His exploits, rants are a laughfest for readers

(Not That You Asked) Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions
By Steve Almond
Random House, 304 pp., $21.95

Comedian Richard Pryor famously transformed his own pain and soul-shattering personal demons into unforgettable comedy. Pryor's complete lack of self-censorship, his willingness to give voice to his darkest thoughts, is a trait shared by local author Steve Almond in this absurdly funny collection of 20 personal essays.

In a hilarious essay, Almond describes how erotic he thought it would be to have his girlfriend wax his chest. Needless to say, things didn't go as planned: "This wasn't your standard sexual miscalculation," writes Almond, "The I'm-feeling-crazy-tonight-are-you-feeling-crazy-baby?-back sprain-mambo. The let's-do-it-in-a-public-place-Oh-Hi-Officer-deluxe."

Almond describes the entire painful-for-him, laughfest-for-us disaster in vivid, itchy detail.

Like many of us, Almond has a love-hate relationship with celebrities. He opens his collection with a series of letters to Oprah Winfrey, the first of which pre-emptively rejects her potential selection of "(Not That You Asked)" for her book club. After speaking with his publisher, and considering that Oprah's selection could make him obscenely wealthy, Almond follows up with a letter of apology, telling Oprah that his previous letter "was my way of rejecting you before you could reject me. Pretty third-grade on my part." After eight more increasingly groveling missives to his "homegirl" Oprah, all unanswered, Almond has one final ploy: "it occurred to me last night, in the midst of re-reading 'The Gospel According to Oprah,' that a gesture of trust was needed to seal the bond between us. So here she is. . ." Almond ships Oprah his infant daughter.

Almond will do almost anything for attention, and his willingness to explore this fact is among his most endearing, laugh-inducing qualities. He's contacted by a VH1 reality show called "Totally Obsessed" that wants to film his obsession with candy (he wrote a book called "Candyfreak"). A film crew arrives, taking over Almond's apartment and micromanaging his entire existence: "the most effective way to take over a country was not to bomb them at all," writes Almond, "but to send reality TV crews." He follows every instruction of the show's producer like a trained monkey, even speaking erotically to candy bars on cue, but when she demands that he "roll around in candy," Almond refuses. Later, he faces the ultimate indignity when his segment gets axed.

Almond has a serious side too. He writes a thought-provoking essay about how death-obsessed television shows like "CSI" reflect America's unconscious guilt about war. He offers a brilliant essay - part autobiography, part literary biography - about his devotion to the late Kurt Vonnegut, revering the novelist as a second father. He also describes a tumultuous week when he resigned his teaching job at Boston College in response to the school's selection of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as commencement speaker. Almond, a passionate Iraq War opponent, found himself under assault by a conservative media that depicted him as a left-wing nut-job. When Almond gets interviewed (and predictably bullied) on Fox-TV and decides to mention accusations of sexual harassment leveled against host Bill O'Reilly, he's summarily taken off the air.

Almond isn't one to hold back. Even crazier than attacking the likes of Oprah and O'Reilly, Almond has the temerity to condemn Red Sox Nation: "I have never encountered a group of fans as whiny, sanctimonious, and unforgiving as Red Sox Nation." It's just another "oh-no-he-didn't" moment in a collection brimming with them. While "(Not That You Asked)" may offend the faint of heart, readers comfortable with a little savagery and the occasional TMI ("too much information") will find themselves laughing at the bizarre, refreshingly irreverent world inside Steve Almond's head.

Chuck Leddy is a freelance writer who lives in Dorchester.