Arcade of Cruelty – A Review

This book dances on the edge of being either one of the funnier and rawest comedy books I have read or just a totally egotistical vanity project by Joseph Patrick Larkin.

The beginning of the book is my favorite part. From the time you open the book and read the credits to the “This book belongs to” page I was laughing before the book officially had started. Then we get into a grade school and middle school yearbook pages that had been marked up and had the juvenile humor that is so inane and idiotic at times, yet so true to the way at least some of my friends were that it had me cracking up and thinking this was one of the finest humor books ever done.

The book did not maintain the pure quality of the raw and unedited humor I found in the early pages as the book is the about the imaginary death of Joseph Patrick Larkin and someone is suppose to be publishing all of his works including sketch books and other such material. In reality it is a self published book by Joseph Larkin and he appears to be publishing anything and everything he ever did and some of it is absolute trash, but again that is part of the joke in my view as when someone dies all of a sudden even stuff the person who died thought was garbage is now considered gold.

As a true cartoonist Joseph is lacking in drawing ability, but as a humorist and commentator on life I found some of the work to be amusing and to be fair chunks of the book to be less then worthwhile. It is the raw and unvarnished part of his humor and the actual concept of the book that had me enjoying this book. I get tired of everyone trying to be PC and there is nothing PC about this book and I’m sure it will offend many people, which in an odd way made me enjoy it that much more for a truly honest viewpoint that is expressed in this book.

Bottom Line for an $18 dollar cover price, I got more laughs and amusement out of this book that I have from many movies and when my wife and I go to a movie it is $20 without a drink or popcorn. Note for the faint of heart or the easily offended, but for those of you who can handle an expletive laden non-PC quirky humor book worth checking out.