Title: I Want to Buy a Vowel
First published: 1996
Description: "My doctor says Mylanta..." "Aetna, I'm glad I met ya..." "The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup..." What if you were an illegal alien? What if the only way you had to learn to speak English, and learn about America, was by watching TV? Who else would help? Who would tell you how to buy a vowel and get on Wheel of Fortune? Who else would understand? "Kotex understands...".

So does John Welter. His third novel, I Want to Buy a Vowel, asks the question "Where do you sleep when you're still dreaming the American Dream?" It's full of the offbeat irony that reviewers cheered in his first two novels and that has won him a cult following among the ranks of the terminally irreverent.

John Welter's I Want to Buy a Vowel is a joyous satire of all-American alienation, small-town confusion, and local media gone amok. It tells the story of how a little man looking for a home and a little girl looking for God find big trouble over the course of a long, hot summer. And it answers, once and for all the burning question: "Have you driven a Ford, lately?..."
Subjects: Fiction, Study and teaching, Guatemalans, English language, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, humorous, Fiction, humorous, general
Places: United States
LC classification: PS3573.E4963 I2 1996