World Famous Comics: Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country
Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country
By: Joe Queenan Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Henry Holt and Co. Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 256 Publication Date: November 04, 2004 Release Date: October 14, 2004
Product Description: In this hilarious romp through England, one of America's preeminent humorists seeks the answer to an eternal question: What makes the Brits tick?
One semitropical Fourth of July, Joe Queenan's English wife suggested that the family might like a chicken vindaloo in lieu of the customary barbecue. It was this pitiless act of gastronomic cultural oppression, coupled with dread of the fearsome Christmas pudding that awaited him for dessert, that inspired the author to make a solitary pilgrimage to Great Britain. Freed from the obligation to visit an unending procession of Aunty Margarets and Cousin Robins, as he had done for the first twenty-six years of their marriage, Queenan decided that he would not come back from Albion until he had finally penetrated the limey heart of darkness.
His trip was not in vain. Crisscrossing Old Blighty like Cromwell hunting Papists, Queenan finally came to terms with the choochiness, squiffiness, ponciness, and sticky wicketness that lie at the heart of the British character. Here he is trying to find out whose idea it was to impale King Edward II on a red-hot poker-and what this says about English sexual politics. Here he is in an Edinburgh pub foolishly trying to defend Paul McCartney's "Ebony and Ivory." And here he is, trapped in a concert hall with a Coventry-based all-Brit Eagles tribute band named Talon who resent that they are nowhere near as famous as their evil nemeses, the Illegal Eagles. At the end of his epic adventure, the author returns chastened, none the wiser, but encouraged that his wife is actually as sane as she is, in light of her fellow countrymen.
Awful, awful book Is there anything Joe Queenan actually likes other than the sound of his own voice. He states his negative opinion of everything British as if it is fact. His attempts at humor fall flat and he just comes across as a self indulgent whiner who finds fault with everything. At one point he states that people who visit birthplaces of famous people such as Shakespeare are basically morons yet in a previous chapter, he himself spent a day with a cabdriver visiting Ringo Starr's aunt's house, John Lennons birthplace etc all the while listening to the cabdriver regale him with stories of how he grew up with the Beatles. All of these stories turned out to be untrue. Who's the moron now? The early Bill Bryson books are a much better read. My only consolation is that it only cost $2.98 on the bargain table. About $2.97 too much!
The Agony and the Arrogance What could have been a satirical homage to the Mother Country is actually a tiresome, self-indulgent rant. The author's endless historical diatribes are judgmental and tasteless. His attempts at humor are consistently wide of the mark. Any entertainment value this book might have salvaged is completely overshadowed by the arrogant tone of the writing.
funnier, better written, and less mean than Bryson Maybe Queenan is no less mean to the Brits than Bryson, but when Bryson gets cranky for the sake of humor in "Notes from a Small Island," it's just not that funny. I couldn't even finish his book while on a trip to England last year. On this year's trip, I brought along "Queenan Country" and loved it. I was a big fan of "Red Lobster, Blue Lagoon, and White Trash," and while some of the Amazon reviews for this one had me on my guard, my worries were unfounded. Queenan's knowledge of history, eye for detail, and of course caustic sense of humor make this a great read.
History and a hoot! Those who do not understand history are doomed to re-read it. The trouble is we usually re-read the same old scrubbed up versions that we seldom see historical figures in their true or even blue lights. Joe Queenan's Queenan Country is not just a good travel book but a nice little take on the historical aspects of who or what we're looking at when we're staring up at whatever it is we're looking at on vacation in the Limey Isle. So he occasionally paints us- all of us Yanks, Brits, and Scots, with our wrinkles, wiry nosehairs and zits but he doesn't use a roller, more often than not he deftly does it with an hilarious brush. Let's face it, the guy's smart, he knows and even likes England and Scotland- that much is clear. What's more, he gets us all to like it a little better as well by being like that funny kid in class who says the wrong thing at the right time and makes us chuckle even when we know it's inappropriate. Hell, I would have given the book five stars but I live in Seattle and took offense at his slight of my city...so much so that I just ordered his next book.
Fasten your seatbelt... ...It's going to be a bumpy ride. The first part of the book is absolutely hilarious--I guffawed out loud till my eyes watered and my husband got sick of asking me, "What's so funny?!" But about 1/3 of the way through, things started bogging down. The book was still readable, but no way did it live up to the promise of the first few chapters. There was stuff that was flatly unfunny (the chapter on Wales, the list of stuff the author doesn't like about the Brits), intermixed with your average travelogue, then coming back with a few choice witticisms toward the end. It would've been better as a long magazine article or short paperback, with all that filler deleted.
The other quibble I have is that the author uses some British slang words that aren't very well known to Americans, so that I had to have my dictionary at the ready to check exactly what he was saying. This interrupted the humor, making the joke fall flat. I realize he probably included the slang for atmosphere, but he'd have done better to have used words people on both sides of the ocean would've known immediately.
Two stars makes it sound like I liked the book less than I actually did, but three makes it sound like it was more consistent than it was. I'm not sorry I bought it, but I'm also not sorry I bought it on the ultra-discount rack at my supermarket. I'd say if you can get it at less than full price and you like (but are not obsessed with) England, it's worth it.
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