I can’t think of a subject more worthy of our attention than humiliation. Thankfully, that delightful bastard Wayne Koestenbaum agrees with me and has written a series of ‘fugues’ to examine the various ways humiliation enters our lives. How it exists in history, pop culture, how our own bodies expel it. Koestenbaum is open, whether talking about himself or others or big ideas. He deals with some real sad things, some real sexy things, some real unavoidably uncomfortable things. He covers race, American Idol, Basquiat, your mom and glory holes. This book has it all. It will fill all our your cultural, philosophical and memoirish humiliation needs. It will also make you laugh and question your television viewing choices.
Oh man. As I started to write this puny review I was worried I wouldn’t sound intelligent enough, be able to do justice to this gem with my own words. And then I realized I was going to post it on the internet where anyone could confirm the truth of that statement. But then I also realized that hardly anyone reads this thing because I am kind of lame. So in the reading and writing about Humiliation, I have gone through some shameful stages and now my ego and I are going to hit the kitchen to find some most likely shameful foods that I will most likely eat in a humiliating way while watching a reality television program that involves superiority and inferiority and humiliation.
I will not be broadcasting my humiliating lunch over the internets. I will just eat it and let my own bowel movements humiliate me later.
