Two excerpts from Joe Wenderoth’s

Two excerpts from Joe Wenderoth’s Letters to Wendy’s, a collection of prose written as though the author were writing them on Wendy’s Restaurant comment cards:

“Today I had a Biggie. Usually I just have a small, and refill. Why pay more? But today I needed a Biggie inside me. Some days, I guess, are like that. Only a Biggie will do. You wake up and you know; today I will get a Biggie and I will put it inside me and I will feel better. One time I saw a guy with three Biggies at once. One wonders not about him but about what it is that holds us back.”

“I was so high on Sudafed and whiskey today that I couldn’t eat. I got a Coke — actually five Cokes, as I could refill for free. It’s times like this — dehydrated, exhausted, unable to imagine home — that your plastic seats, your quiet understandable room, set beside but not quite overlooking the source of real value, offer me a tragedy small enough to want to endure.”

I couldn’t have loved this book any more than I did; it was funny, very well-written, and the Biggie joke had me on the floor each and every time it was told. So good. (Disclaimer: Normally, I wouldn’t bother with this, but Letters to Wendy’s is also extremely self-involved and contains vulgarities & profanity that would make Larry Flynt blush. I didn’t mind either of these things because they contributed to the overall story Wenderoth was trying to tell. Anyway, consider yourself forewarned…I don’t want anyone to buy this book on my recommendation and feel like I misrepresented it to them.)