Ian Frazier is unquestionably one of America's greatest living humorists, a writer with a distinct, generous sensibility and a thousand different voices. His work is hilarious, elegant, and piercing, drawing on high and low cultureto expose the warped line of thought running beneath our public selves. When "The Atlantic Monthly "published four humorists among the best writing ever to appear in the magazine, they chose essays by Mark Twain, James Thurber, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ian Frazier's "Lamentations of the Father." This collection, gathered from the past fourteen years of his career, once again proves him worthy of that great company. Ian Frazier is the author of seven works of nonfiction including "Great Plains," "Family," and "On the Rez." He has also published two collections of humor writing and is a past winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. A frequent contributor to "The New Yorker," he has also written for "Outside" and other magazines. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey. Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor When "The Atlantic Monthly "celebrated its 150th anniversary by publishing excerpts from the best writing ever to appear in the magazine, it chose only four pieces in the category of the humorous essay--one by Mark Twain, one by James Thurber, one by Kurt Vonnegut, and Ian Frazier's 1997 essay "Lamentations of the Father." The title piece of this new collection has had an ongoing life in anthologies, in radio performances, in audio recordings, on the internet, and in photocopies on refrigerator doors. The august company in which "The Atlantic "placed Frazier gives an idea of where his humorous pieces lie on the literary spectrum. Frazier's work is funny and elegant and poetic and of the highest literary aspiration, all at the same time. More serious than a "gag" writer, funnier than other essayists of equal accomplishment, Frazier is of a classical originality. This collection, a companion to his previous humor collections "Dating Your Mom" and "Coyote v. Acme," contains thirty-three pieces gathered from the last thirteen years. "Although our era is awash in comedy, literary humor has dwindled in recent years . . . Indeed, if there were a federal registry for endangered literary genres, humor surely would be on it, a prose equivalent of the black-footed ferret. All of this makes Ian Frazier a kind of rara avis and his new collection of essays, "Lamentations of the Father," is as welcome as another sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker. As a longtime staff writer for the "New Yorker," the author has enjoyed the protection of what amounts to one of literary humor's protected habitats, and he has made the most of it. No one writing in this genre today hits the mark with anything like Frazier's frequency. The measure of his success is the number of pieces you'll want to read aloud to others--partly to share the pleasure, partly to explain why you've been making all those strangling noises. What distinguishes literary humor from other forms of contemporary comedy is that, in most instances, you can share it with those around you, even if one of the listeners can't get into a PG-13 film on his own . . . One of the many pleasures of Frazier's humorous sensibility is that it doesn't deny the distinction between high and low, but integrates the two as equally real and worthy of consideration. The title 'The New Poetry, ' for example, could be ripped from the hand-cut pages of any one of several dozen magazines. In Frazier's hands, it becomes the occasion for considering a Thomas Hardy you won't quite recognize and an Ezra Pound whose pretensions you will, because he 'had a Parisian jeweler make a solid-gold laurel wreath for him, which he wore about his temples when he attended award ceremonies of the French Academy.' If the author's account of his 'new poets' and their art seems curiously like an entertainment page piece on a stable of rap musicians, well . . . there's this on the Wystan Hugh you never knew: 'In his personal life, Auden was Peck's Bad Boy, in and out of trouble with the law. His sad gentle eyes and seamed face gave no indication of the trouble in store if you messed with him. His mother, who supported him throughout his career, always said that the literary rivals Auden shot would have done the same to him if he had given them the chance. Certainly, there was some truth in that . . . When a dispute over the acceptability of an off-rhyme led to gunplay, Auden was always the one authorities came looking for.' And what, measured against literary immortality, are the commonplace vagaries of middle age? To Frazier's shrewd eye--and in his graceful hands--they're a small window in the universal condition."--Tim Rutten, "Los Angeles Times" "Ian Frazier is an antidote for the blues."--"The Boston Globe" "Frazier is a master of the trade and for those cursed with literacy, an absolute howl."--Jeff Simon, "The Buffalo News" "A celebrated essayist for "The Atlantic Monthly" and "The New Yorker," Ian Frazier knows funny. The only reason he's not a household name in mainstream America is that his wit is of the Dorothy Parker variety: dry, smart and satirical. Think Twain and Vonnegut if they'd changed diapers and blogged from Starbucks. When this wit taps into something universal, a Frazier essay can and has started e-mail wildfires. The title essay of his latest collection, 'Lamentations of the Father, ' did just that a few years back. Written as a benediction filtered through the thoughts and world-weary mouth of a stay-at-home dad, it beseeches, curses and, well, laments about how and why children act in such a childlike manner. It's one of the most original, laugh-out-loud rants in a decade . . . 'Unbowed' is an inspired piece in which Frazier mocks the tabloid tradition of sensationalizing every utterance and move of our modern royalty: the movie star. Frazier opens with two real quotes from the daily trials and tribulations of Russell