Free Downloads Letters To Wendy's
Letters to Wendy’s is an outrageous, tragic, genre-bending novel written over the course of a year on comment cards from the fast-food chain restaurant Wendy’s. Through the letters, the book traces a year in the life and thoughts of an unnamed narrator obsessed not only by Biggies and Frosties, but also by consumerism, pornography, and mortality.
Paperback: 296 pages
Publisher: Wave Books; 1st edition (January 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0970367201
ISBN-13: 978-0970367204
Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 6.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 0.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #379,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #99 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Epistolary #211 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Humor & Satire > Dark Humor #1646 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > United States
This is a brilliantly paced book of hilarious, sad, beautiful and perverted prose poems. It's like Nabokov in that it is simultaneously perverted and erudite. I read almost all of it on the subway this morning and relished the others reading over my shoulder as I read about Frosties, Porn in the morning, Foucault, and spanking Wendy.
Wenderoth has found a new form for poetry--the customer comment card--and filled a series of them with more desire and truth than any restaurant could safely want to know. Imagine the phrase "How can I help you?" finding no compromise. A stunning and dangerous book.
This little book full of little "poems" packs a thunderous punch. Wenderoth manages to incorporate humor, genius, sex, love, pain, disease, etc in an inventive form. Why is this book so great? Because nobody's done it before. Nobody's brave enough to create such literature. This is a new favorite on my shelves of poetry books. It stands out...a blur of genre, a combination of many realms. Absolutely wonderful.
Joe Wenderoth’s spare, dark collection of aphoristic poems is reaches strange heights in this nicely written diary. Taking Wendy’s as the centerpiece of American culture, Wenderoth constructs a densely semiotic chain of interlocking objects and moods. Often funny, probably more often gloomy, this small text speaks to the generalized alienation of recession America. A strange work, though you might be happy to be out of it by the end.
Joe Wenderoth's Letters to Wendy's is a shockingly honest commentary on consumerism & capitalism written in the form of bits of reflection on Wendy's comment cards. The narrator uses things like Biggies, Frostys, and the girl depicted in the Wendy's logo as vessels to delve into metaphysical thought. He grapples with what it means to be authentic and feel truly alive in a consumerist culture, broaching subjects like drugs and pornography in his diary entry-like letters. The letters are like miniature essays that'll make you feel like you're reading something deeply personal and profound. They're also very lyric and poetic, but certainly not without humor, as many of the narrator's thoughts and actions are absurdly funny and will likely make you laugh out loud.This book is a great & thought-provoking read, whether you read it in segments or gobble it up in one sitting.
Letters to Wendy's offers a wonderful commentary on our love/hate relationship with Capitalist consumerism. Through the use of short, thought-saturated essays, Wenderoth shows us the world through the consumerist lens over the course of a year-- in one simple fast food restaurant, we can have all our needs fulfilled: food, drink, voyeuristic and sexual pleasure, excretion, and shelter. Wenderoth is a poet, an experimenter, and a philosopher. His poignant thoughts about the philosophy of consumerism encourage us to contemplate our complicity in a world where we consistently want and are given more. He shows us that we are moving toward a world of everyday Wendy's, a loss of boundaries for the sake of supporting a Capitalist economy. Over the course of just over a year writing letters to Wendy's, Wenderoth offers a journey. Tell us about your visit-- We care!
Letters To Wendy's is an incredible achievement: it manages to blend pornography, philosophy and beauty into one big frosty dessert treat. This book is a "Biggie" in more ways than one: it's big on lyrical beauty, humor, sex and thoughtfulness. It's a hilarious and poignant collection of prose poems. As a colleague pointed out today, who else can make the word "employee" sound so beautiful?
Well, okay, it's great to suddenly hear Wenderoth lust after an American Icon/logo (and she gets spanked!). "Letters" is interesting in parts, but by page 150 one starts to feel a sense of diminishing returns while reading this book. How many clever--albeit slightly twisted--aphorisms in a row can one continue to be as hungry for, after all, as, say one of those big double cheeseburgers with the dual square patties. This book lacks the formal variety of Wenderoth's books of poems. Wenderoth is not, as a writer, always best served by forced brevity. And in "Letters" he seems so intent on shocking the reader and it just feels mildly arrogant. I wouldn't dissuade anyone from buying this book, but I prefer the poems full of large breaths and diamond honed crystalizations in Wenderoth's first two groundbreaking books.
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