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'New' little book a real gem
By Mark W. Mayfield
Welcome, avid readers, to another exciting installment of Mark's Book Club, which is dedicated to shamelessly promoting new books in exchange for generous kickbacks from grateful authors.
Before proceeding with today's glowing review, I want to update Club Members on our first featured book, The Testament by John Grisham. As I predicted, Grisham is now an incredibly wealthy, wildly popular author.
But, as many other overnight sensations, he is completely ignoring the people who are responsible for his success, namely me. Mark's Book Club hasn't received one word of thanks or a single dollar of kickback money from this overrated ingrate. He hasn't even responded to my numerous invoices. Therefore, I must reluctantly publish this brief review of Grisham's latest book and all his future books:
They stink. Furthermore, one of Mark's Book Club's powerful, influential subsidiaries, Mark's Movie Club, must reluctantly publish this brief review of every movie--past, present and future--based on Grisham's novels: They also stink. Now, onward to today's featured book.
Sometimes we sophisticated literary critics get carried away by our hectic, extravagant lifestyles. We are so preoccupied with sending invoices to newly famous authors and spending our generous kickbacks that we occasionally overlook an unknown writer with considerable talent.
Such was the case of John Steinbeck, whose new little book, Of Mice and Men, is a very impressive first effort. (Special thanks to Mark's Book Club's daughter for bringing this obscure book home from her high school English class.) Mr. Steinbeck, if you're reading this review--and I KNOW that you are--I enthusiastically say to you, "Bravo! Kudos! Well done, my soon-to-be wealthy friend! Mark's Book Club truly believes that you have the potential to be a pretty good writer."
Here's MBC's compelling plot summary: Two traveling ranch hands, one of whom has a weird fascination with mice, find work in California and then do stuff that is interesting to read about.
The best feature of this book is its length--107 pages. In today's fast-paced world, readers don't have time for those big 800-page novels with complicated storylines. Of Mice and Men is a book you can read between your favorite TV shows, or while standing in line at the bank. n fact, Mark's Book Club read the entire book while waiting for a very snotty cashier to check the price on a frozen pizza.
(Important note for other unknown writers: Shorter is not always better. MBC will not review anything under 50 pages. After all, this is Mark's BOOK Club, not Mark's BROCHURE club.)
The only weakness in Of Mice and Men is the obsolete profanity. The cuss words are much too mild and old-fashioned. They sound like they came from the 1940's, for gosh sakes! In his future books, Steinbeck should use shocking, offensive, in-your-face cuss words that cause readers to say, "WOW! This guy really knows his @*$%!#! profanity!"
Perhaps he can call fellow struggling author Stephen King for some pointers. King knows lots of modern cuss words, and I'm sure that he'd be happy to share a few with John.
Unfortunately, Mark's Book Club must qualify this glowing review with a serious concern about the originality of Steinbeck's story. The main characters, Lennie and George, bear a striking resemblance to the main characters in one of Mark's Book Club's all-time favorite cartoons, Hoppy Go Lucky, in which Sylvester the cat and his big, dopey friend, Benny, who doesn't know his own strength, mistake Hippety Hopper (a baby kangaroo) for a large mouse.
In this 1952 Warner Brothers masterpiece, Benny delivers this memorable line: "Let's go in and get me a mouse to have for my very own! I will hug him and hug him and pet him and pet him." In Of Mice and Men, big, dopey Lennie, who also doesn't know his own strength, delivers several suspiciously similar lines.
If these similarities are entirely coincidental, Mark's Book Club wholeheartedly recommends Of Mice and Men. But if John Steinbeck is guilty of pluralism (stealing somebody else's work), Mark's Book Club will still wholeheartedly recommend Of Mice and Men because he really needs the generous kickback.
To read the first review from Mark's Book Club, visit Mark's Remarkable Website at http://markmayfield.homestead.com/home.html.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
