Reviews of three new books. Holes: A Book Not Entirely About Golf by Richard Meltzer (Future Tense Books, 47 pages, $4) CLUB KIDS Take one all-American male-yuppie pastime and filter it through an aging gonzo-beatnik icon, and you might have something like Holes: A Book Not Entirely About Golf by Portland writer Richard Meltzer. After a Christmas party, Meltzer's girlfriend challenged his notions of what it is "normal" people do; he rises fearlessly to the occasion and throws himself into the task of learning how to play golf. This provides a launching point for philosophical meanderings, metaphorical segues and pithy observations. Throughout is Meltzer's distinctive conversational voice, which mingles confessions with outrageous inventions and lies. This must be the only treatise on golf to quote Thorstein Veblen, Wallace Stevens, Italo Calvino and the 1987 Banana Republic catalog. Predictably, Meltzer is a bad golfer. But he tries; and as he tries, he observes, in the best writerly way, golf culture (the clothes, the courses, the rituals and the unexpected empty Heineken can in the bottom of the rented golf bag). The players run the gamut: seniors, hipsters, punks, men and women. They often pass Meltzer by on the course, which leads inevitably to conversation and repartee: "It's the pursuit of a Platonic ideal." "The two things I love about it are the tool aspect and the mindlessness." This is deep territory because any mention of tools leads naturally and inevitably to the big sex metaphor: "So golf as primal whackin': no problem there. It computes." "Whacking...holing. What's between?" What indeed: Read on and find out more about this deceptively difficult game through the eyes of Richard Meltzer. Valerie Cashman The Oxygen Man by Steve Yarbrough (MacMurray & Beck, 280 pages, $20) STUCK IN THE MUD Slimy things thrive in the Mississippi Delta, especially the people who dwell in The Oxygen Man, Steve Yarbrough's debut novel. The good old boys of Indianola are stuck in the muck of their ignorant lives, driving down the road to ruin with a cooler of cold ones in the back seat. Ned and Daisy Rose, the children of an itinerant house painter and promiscuous 7-11 clerk, are bright enough to know that their tender lives are hopelessly screwed up. But when they reach ninth grade, the town leaders bestow upon each of them a scholarship to the private, all-white Academy. Ned falls in with the football team. Daisy dates the banker's son. All seems OK until tragedy strikes and their world changes forever. Yarbrough jumps between 1973 and present day, when Ned plays yes-man to the same kid who bullied him through high school, checking the oxygen levels in his catfish ponds. Daisy is disgusted by her brother's spinelessness, but her life isn't much better. She works sullen afternoon shifts in a trucker bar. Yet just when it seems their stifling lives will never change, a quiet miracle occurs. In The Oxygen Man, Yarbrough tackles themes as deep and wide as the Big Muddy itself: racism, sex, environmentalism, class struggle, even the Oedipus complex. But these sweeping issues are handily contained in a pleasing, well-written tale of responsibility and redemption. Even an ugly, oppressive, catfish-breeding society can have some beautiful moments. Susan Wickstrom Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source edited by Scott Dikkers (Three Rivers Press, 164 pages, $15) AREA NEWSPAPER, ALIENS TRASH U.S. HISTORY MADISON, WIS.--Area newspaper The Onion faced criticism this week when experts refused to accept that it was humanly possible for media satire to be so goddamned funny. For years skeptics have questioned that a Midwestern weekly could be the single most hilarious publication in print. With fake news articles like "Christ Demands More Money," "Study: Sniffing Glue Proven Effective in Treatment of Adolescent Boredom" and "Auto Workers Strike for More Acrylic Novelty Baseball Caps," the Onion staff has mocked every publishing trope known to man, from small-town "community voices" columns to USA Today pie charts. Now leading humorists are demanding to know: How do they come up with this shit? Experts have taken a harder look since the staff's first book, Our Dumb Century, topped the New York Times best-seller list after two weeks on the market. The book, which skewers 20th-century history with Page One layouts like "Holy Shit! Man Walks on Fucking Moon," doesn't have everyone laughing. "Young people don't know bullcrud about history," says former National Lampoon editor Mel Kippler. "How could they possibly come up with the side-splitting 1932 headline 'Brother Unable to Spare Dime'? I lived through the Depression, and I never thought up any jokes about it. Dammit." Answers came last week in a probe launched by mafia don Antonio Scorini, whose family has controlled the satire market for six decades. After being stabbed through the hand with a large knife, editor Scott Dikkers finally admitted the truth: The stories are the work of mysterious beings whom he first encountered on a rural highway outside Madison. "The Onion's been in business since 1988," Dikkers says. "Did you really believe we could still be funny after 11 years? No other comedians have been able to." Dikkers adds that he tried to interest the aliens in reviving the spent careers of formerly funny Joe Piscopo and the Spy magazine staff. "Sadly, their powers are only so awesome," he says. Karen E. Steen - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published May 12, 1999