Location:Home » Caribbean » Satire » A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean: A Grump in Paradise Discovers that Anyplace it's Legal to Carry a Machete is Comedy Just Waiting to Happen (Travelers' Tales)
Beer spewing out of your nose funny May 31, 2008 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Writing funny stories is hard work. I know as I attempt it in my writing. My idols are Dave Barry, PJ O'Rourke and Carl Hiassen and now you can add Gary Buslik to that list. It is easy to sit in a bar and tell a story, everybody laughs and slaps you on the back. Bars have an endless supply of semi inebriated less than scholarly types, who will laugh at almost anything. Try writing the story down and you are faced with a cast of intellectuals who keep track of things like quotation marks and indents (whatever that is), they talk in terms of "first person" and "present tense" words that have never been uttered in bars. The point is humor is hard to write and seldom turns out funny. Every story in this book is, "beer spewing out of your nose" funny. You will find yourself laughing so hard; people will come up to you to find out what in the hell is so funny.
Some will take offense to the depiction of certain nationalities and religious groups. Get over it, it's humor, the over the top depiction of Europeans and local Islanders is intentional and adds to the humor. I don't think any intelligent reader finds the exaggeration of stereotypes anything more than amusing. I share Gary's love of the town of Plymouth on Montserrat and found the reference in the book to be quite touching. The story Papa's Ghost adds a great touch to the Hemingway legend. Pick up this book a bottle of rum and enjoy the trip, beats the hell out of the hockey playoffs.
If you can't afford a trip to the Caribbean, buy this book! May 21, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean is truly laugh-out-loud funny. Gary Buslik's ancedotes are so far-fetched, and the characters he depicts (including himself) are so over-the top you can't help but guffaw out loud--which is fine when you're reading in the privacy of your own home, but might earn you some strange looks if you're reading in a public place. So, if anyone asks you what's so funny, just read them a line or two from this book. They'll have to agree with you that this is really funny stuff.
marvelous book-maven May 19, 2008 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Although this book certainly is rip-roaringly funny, Buslik does himself a disservice by considering himself first and foremost a comic writer. There is a misleading modesty here, because Buslik is a highly skilled prose stylist: a master of controlled language, tone, and the ability to invoke deep emotions, felt and remembered long after the last page. The essays in this collections are occasionally played just for laughs but more often set readers up with humor and endlessly silly digressions, only, at the finish, to spring powerful emotional traps. The final piece, "Where Satan Works," is nonstop hilarity for eleven pages, only to end with the saddest and most spot-on observations about 9/11 I have ever read. This may be the best writing ever about that horrible day. His poignant "Flow," "Nasdaq 5000," "Weed Killer," and "Sometimes It's the Other Way Around" are literary feasts. Don't kid yourself: this author is not only a keen observer of human behavior but of human nature. The publisher might be selling this book mainly to tourists now, but my guess is that in a few years they'll be selling it to University English departments.
Laughed my bikini top off. May 16, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this book at the airport, on our way to Jamaica, thinking I'd read it poolside once we got there. I made the mistake of glancing at the first page on the plane, so it never made it to the pool. I couldn't put it down either on our flight or in bed that night. My husband wanted to know why I kept laughing out loud and, for that matter, why I was more interested in this book than in him. I told him he'd find out. This book is not only hilarious, it totally nails the dynamics of a couple on vacation. It sets just the right tone for a good time with the one you love. I not only would recommend this book to anyone, I did. On our flight home, half our group had their own copies, and flight attendants wanted to know why everyone was in stitches.
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