Letters to Wendy's

By Joe Wenderoth

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0970367201
• ISBN13: 9780970367204
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Wave Books
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant

This little book full of little "poems" packs a thunderous punch. Wenderoth manages to incorporate humor, genius, sex, love, pain, disease, etc in an inventive form. Why is this book so great? Because nobody's done it before. Nobody's brave enough to create such literature. This is a new favorite on my shelves of poetry books. It stands out...a blur of genre, a combination of many realms. Absolutely wonderful.

Pained Eloquence

I was really surprised by this book. It doesn't work like a novel-- doesn't give the novel reader what the novel reader expects. It is foolish to understand this fact as an indication of the book's being deficient. Its value is more like the value of a book of poems-- a book one can look into, quite at random, again and again, and in which each Soul will surely have her favorites. The worth of the book can be gauged by how intensely one clings to one's favorites, and how elusive they nevertheless remain.

Shocking and Brilliant

Wenderoth has found a new form for poetry--the customer comment card--and filled a series of them with more desire and truth than any restaurant could safely want to know. Imagine the phrase "How can I help you?" finding no compromise. A stunning and dangerous book.

Like Nabokov Eating at Wendy's

This is a brilliantly paced book of hilarious, sad, beautiful and perverted prose poems. It's like Nabokov in that it is simultaneously perverted and erudite. I read almost all of it on the subway this morning and relished the others reading over my shoulder as I read about Frosties, Porn in the morning, Foucault, and spanking Wendy.

Mind-Bendingly Beautiful

Letters To Wendy's is an incredible achievement: it manages to blend pornography, philosophy and beauty into one big frosty dessert treat. This book is a "Biggie" in more ways than one: it's big on lyrical beauty, humor, sex and thoughtfulness. It's a hilarious and poignant collection of prose poems. As a colleague pointed out today, who else can make the word "employee" sound so beautiful?