The Copernican Revolution of Slapstick Science

The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure by Jack Handey
Reviewed by Steve(n)

There is no conundrum so complex that Jack Handey can’t solve it with some clever wordplay and a stick of dynamite. When it comes down to it, the most satisfying resolution to any conflict is an accidental explosion that splatters you with charred bits of turtle-man and science goo. My unfounded presumption had always been that “Jack Handey” was a collective nom de plume for a whole team of absurdist Saturday Night Live humorists. I didn’t think it possible for one man to foster so many “Deep Thoughts” and make it through life with his sanity intact. While the veracity of this proposition is debatable, Jack Handey will continue plying his humor-craft, blithely unaware that his unique calling is somewhat out-of-the-ordinary. This native Texan has devoted his decades-long comedy career to the development and furthering of nonsensical aphorisms and fake platitudes, the spirit of which he has condensed into a brilliantly surreal narrative in The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure.

No word is out of place in what essentially amounts to one long joke composed of hundreds of smaller jokes, which themselves are made up of micro-jokes. Don’t even get me started on the infinitude of subatomic jokes, or “chuckle-trons”, that fill in the gaps between the micro-jokes. The Stench of Honolulu is the Copernican Revolution of slapstick science. The adventure follows two bumbling buddies as they traipse across the unlivable stink-scape of Hawaii in search of something-or-other. Along the way, they must woo native beauties, fend off turtle-creatures, battle mad scientists, blow up tourists, and confront an irritable volcano – all while keeping their cool in the face (specifically, the nose) of the famously repulsive odor of this tropical hellhole.

Fraught with Handey’s famously peculiar observations, The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure is a short but outrageously dense read. With roughly a dozen jokes per page, this work of singular genius pelts you with a hectic barrage of cathartic giggles that leave you drained and intellectually satisfied but might get you ejected from any public place. Choose your reading venue carefully, hunker down for the staccato hail of whimsy to come, and give bittersweet thanks for the fact that no other book is anything like The Stench of Honolulu.

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Coies of The Stench of Honolulu are available on our shelves and via bookpeople.com.