Scanning the Bookshelf

All those who think that Chuck Palahniuk is William S. Burroughs and David Foster Wallace rolled into one, please stand on the right side of the room. Thank you.

All those who think Chuck Palahniuk is an overhyped empty suit (in writing terms), please step to the left side of the room. Thank you.

Hmmm, this looks like a bad split — you guys are worse than the California Legislature! I guess it's up to me to make the call.

And I can't. I, too, have mixed — make that very mixed — feelings about the Palahniuk oeuvre. When he's good, he's great, and when he's bad he's not so great.

But he's always interesting, and even when he's stinking up the joint, there are enough flashes of lightning to keep you engaged. (Example: His last work, "Snuff.")

So, it was again a coin toss when I opened "Pygmy" (Doubleday, 241 pages, $24.95), a "return to the fine form of 'Fight Club'" that is "'The Manchurian Candidate' meets 'South Park,'" per the press release.

Pygmy, a young adult sent to the United States to destroy us in an act of massive terrorism, is an exchange student in the Midwest. "Pygmy" is written in wild brainwashed spy-speak — "For official record, only host sister looks rewarding opponent. Host sister; stealth cat. Cat of night, silent but eying all happen. Cat sister press red paper bundle on fingers of operative me, host sister say 'I hope it fits.'" — and here Palahniuk's brilliant and hilarious.

Can he sustain it for 241 pages? Can you sustain interest for 241 pages? Let's see how the room divides this time.

P.J. O'Rourke's another room divider, but mostly for political reasons. O'Rourke has a refreshing, decidedly not knee-jerk right-wing take on life that some knee-jerk lefties can't stomach, but he's a hilarious observer of American craziness who cheerfully skewers all sorts of folks and all sorts of ideas.

Cars are just the framework to explore and skewer those folks and ideas in "Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-bending, Celebrating America the Way It's Supposed to Be — With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 258 pages, $24). As always, target No. 1 for O'Rourke are the Fun-Suckers: "Ruining cars could produce an even bigger sensation (and government) than the Fun-Suckers previous golden oldie: Prohibition.

After all, at any given moment there are a few people on the wagon and hence not affected by Prohibition. But Americans never get out of their cars."

"Driving Like Crazy" is a mix of old and new material that shows O'Rourke to be a stouthearted satirist who hasn't wavered yet.

Official Peek Behind the Curtain: I picked up Andy Raskin's "The Ramen King and I" (Gotham Books, 292 pages, $26) because of its subtitle: "How the Inventor of Instant Noodles Fixed My Love Life."

And I'm glad it caught my eye because Raskin has produced a memoir that's way more than that — "The Ramen King and I" is a romp through Raskin's past, obsessions and, well, generally sad-sack self on a great quest.

The quest: To meet Momofuku Ando, the man behind that instant strip of dry dough. "The Ramen King and I" features Raskin's letters to Ando, chapters spread throughout on "A Very Brief History of Momofuku Ando," thoughts on "The Fundamental Misunderstanding of Humanity" and much more. Heat up a bowl of Oodles of Noodles and enjoy!

If nothing else, to judge from the unending stream of books on the subject, the conflicts in the Middle East are good for publishers and authors. The latest entry: "Myths, Illusions, & Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East" (Viking, 366 pages, $27.95) by Dennis Ross and David Makovsky.

Ross is an official player, having served as chief peace negotiator for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and now working as an adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Gulf and Southwest Asia. Makovsky, a former journalist, is no slouch either, serving as a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and as a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.

Their goal: to counter "wrong-headed assumptions" about the region because "With 9/11, we learned the hard way that the Las Vegas rule doesn't apply to the Middle East: What happens there does not stay there." "Myths, Illusions, & Peace" takes on the policy differences from left, right and center, deconstructs arguments one by one, and tries to offer a "new realism" to guide policymakers to focus on, and promote, peacemaking, reform and accountability in this volatile chunk of the globe. It's thorough and well-written, and shouldn't be wasted on those of rigid mind inside the beltway.

To find out more about Martin Zimmerman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.