Overqualified
Joey Comeau
ECW Press
ISBN 978-1-5502-858-8
Buy at Amazon
File Under: Fiction

Okay a show of hands, how many of you remember Mark Leyner? Okay put your hands down, this is the Internet, I can't see you. I haven't read Leyner in ten years, but there is something about Comeau that reminds me of Leyner. Both write in a stream of consciousness style that seems in no way tied together. Although each small piece is funny, you don't get the feeling your going to get a cohesive story out of it. It is funny enough so you keep going and then after a while you realize through all this odd fog a story is being pieced together. Quick show of hands, does any of what I just wrote make any sense?

What Comeau has assembled here is a series of cover letters to various companies asking for jobs instead of going into the usual lies that we all tell, he tells sometimes manic stories from his life about his girlfriend, his grandmother or his dead brother. I know what can be funnier than a dead brother? But, thinking of some human resource drone reading these letters cracked me up every time. The idea to write a story out of a series of cover letters is a unique concept. It is a difficult concept that Comeau terrifically pulls off.

In a letter applying to be a bookkeeper he let's them know he has been keeping books for four years now and he is never going to give them back. He wants to write greeting cards for Hallmark and goes into a tirade about what used to be called a secret admirer is now called a stalker.

This is a slim book checking in at 94 pages, you will probably read it in one sitting. I guarantee that you will laugh out-loud at least once and that you will try to share what was so funny with someone who will just stare at you like you are a freak.

I found out through the little author bio on the back that Comeau is also a co-writer of A Softer World , a great web comic that I have read for a little bit. This makes him only cooler in my book. Check out A Softer World to see a sampling of the letters in this book.