humor

I thought "Private Parts" was funnier, but this book is different--it is more introspective but still has many hilarious moments. The hysterical chapter on Stern's meeting with Michael Jackson is definitely worth the price of this book alone. He trashes Jackson thoroughly, asking the question no one dares to ask: "If you love children so much, where are the girls?" I kept reading this chapter over and over again. What I like about Howard Stern is that he is not afraid to tell the truth. He is not awed by celebrities and doesn't hesitate to shred them apart when they deserve it. He is great at exposing celebrity hypocrisy and hype. Another incredibly funny account is Stern's experience with cybersex and meeting his cybermates in person. The language is foul, vulgar and crude in this book, but if you can get beyond that, you'll realize what an incredibly brilliant and funny man Stern is. Even the way he uses typefaces in this book effectively conveys his feelings to the reader and makes what he says twice as funny. If you're offended by graphic language, I wouldn't recommend this book. But if you have a biting, satirical, twisted sense of humor, you'll enjoy this book immensely.

Howard Stern is an American icon. There is no denying it. I read every blasphemous page of Miss America. It made me feel belittled, sullied, and degraded; and I loved it. From his quest to become a gubernatorial rubber stamp for the death penalty in New York to his almost adulterous encounters with trolls posing as on-line goddesses to his pitiful enslavement to obsessive-compulsive dementia, I found this book to be enormously therapeutic in showing that Howard's life is even more pathetic than my own. While it may be yet another slap in the face to his long suffering wife, it is an important step in Stern's eventual monopoly of American popular culture. I would rank this book alongside Bocaccio's Decameron as the most significant dirty book to come along in the last thousand years.

It would be far too easy to dismiss this book as "just more of the same from the author of Private Parts" because by and large it is just that. But if you do write off (no pun intended) Howard's second novel, then you will truly miss out on discovering the real Howard Stern.

What Howard does in Miss America that he did not in Private Parts, is take his time to think. In his second novel he does not seem in such a mad rush to blurt out every intimate detail of his existence and of those around him. This time we discover a slightly older and more thoughtful Howard Stern. Don't get me wrong he has not seen any error in his ways, nor does he intend to change them. But he does stop to consider why and it makes the whole reading experience far more enjoyable.

Howard has still not lost his rapier wit and it is still delivered with a sledgehammer. Nor has he lost his love of naked females and that is sort of reassuring, for if he were to change at this point, we would know he was a phoney.

In Miss America Howard does go back over some old territory, but this time gives us another perspective. For Example we see the World of Howard, from Robin's eyes and it is an eye opener. Howard also has fun exploring and analysing his friendship with Fred Norris and this all makes for great reading. But the fun really begins when he gives us full chapter and verse on how he totally destroys a rival DJ and it is then that book becomes (to use a cliché) a real page turner.

Miss America is not as funny as Private parts, but a more thoughtful and enjoyable read as once again we are get another look at the world through Howard's small and very dark glasses.