Municipal bondage
By: Henry Alford.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1993
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
Subjects: American wit and humor.
Description: Some of civilization's greatest thinkers and artists have endured the shackles of imprisonment: Socrates. Galileo. Dostoyevsky. Havel. James Brown. They have suffered, and they have taught the world a lesson. Now it is Henry Alford's turn.

An adventurous and rather odd young man who has made it his mission to probe the mysteries of the big city, Alford joins the ranks of civilization's great prisoners in Municipal Bondage, a unique collection of pranks, comic investigations, essays, and musings that reflect Alford's distinct realm of urban psychic confinement.

There is no one else on the literary humor scene like Henry Alford - for good reason. What other writer is brave enough to take a dog-grooming test intended for professionals? Attractive enough to pass himself off as a high-ranked earlobe model? Political enough to chauffeur the governor of Colorado during the Democratic National Convention? Or entrepreneurial enough to invent, bake, and peddle his own yummy snack food, Nubbins?

Working undercover, Alford uses his self-taught skills as an investigative humorist to do all of this and so much more that readers will be dizzy with delight. Interspersed among Alford's exploits are witty essays about city life and a hilarious series of ponderings that all begin with the phrase "What if..." and answer such lingering conundrums as: What if Freud had been a former fashion model? What if the Bronte sisters had been a heavy-metal band? And, of course, what if the Pope were a dog?

Henry Alford is a major comic talent. Municipal Bondage is inescapably brilliant.