Letters To
Wendy's is a work of fiction (perhaps a collection of short
poems?) by
Joe Wenderoth. It is essentially a collection of
fictional Wendy's
consumer response cards.... Those little things by the
cash register with the words "
We Care!" in a soothing red, and several lines on which to provide your feedback. They are at once poetic,
disturbing, and surprisingly engaging: I read the 300 or so sub-100 word
pseudo-letters over the course of an afternoon while stuck at an
aunt's house. It is what I would describe as an excellent
emergency read: It doesn't try and go too
deep, and it can be read one page at a time, so as to make it easy to put down if the need arises. The
letters manage to be very funny, but not overtly so.
July 4, 1996 (Independence Day)
I wonder what "beauty" really is. I know that the little girl,
Wendy, who is pictured on your cups and bags, is beautiful,
and so is the green green descent into the valley. Within
this descent, I can feel the overpowering order within which
I am but a temporary eccentricity. This overpowering,
anticipated but absent, is beauty. I'd like to spank Wendy's
white ass and fuck her hard.
This is the third letter in the book, and
sets the mood of the rest of the piece. It's almost as if the author wanted to do something really deep, but at the last minute decided to go for the
cheap joke. In not taking itself too seriously, and through excellent use of
language, It manages to be one of the most
refreshing reads I have had the pleasure of enjoying in recent history. For the record, the above
exert is not really
representational of the whole book, although I might be
reluctant to recommend it to your grandmother.
March 20, 1997
If you need someone to hold the fort down, you need
someone dead. I'm your man. If I'm not dead, no one is.
There's no fort I cannot hold down. It's impossible to
convey just how dead I am and how secure the fort would
be in my care. Perhaps seeing it evaporate in the care of
someone far less dead than myself would make you
understand. But then, there is no understanding without
the fort.
If you're in the right
mood, Letters To Wendy's comes off as surreally entertaining. If not, it is
literary self-indulgence. A
non-traditional sense of humour is perhaps a must for full enjoyment of this book, but then as far as I'm concerned, the same can be said for most things in life.
Letters To Wendy's
Joe Wenderoth
ISBN: 0-9703672-0-1
Verse Press,
Athens, GA -
Amherst, MAnode your bookcase.