Word: napkinics
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...murmurs Bob from the next bar stool. Chariots of Fire follows Stars Fell on Alabama. Bob tells a regional joke: "It is not true that possums are born dead by the side of the road." He insists that Terry fill out an application to the clan on a cocktail napkin. A Northern visitor is worried that he means the Klan. But no, this invitation is to join the Clan Maxwell Society. "We meet four times a year, wear kilts, promote Scottish culture." Another clan member, Kenn, a fourth-generation American with a Pavarotti girth and an approximate voice, whose favorite...
...sure, there are large and hairy losers in this chrestomathy. Truman Capote's A Day's Work is a smirk posing as an empathic look at a cleaning lady; Marshall Brickman's pastiche The Analytic Napkin is road company Woody Allen; Dan Greenburg's How to Be a Jewish Mother has aged so rapidly that it makes the paper beneath it look brown. But almost everything else functions well in Richler's idiosyncratic, exuberant and welcome volume. What does not work is a steady insistence that humorists are a devalued species. In fact they enjoy...
...crass commercialism of the more than 700 religious souvenir shops, innumerable ice-cream parlors and other tourist businesses that line its narrow streets. Lourdes alarm clocks, fondue sets and cigarette lighters compete for shelf space with bottles of "Eau de Toilette a la Bernadette" (three scents), tin napkin holders depicting Bernadette and the Virgin, and plastic packets of "Lourdes Mints" guaranteed to be made from grotto water...
...Liberals (Folkpartiet) the Conservatives (called the Moderates) and his own Center parts. This coalition government united only by its opposition to the Social Democrats, suffered the same in-fighting that has plagued the heterogeneous. Republican party since Reagan's election. And though the Swedes fell short of Laffer's napkin-based whimsy in their economic policies, they too were trapped between a mountainous government spending deficit and the campaign promise to control taxes...
...minutes go by, and the counterman returns, alone and out of breath. He goes back behind the counter and starts scraping the grease off the grill. The man with the crossbite reaches for a napkin. "Somebody ran out on you?" he says. "That's OK, somebody ran out on me tonight...