The Picayune Intelligencer: Collected Articles 1962-2015

by Alexander Kern

In the brutally competitive world of imaginary news, one fictitious newspaper dares to be so bleeding-edge, so provocative, and so underground that no one has even heard of it until now:The Picayune-Intelligencer.

Drawing from flash fiction, The Onion styled satire, and the imaginatively warped worldview of The Far Side, The Picayune Intelligencer collects over thirty hard hitting stories tackling such pressing issues as manspreading, amateur art criticism, the marital problems of superheroes, and many more.

Alexander Kern’s short fiction debut is a humorous foray into the endearing absurdities of human nature, illustrating that sometimes the most outlandish news tells the most realistic truths.

144 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2015

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of satirical news articles, mostly spoofing American social life. The humor is drier than The Onion and the situations are sometimes a bit surreal, so it carves out its own niche. Perhaps because the articles all have one author, the style gets a little repetitive, so it's probably more enjoyable if you pick it up once and again and read a random article rather than trying to plow through the whole thing at one go. I didn't find anything laugh-out-loud funny, or even funny enough to want to share a particular story, but I have to admire the author's imagination and careful imitation of journalistic style. The biggest problem IMO is that the articles all go on a bit too long, flogging the one joke each one is built around until it stops twitching (e.g. a father dismayed to find his son reading Playboy for the articles, a start-up business that wants to provide an offline, "analog internet," breweries struggling to keep up with the demands of hipsters who want to drink terrible, weak beer ironically, etc.) The jokes are mostly pretty decent, but many of these stories would be funnier as just the headlines, or at least as much shorter pieces. Of course then there wouldn't be enough here to fill out a book (which already consists of about 1/6 blank pages).

*Disclaimer: I won a copy of this book via the goodreads 'first reads' giveaway.*

[Donna Foy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! Very funny and readable. More please.