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Letters to Wendy’s

By Joe Wenderoth
Publication Date: December 1, 2000

ISBN# 9780970367204 (5.5x6.5 296pp)

Description
Reviews
Bio

“A work of genius.” —Philadelphia Weekly

Letters to Wendy’s is an outrageous, tragic, genre-bending novel written over the course of a year on comment cards from the fast-food chain restaurant Wendy’s. Through the letters, the book traces a year in the life and thoughts of an unnamed narrator obsessed not only by Biggies and Frosties, but also by consumerism, pornography, and mortality.
At once a love story, cultural critique, and commentary on literary theory, Letters to Wendy’s ... has already become an underground internet favorite, and is likely to be known eventually as the most apt, able, and adventurous ars poetica to be produced for and by Generation X.
John D’Agata, Boston Review

... a perverse, sometimes pretty, obscene and confounding collection of one page meditative missives ... trimmed with lunatic fringe.
Rolling Stone

When I first read a selection of Letters in American Poetry Review two years ago, I disrupted the peace of a library reading room by laughing out loud. Their earnest naiveté, when juxtaposed with philosophical argument or outright violence, created an uneasy tension, prompting an almost involuntary reverse reaction akin to that experienced on scary amusement park rides—the sudden, zig-zag jerking into darkness or light.
Fred Muratori, Electronic Poetry Review
Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore. He is the author of No Real Light (Wave Books, 2007), The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft’s Secret Self (Verse Press, 2005) and Letters to Wendy’s (Verse Press, 2000). Wesleyan University Press published his first two books of poems: Disfortune (1995) and It Is If I Speak (2000). He is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.