The problem with spoofs is that writers have to manage parodying specific points of an established piece while still creating something funny and appealing in its own right.
Sometimes, they just fall flat.
Never was this truer than in Oddly Huge: The Ultimate Story of Ultimate Love ' author Derik Taylor's foray into satirical literature.
Taylor constructs an often lewd novel from what should have been a six-minute sketch on Saturday Night Live. It is 162 pages of predictable punch lines after expected twists.
His story, characters and entire premise are a rather unpleasant send-up of the hugely popular The Notebook, about an old man reliving the love of his life.
At moments, it is too blunt to be funny, including a scene with comedic potential he ruins by actually writing, Seth wiped and looked at the soiled toilet paper. It was going to take a few more wipes.
This is clear even in the first chapter when the main character is sitting in his bed at a nursing home and a nurse walks in displaying a tasteful bit of cleavage.
He continues.
She opens my Venetian blinds while I check out her ass.
That sentence could sum up the entire book. Taylor tries to mix the absurd and the overtly sexual with banal prose, the usual outcome being that neither ingredient stands out enough to make any impact.
If he would have written a purely pornographic novel with the intent of being sardonic, or written an intelligent piece with subtle jabs at an admittedly melodramatic genre, then he might have succeeded.
But as it stands, Taylor's book is a continual disappointment, never more clever than what someone would say after watching something like The Notebook and never funnier than someone else's inside joke.
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Justin Thompson
