Me:By Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente As told to Garrison Keillor (1999) HCDJ Signed

by Garrison Keillor

$65 · Offered by eBay

Signed

Me: by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente by Garrison Keillor (Author) Format: Hardcover In a political satire inspired by--but not based on--recent events, the new governor of Minnesota recounts to a ghostwriter his boyhood as an adoptee, his military experiences as a Navy Walrus in Vietnam, and his life in professional wrestling You don't need to know squat about wrestler-turned-governor Jesse (The Body) Ventura to read Keillor's book about Gov. Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente--he'll have you doubled up gasping for air, whether you like it or not. Writing in wrestle-speak unleashes Keillor's more rampageous comic impulses. He writes like Joe Bob Briggs, Ethan Coen, Hunter Thompson, and the young tall-tale-teller Mark Twain (whose characters the Duke and the Dauphin he steals). It's not just a Twin Cities tale, either. Once young Jimmy discovers Hank Hercules's mail-order bodybuilding course, he goes from Minnesota bully magnet to globe-straddling he-man. (The book's design echoes Charles Atlas ads.) In Vietnam, Jimmy kicks commie butt with the elite Walrus Corps and meets his lifelong stalker, the V.C. turncoat the Rodent. In Alaska, Jimmy joins the IWW wrestling circuit and makes the monocled bone crusher Oberkapitan Werner Wehrmacht, Vicious Eddie with the zippered cheek, and Dave the Postal Worker look like NPR-listening wimps. Jimmy wrestles a 1,200-pound she-grizzly, and he's man enough to keep interrupting his life story to pick fights with his amanuensis ("Mr. Keillor is a tired old ha

  • Publisher: Viking
  • Year: 1999
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • ISBN: 067088796X
  • Condition: Good

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