Black is the New Green
Description
$32.95
ISBN 978-1-55017-494-6
DDC C818'.5402
Author
Publisher
Year
Review
When it comes to humour, Arthur Black has a well-earned reputation as one of Canada's best writers in that vein. A dozen books, each a compilation of his columns, have had readers chuckling at his ingenuity in finding hilarity in the often absurd situations that affect and afflict the human race. But Mr. Black in his latest volume has shown us a serious side--he has gone green. His solemn side, though, is leavened with a generous dose of wit. Climate change, lawn mowers, polluted rivers, smoking, plastic bags--they all fall under his sharp eye, and he manages not only to extract humour from the situations, but he seems to do it effortlessly.
Yet not everything in the book is environmentally related. In fact, most of the seventy-five 800-word pieces are about the oddities of life or, sometimes, the ordinariness of life in which only an Arthur Black can perceive something funny. Topics include small-stature people who can claim large-stature achievements, the loose-lipped Prince Philip, exercising a dog, cycling, Australian versions of the English language, Vaseline, computer passwords and much else. Nothing seems immune from his pen. And let's not forget "Your call is important to us," which skewers major corporations' phone systems that are apparently installed to baffle callers.
The author is not merely amusing; he is also a skilled writer with an unerring instinct for the most apt word and the most telling phrase to embellish his essays. This reviewer is an unabashed Arthur Black fan and he eagerly awaits the humorist's next volume.