it.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I can re-remember things to suit my regret." - Patton Oswalt

What a fantastic antidote to the bad taste that "Dad is Fat" left in my literary mouth. This is exactly what I was looking for from Patton Oswalt. This is another comedian who I'm a huge fan of, I've seen all his specials, all his movies and TV appearances...and this book was something entirely new and original. It wasn't just a retread of stand-up he's done before. Rather, it was a personal, touching, hilarious and heart-breaking journey through different moments in his life.

Adding to my enjoyment was the fact that I listened to the audiobook read by Oswalt himself. It was honestly like hanging out with a friend for a few hours who was telling me genuinely wonderful stories.

All of the traits that make Oswalt a great stand-up were on display here: How to tell a story, his awareness and acceptance of his faults, his pop culture knowledge, and his sensitive soul hidden beneath his comedic armor.

Oswalt tells about working in a small town movie theater in 1987, coming to a realization that an "eccentric" cousin had much deeper issues, a week long stand-up gig from hell (oddly enough, in the Great White North). All of these and more are captivating and feel completely authentic. I can't recommend this highly enough.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A kind of yard sale of essays and reminiscences, most of which are entertaining. As opposed to witless drivel published by other comics (looking at you, Chelsea Handler, though it pains me), Oswalt isn't just making gags in this book. (Actually, the gag bits are the worst bits of the book.) Instead, he indulges in a fair bit of autobiography that creates a Portrait of the Stand-Up As a Young Man. He played D&D, was a science-fiction devotee, watched tons of bad movies and worked in suburban movie theaters—in short, his adolescence ran on parallel tracks to my own. Which has some appeal to me as a reader, god knows.

And Oswalt writes well and sensitively about all of these things—a portrait of a crazy uncle is especially funny and touching—but the book is a mixed bag. The "funny" pieces are rarely so, but the italicized essays that introduce them are full of heartfelt memory and insight. Memoir schizophrenia!

Anyway, pleasant, often funny, sometimes boring, and short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a particularly fun read for me because I got to listen to it with my kidnapping victim! We laughed, we laughed some more, we "awww"ed a few times, and it gave us plenty of good quotes.

Oswalt is great at reading his own stuff. His delivery is perfect, his voices are fun, and I could see his facial expressions in my mind because I watch too much of this guy and really need to stop being such a stalker (hahaha! Who am I even trying to kid? I will never stop)

This one's light, humorous, snarky but I love that his snark is just as often turned inward, and nerdy.

[kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

well, i'm done.

the parts that were "supposed" to be funny? totally not funny.

but the musing parts, the parts where he just rambles and talks about his life? LOVED.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I apologize ahead of time for not even trying to aim at Point B, or even starting from Point A. Comedy and terror and autobiography and comics and literature—they’re all the same thing.

To me.

I hereby officially nominate Patton Oswalt as the spokesperson for the Generation X nerd. And would like to perhaps hire him as my personal ambassador to the world. He’s a couple of years older than I am, but we definitely share similar formative experiences and outlooks. Except he’s funnier, more articulate, well-rounded, and culturally educated, and a better writer.

The libraries and bookstores I checked have this book in with the humor because Oswalt is a comedian, but the book is much, much more. As he says in the quote above from the book’s “Preface Foreword Intro,” it’s a random mishmash of things. Personally, I would put it with the biographies, because the autobiographical reflections are the lengthiest and densest, making up the bulk of the book in terms of both physical pages and tone. While these are funny, they are also insightful, poignant, vulnerable, and sincere. The comic bits in between made me laugh out loud often, and I’ve been sharing some with many of my friends; unfortunately, they’re for the most part too complex, nuanced, and lengthy to easily share here without context. I love the variety and randomness of the whole endeavor.

One of the not-so-comic quotes that represents me well and that I’ll be keeping handy:

I want to experience as many different tastes, sights, emotions, conflicts, and cultures as possible, so that I can expand the canvas of my memory and enrich my comedy.

As to the title, it’s from one of his central essays reflecting on his youth spent immersed in fantasy, science fiction, and comics and how it played a role in his career choices:

Every teen outcast who pursues a creative career has, at its outset, either a Zombie, Spaceship, or Wasteland work of art in them. . . .

The real-world experience we’re going to need, as writers or artists or filmmakers, will come later, when we actually have to get a real job to support whatever creative thing we’re hoping to do.

So until then, anything we create has to involve simplifying, leaving, or destroying the world we’re living in. . . .

Looking back on it now, I realize I’m a Wasteland. A lot of comedians are Wastelands--what is stand-up comedy except isolating specific parts of culture or humanity and holding them up against a stark, vast background to approach at an oblique angle and get laughs? Or, in a broader sense, pointing out how so much of what we perceive as culture and society is disposable waste? We wander the country, seeking outposts full of cheap booze, nachos, and audiences in order to ply our trade. I’m amazed we all don’t wear sawed-off shotguns on our hips.

I should also mention that this work needs to be experienced as an audiobook with the physical book handy. While Oswalt is a surprisingly deft writer, he’s a performer first, and the book needs his performance to truly give it life. Not only does he provide the proper cadence, tone, accents, and voices when called for, he also supplements what’s on the page. Some sections have musical accompaniment and other readers. A musician performs his faux old hobo songs. Michael Stipe reads the R.E.M. lyrics in the essay constructed around them. He tells us his footnotes are footnotes before he reads them and simply adds a few bits of introduction and related thoughts that aren’t in the text.

Conversely, he also says he’s not going to attempt an audio version of the graphic novel chapter and to use the enhanced features of the CD to read the included pdf. And you need the physical book to see things like the faux note about the typeset at the end of the book and the “Also by Patton Oswalt” list of imagined books opposite the title page. I’m particularly interested in getting my hands on the three children’s books:

The Candy Van
A Ewe Named Udo Who Does Judo and Other Poems
Everyone Resents

A few other random passages:

My fresh-from-the-oven toddler’s eyes were fixed on the frame of the glass balcony door. And they must’ve thought the snow was stationary and the building was rising through the morning air into the sky.

My first coherent thought about life was that apartment houses could levitate in the snow. Decades later, when I took LSD in a tiny apartment in San Francisco, I had a realization. Most narcotics are designed to approximate the nonjudgmental, magically incorrect way we see the world before we can speak.

-----

Not only did I conceive of Ulvaak as physically ugly--eyes crookedly set, a sneering maw full of gray teeth, horribly scarred from a slime monster attack--but also obnoxious and unpleasant. Cruel jokes, quick to anger, slow to calm--he was comfortable being everything that, in life, I wished I wasn’t. Even at my politest, with my braces and cystic acne and snowman torso, no one wanted anything to do with me. So I created a fantasy character who had the strength, speed, and guts to back up every awkward remark I spent my days apologizing for. My comfort during the loneliest days of my adolescence was happy nihilism, which carried an ebony sword.

-----

The story ends--like most German children’s tales--with one animal cursing God and the horror at the heart of the universe, while another animal performs a happy, demonic murder dance under the blue moonlight.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, the bad: it's *incredibly* short; some of the bits, while perhaps conceptually interesting - for example, an epic poem about his favorite D&D character - don't really work; it's not all that funny.

Now, the good: It's not all that funny, but it's not necessarily *supposed* to be all that funny. Look, if you're a huge fan of Patton Oswalt's stand-up comedy and you see that he's writing a book called "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland", you would expect that it's going to be hilarious. If you were find out that it's actually sort of a memoir, you would temper your expectations a little further. Let me tell you, then, that this book is maybe 50% memoir, 50% random bits (the epic poem, a short graphic-novel thing, a series of greeting cards with descriptions, the obligatory chapter on hobos, and - my favorite - a wine list).

The memoir bits work the best. Unlike some other comedians who've ventured into book-writing, Patton is a gifted prose stylist and it's clear that he knows what he's doing. He knows how to tell a story, and as such he knows how to get the audience to feel what he wants them to feel. His memories of his crazy uncle hit me pretty close to home, actually.

I just wish there was a little more to chew on. I finished this book in about 4 hours; I would've loved some more stories.

[Kate Woods Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a fan, and have been ever since first hearing Patton Oswalt's intelligent comedy in a late nineties HBO comedy special. Now I'm a bigger fan.

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland was enjoyable start to finish, but I particularly enjoyed "Punch Up Notes," "Wines by the Glass" and "Mary C. Runfola Explains Her Gifts." Oswalt displays such a wide range of literary gifts, it's possible to imagine him among the National Lampoon writers of the 1970s, sitting at the Algonquin Round Table or even included in some sort of unrequited love round-robin with famous 19th Century Romantic Poets.

It's not often I am moved to jealousy by phrases or sentences, but consider just one of Oswalt's gems. On page 57, this sentence taunts me with its simple beauty: "If the victories we create in our heads were let loose on reality, the world we know would drown in blazing happiness." There are more instances where he just makes me put the book down and gasp. Or smile. Or BWAH!

I want more from this writer.

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

Patton Oswalt is one of my two favorite comedians (right up there with Louis CK) and one of the funniest creations of all time. His book...is not.

Half memoir and half comedy skit chapters SOUNDS like a good time. But the comedy chapters feel like bits that couldn't make it into his stand-up act and the memoir parts focus mostly on his younger, pre-comedian D&D days. It's not terrible by any stretch. I just hoped for more behind-the-scenes as a struggling comedian and less disgruntled middle-school nerdery.

However, there IS a lengthy story toward about a ten-day headlining gig he took in a terrible club outside Vancouver. It's fantastic and nearly worth the price of the book by itself. I know Patton has hundreds of stories like this, and if he ever decides to write THAT book, I'm there.

[Serena.. Sery-ously? · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, questa volta l'ho terminato.
Tanta tanta noia e la consapevolezza di non avere la minima idea di quanto Oswalt stia dicendo nel 90% dei casi.
E poi secondo me parte per la tangente come pochi!

Not my cup of tea (Abbandonato al 23% senza rimpianti, ma io e Patton ci siamo lasciati da buoni amici).

Non solo non ho la minima idea di chi sia Patton Oswalt (Lo so, io a malapena so accendere il decoder della tv, figuriamoci guardarla).. Ma per i primi due capitoli mi ha parlato di cose/persone/show che non ho mai nemmeno sentito nominare. Mi mancano decisamente le chiavi di lettura per apprezzare l'opera :D

[Samuel Vega · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Patton Oswalt, but this book is just a mess. Some parts of it are great and others are just borderline incoherent.

[Will Manuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a huge Oswalt fan. He has to be close to my age and makes great references. I blew through this book and enjoyed it. Would be 4 stars but a few spots dragged a little.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this at the gym while lamenting that I was riding the stationary bike instead of running.

Patton Oswalt's first book differs from most comedian books. For the most part, I've stopped buying comedian books because they are inevitably disappointing. If I like a comedian enough to follow their work to the point that I want to purchase their book, I am usually pretty familiar with their material. Unfortunately, my experience has shown that comedian books, especially initial comedian books, consist entirely of their stand-up material written down along with some book exclusive funny lists. But Oswalt is clearly a writer first and comedian second, and that makes all the difference.

While Oswalt does employ a few of the standard funny lists, the rest of the book combines autobiographical stories of his early life along with pop culture essays similar in vein to his recent Wired article that stirred up some controversy. Each of the individual parts -- the autobiographical sections, road stories, and the essays -- are strong enough that they would make great books on their own. His sole road story, covering a week-long stint in a Vancouver suburb, seems to only scratch the surface of what Oswalt has to offer.

The strongest parts are the pop culture critiques. As someone who has become less and less enamored with Chuck Klosterman the more I hear him speak on Bill Simmons' podcasts, Oswalt effortlessly accomplishes what Klosterman sometimes struggles to do: view pop culture from a knowledgeable and original point of view. Oswalt's look at the change in culture and his odd place in it as part of the generation that grew up as MTV came to life and then experienced a completely different sea change in the birth of the Internet is a succinct and cogent look at a group of people who will hold a unique sense of gravitas over future generations; surprisingly, he does so without the "get off my lawn" attitude that sometimes permeates essays on generational shifts.

My one complaint is how short the whole thing turned out to be. Sometimes that's a reason for giving something a full five-star monty, but here it's more of a drawback. I hope beyond words that the book is successful enough that Oswalt writes a sequel in a reasonable amount of time because he's barely seemed to scratch the surface with this one.

[Clare Shaffer · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are looking for a book with a clear, concise plot and manageable characters, you might want to look elsewhere. Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, though an extremely clever, funny book, doesn't seem to have any clear plot line or story. Instead, it is a mishmash of different stories from the narrator's, stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt,life. Intermingled in these memoirs are random little bits of comedy routines that he has performed in the past, which also take on the persona of yet another life story. The stories and segments are in no way, shape or form related to one another, and there is no way of introducing a new topic, or transitioning from one subject to the next. Patton Oswalt raises creative lisence to an entirely new level, as he seems to completely ignore any rules or regulations of writing a fiction piece, such as organization and transitions. However, that may be what makes the book so funny, as the reader often finds themselves laughing aloud at their own complete and utter confusion. The author makes dozens of references for each chapter, some of which are completely unknown to the rest of the world, yet he does not take it upon himself to explain it to us. He just writes his stories and segments exactly as they are, with no extra explaining, and sometimes not even stopping for a pause in between. This book is definately a rollercoaster ride, but the jokes that I did manage to understand had me laughing out loud at his clearly brilliant mind.

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's hard to really get interested in a person that starts a biographical section in a book by sharing how he used to steal from his bosses, and clearly, clearly, feels no shame about it. I should also point out that it isn't played for laughs, nor is there any comeuppance that occurs or is even suggested. No, it's just matter of fact.

At times I laughed (though extremely rarely, barely got through the whole fake greeting card section), but generally I flipped pages waiting for something interesting and/or insightful. My favorite parts were absolutely the personal anecdotes, especially the trip to the town outside of Vancouver to be a headliner, but generally the book felt like a waste of his time and a waste of my time.

Reading the reviews there are plenty sharing the same sentiment: Some not too exiting or revealing childhood stories (for me at times off-putting), some kind-of-random and pointless asides that come accross as filler, with the rare gem of a truly personal account of his life as a stand-up. If you don't believe me, read those other reviews, they are all true and frequently better written than mine.

For fans of stand-up comedy I would recommend it for those occasional insights, but otherwise, I'm not surprised I was able to pick this up for $3 new. I did finish it, so that's saying something.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short works--mostly autobiographical--is interesting but pretty hit or miss for me laugh-wise. I giggled at the short story told in comics and the fantastically accurate satire of a wine list, and I rolled my eyes and skimmed the sickeningly graphic 'decoding' of hobo songs. Most of all, I liked the chapters about a kid coming into puberty playing D&D or the excellent shaggy dog story about his first gig headlining a club. And--as ever--when Oswalt's humor works for me, it really, really works.

While I was waiting for the SUV to take me back to my car, I got waylaid by an assistant from MTV's Pimp My Ride. You know what a pimp is, right? He's a dude who tricks, frightens, or flat-out bullies a woman to fuck other men for money, which she then gives to him. Oh, and it's also an adorable slang phrase. There's a doggy grooming spa near where I live called Pimp My Pooch. Someday there will be a baby boutique called Rape My Bassinet.

[Ariel Cummins · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I should just stop reading books by comedians I like. After being burned by lukewarm feelings (MIXED METAPHOR IN YOUR FACE!) about Bossypants, I still had hope that Patton Oswalt, king of the Nerd Comedians, would be able to deliver a funny and coherent memoir. And yet, here I am, summing up this book with the same word I used to describe Fey's -- meh.

Oswalt's book definitely has some hilarious moments, and I really enjoyed the times when he talked about ACTUAL events in his life. It was the non sequitors and weird crap he threw in between those things that made me less than enthusiastic about the book as a whole. Overall, this book felt less like a coherent comedic memoir and more like comedic vomit.

I listened to this one on audio book, and Oswalt narrated it himself. For all the faults I found in this book, none of them involve his excellent delivery. His performance on the audio book was excellent and the production overall was top-notch.

Rabid Oswalt fans will want to pick this one up, but for everyone else, feel safe passing this one up.

[Abe Something · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other books Patton's book led me to:

Nightmare Alley - William Lindsay Gresham
The Horizontal Man - Helen Eustis
The Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey
Carioca Fletch - Gregory Mcdonald
The Hawkline Monster - Richard Brautigan
At the Mountains of Madness - H. P. Lovecraft
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World - Harlan Ellison
The Howling - Gary Brandner

This book is chock full of references that I look forward to digging into. I knew to start keeping track of the gems Patton was dropping when he spoke so lovingly of Murnau's Nosferatu, and passingly mentioned Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45 in the forward to the book. He goes on to mention Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, P.K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, and Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. I guess what I am saying is, if you already like Patton, or are simply looking for a fun book to read that this is a good one, but be open to the older friend hipping you to the cool underworld treasures vibe that it carries or you'll miss out on part of this book's pleasure.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laughed out loud at 7:15 in the morning as I sat by myself with this book and a bowl of raisin bran.* "The room smells like a hot, wet hat. The coffee tastes like pants," and "what's more rock and roll than a wolf and a cannon that's about to shoot?" Thank you, horrible Reed and grandma. Somehow you were key ingredients in the marvelous layer cake that is Patton Oswalt.

That's not to say that this book is one-liner, zinger-type funny. That'd be missing the point. Mostly, it's a warm fuzzy feeling that someone else out there shares my inner monologue, only with more wit. And spite.

* I point out to illustrate that the laughter was not caused by some peripheral amusement, like the giggling of my children or an ironically shaped pancake. There is no breakfast food more serious than raisin bran.

[Gordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love his comedy, and appreciate his thinking-man's approach. He's certainly literate enough to be authoring books, but this read like some contractual obligation, a hodgepodge of disparate material collected for a book release, rather than the labor of love he repeatedly mentions dreaming of. Reminded me a bit of my own comedy book I abandoned ten years ago when I decided to just post those brain droppings on a blog instead. The standup anecdotes are entertaining, as is the Neill Cumpston stuff (which I read long ago online), but all the fantasy genre fanboying wore on me after a while. Because I’m a lit-snob.

[Heidi Wiechert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patton Oswalt has a very dark sense of humor and a strange, rambling style that works better in his stand up than in a book. I got the feeling while reading this that he's either a lot smarter than me or has done a lot more drugs. It's quite possibly a combination of those two things that makes this book not really funny. However, I did enjoy his essay about DnD. Read that chapter, at least, if you delve into this book.