Cranial Fracking

by Ian Frazier

Overview

Dispatches from the front lines of American culture by the great humorist

Ian Frazier, “America’s greatest essayist” (Los Angeles Times), has gathered his insights on the most urgent issues of today in Cranial Fracking. From climate change (what did Al Gore say at his colloquium on the rising temperatures in Hell?) to the state of culture (what do you do when you’re afflicted with Loss of Funding?) to Texas (what should we do with Texas?), he has all the answers. Or, at the very least, a lot of questions.

Frazier is endlessly curious and perpetually delighted, and seeing the absurdity of the world through his eyes is irresistible. Once more, the author of Hogs Wild and Travels in Siberia has struck oil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374603076
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ian Frazier is the author of Travels in Siberia, Great Plains, On the Rez, Lamentations of the Father and Coyote V. Acme, among other works, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He graduated from Harvard University. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Recap

By the Foot

A. S. A. P.

Mi Chiamo Stan

Lines on the Poet’s Turning Forty

The Temperature of Hell: A Colloquium

Fanshawe

Remembering Justice Stevens

In My Defense

A Bow to Our Benefactors

Messages from Dr. Abravenel

99% Chance

Cranial Fracking

All Mine

Disclos’d

Recherche

The Roosevelt Outtakes

Walking Normally: The Facts

On Texas

Deniers

Buds

Shining City

Enough to Make a Dog Laugh

Of Younger Days

Confab

Still Looking

The Rise of Artificial Unintelligence

The Disturbing Case of the Dead Witch

Incident Review

Why Mummies?

Goodbye, My Funding

Victor Laszlo’s Blog

The British Museum of Your Stuff

Take My Globalist Wife

It’s the Data, Dolts

Ask the Compliance Expert

Italy

In Billionaires Is the Preservation of the World

Creative

Once and Future Prince

Etymology of Some Common Typos

In the Mail

Dracula Is off the Case

Two Plus Two

Editorial Reviews

05/24/2021

Longtime New Yorker contributor and humorist Frazier (Lamentations of the Father) bounces between the acerbic and the gently humorous in this uneven but fun collection of satiric miscellany. In “Once and Future Prince,” Frazier turns an anodyne ABC News item into a playful rumination on the Prince music that could be released post-2025 (“Raspberry Hazmat Beret,” perhaps), and “In My Defense” fashions an Associated Press report on the Boy Scouts’ new scout leader requirements into a concise and incisive essay about heresy. Frazier is at his best when firing shots at the ultra-wealthy and well-connected, or the ridiculous state of funding and fellowships that support the arts, delivering insightful essays that have plenty of bite. Some pieces, though, have had their comedic edge dulled by time, as with “The Temperature of Hell: A Colloquium,” from 2009, in which Frazier imagines Al Gore giving an Inconvenient Truth–esque PowerPoint presentation to the denizens of hell. But even the more meandering entries (“Dracula is Off the Case,” for example, which imagines Dracula as a brash New York City detective) are still entertaining. Frazier’s fans will be delighted, even if there are a few duds in the mix. Agent: Jin Auh, the Wylie Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2021-06-29
A short, bumpy ride through the humorist’s dry, deadpan sensibilities.

Perhaps it’s comparing almonds to walnuts, but Frazier’s latest, a hit-and-miss foray into absurdist humor, is not in the class of his much-admired travel books. The author makes a few penetrating satirical stabs at contemporary follies and offers spasms of cleverness, yet too many of the three-page ditties are like underinflated balloons that fizzle out, and the savagely funny pieces only serve to underscore the collection’s overall unevenness. However, the idea of climate change in Hades (“The Temperature of Hell: A Colloquium”) is certainly delicious, and “In My Defense,” a survey of assorted heresies perpetrated by a scoutmaster who has lost his faith, is amusingly clever. There’s also a wry Shakespearean parody on the rigors of parking thy horse and some chuckles to be had with the title piece, in which Frazier sells the extraction rights to vast reserves of natural gas found in his head. When he is critiquing artificial intelligence or advocating for mummies in what is otherwise a golden age of zombies, the theater of the absurd is taken to brave new worlds—consider Jane Austen, “who featured zombies in all her exquisitely wrought nineteenth-century comedies of manners.” One can’t deny that great opening lines like, “I was walking down the street one afternoon, when I suddenly lost funding” belong in a pantheon of sorts, and the idea of Victor Laszlo writing a blog is amusing. Some may cock an eyebrow at the slyly witty “The British Museum of Your Stuff,” wherein larceny and scholarship go hand in hand, or enjoy Frazier’s exercise in anti-travel planning. But there are also plenty of misses, including “Etymology of Some Common Typos,” making this a minor work in the author’s oeuvre. For more substantial essay-length pieces, check out Hogs Wild (2017).

For Frazier fans. His style of badinage remains an acquired taste that not everyone may wish to acquire.

Kirkus Reviews

"[Cranial Fracking] secures Ian Frazier's status as a shrewd social commentator masquerading as a great wit."—Nell Beram, Shelf Awareness

"When [Frazier] is critiquing artificial intelligence or advocating for mummies in what is otherwise a golden age of zombies, the theater of the absurd is taken to brave new worlds." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher