More Letters From A Nut

Seinfeld. For more than 33 million viewers, the Emmy Award-winning television show has become a Thursday night ritual. Now, even though the show has ended, Jerry Seinfeld's distinct brand of humor can still be yours. Ted L. Nancy's first book, Letters from a Nut, with an introduction by Jerry Seinfeld, now has more than 225,000 copies in print. In More Letters From a Nut, master-prankster Nancy shares even more sidesplittingly funny letters he has written and the unbelievable true responses he has received.

Spoof letter writing has a long history from Lazlo Toth to Henry Root but nothing can prepare you for the uniquely surreal and endearing world of Ted L Nancy. A kind of Trigger Happy correspondence, his innocent requests, queries, complaints, demands and suggestions to hotels, airlines, multi-national corporations, local government and department stores are so absurd it is amazing they fool anyone - but often the deadpan responses are even more hilarious. Ted wants to know if he can graft his big toe onto his nose, why his wife left him while he was in a coma for another man in a coma, and if he can consummate his marriage in the administrative office of the chapel. He writes to hotels telling them he eats his mattress. He writes to casinos to ask if his band the 'Fat Beatles' can perform and if he can stay in their hotel dressed as a bladder. Utterly addictive and wet-yourself-in-a-public-place funny: Dear Business Permits Dept: I want to apply for a business permit in your fine city... I operate the SOUP & SLEEP RESTAURANTS. You can either order soup or sleep. A hostess will greet you and you would say, "I'd like to sleep." She will lead you to a table where you can catch a few winks. Dear Helena Ocean & Dog Licensing Dept: I will stage the play "MARK TWAIN WITH TOURETTE'S SYNDROME."... Let me know what arrangements I need to make to store my anchovy tank at your seaport. Thank you. I await large crowds.

The best-selling author of Letters from a Nut presents a latest collection of whimsical correspondence between the author and the unwary establishments, organizations and government offices that attempted to respond to such requests as a hotel room for 300 hamsters and a 59-foot piece of bologna.

Welcome to the world of Ted L. Nancy. Some have called him inspired, some have called him a goofball, and many have wondered who Ted really is. All we know is that Ted loves to write and it shows-Extra Nutty! is chock full of nut, a record of real live correspondence from America's favorite pen pal to a cross-section of this great nation. Extra Nutty! is bursting with all new letters showing Ted at his looniest. Take, for example, this: Dear Business Permits Dept.: I want to apply for a business permit in your fine city...I operate the Soup & Sleep Restaurants. You can either order soup or sleep. A hostess will greet you and you would say, "I'd like to sleep." She will lead you to a table where you can catch a few winks. Or this: Dear Helena Ocean & Dog Licensing Dept: I will stage the play "Mark Twain with Tourette's Syndrome.". . . Let me know what arrangements I need to make to store my anchovie tank at your seaport. Thank you. I await large crowds. Or even this: Dear Kmart: I have invented a male underpants liner...This liner fits right in your shorts and can be thrown away after 15 weeks. I have been wearing the same pair of underwear for 105 days now and although they feel a little stretchy they are perfectly clean. Ted's unique way of looking at the world-and how the world responds to Ted's schemes--is captured here in this extra nutty, hugely hilarious collection.

"Sorry, there's no way we can use this." - Plumpers Magazine "As a word of advice, it always helps for writers to be familiar with the publications they submit material to." - Fencers Quarterly Magazine Ed writes short stories. He's prolific. And desperate to get published. But he sends his stories to the wrong magazines. As for the magazines? Well, they don't mind telling him so: "Dear Ed: I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry..." "Dear Ed: Thank you for your recent submission to Steamboat Magazine; it was wonderful to hear how much our magazine has touched you..." "Dear Ed: We do not publish stories about individuals like Conugal Cal, or about underwear-no matter how often references are made to fencing." "Dear Mr. Broth: Thank you for providing the editors with an opportunity to review your manuscript, 'Luau Lester'..." "Dear Mr. Broth: Thank you for the opportunity to review your article, 'My Car Ride with Daddy,' for possible publication in Mushing..." With this book, Ed Broth finally sees his work published. His "Stories of Hope & Inspiration" and his "Stories of Meaning & Sacrament" plus his passionate pitches to place his writing in our nation's premier publications-from Pest Control Magazine to Arthritis Today-are all to be found in the book you hold in your hands. Some might have advised Ed not to send his story "I Love Dogs" to I Love Cats Magazine or to stop submitting revised stories to editors who have already turned them down. But, well, that's just not the way Ed's mind works. Studded like a rich cranberry strudel with nuggets of genius -from cartoons and advertisements to actual newspaper articles from across the country - Stories From a Moron is an addictive journey into the mind of a great talent.

A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS • “This biography-through-letters gives an intimate and warm voice to the imagination behind the treasury of uncanny tales that is Shirley Jackson’s legacy.”—Joyce Carol Oates Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson’s beloved fiction: flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad. i am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story—with as many levels as grand central station—with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet. Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson’s college years to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday: raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson’s writing over nearly three decades. The novel is getting sadder. It’s always such a strange feeling—I know something’s going to happen, and those poor people in the book don’t; they just go blithely on their ways. Compiled and edited by her elder son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, in consultation with Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy and featuring Jackson’s own witty line drawings, this intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson—writer and reader, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife—up to the light.

Humour.

In the bestselling tradition of "The Lazlow Letters" and "Letters from a Nut," screenwriter Paul Davidson has been firing off humble but humorous letters to Fortune 500 companies to find answers to such hot-button questions like why hasn't Minute Maid begun to sell an all pulp, juice-free product yet, and whether it's safe to microwave a bowl of Marshmallow Fluff on high for ten minutes. And the funny thing is . . . consumer-care departments everywhere have been writing back to him, addressing his queries with deadpan seriousness. Collecting dozens of selections from Davidson's funniest correspondence, "Consumer Joe" uncovers why a box of fifty envelopes only contained forty-seven and how colorblind people are supposed to tell whether their Ziploc baggies ("yellow and blue makes green") are properly sealed, while making numerous product-improvement suggestions along the way (such as adding Tuna Melt flavor to the Jamba Juice product line). Taking aim at the increasingly advertising-sponsored society, "Consumer Joe" features utterly absurd but irresistible missives to companies ranging from Barnes & Noble and Fed-Ex to Southwest Airlines and Taco Bell. Full of kvetches we all can relate to, "Consumer Joe" is poised to become the patron saint of every beleaguered shopper.