A Short Review For A Short Joke Book: "The Truth About Chuck Norris!"

My fiance and I are, quite pleasantly, two very different people (though if we weren't, I suppose I'd enjoy it more when people told me to go . . . myself . . . I LOVE my fiance's body, but I digress, as I said, we're different people). Where I am into drama, my fiance is into comedy, where I can't stand horror in movies, she is squeamish about horror in real life, where she loves anything from David Bowie, I try to be impartial and take every experience for what it is. So, when I had the opportunity to treat her to a New York City vacation, I looked at it as a great chance for us to prepare more for our upcoming nuptials by having more Big Serious Conversations. And we did, for about nine of the 30,000 hours were were on the road.

On one of our stops, she found a book she wanted and (as this was a gift trip) I obligingly bought it for her. When we returned to the car and the Very Serious Conversations, my fiance cut me off and pulled out her books. I was given the choice of what she would read to me: "The Truth About Chuck Norris" and “The New York City Bartender's Joke Book” (reviewed at: http://www.epinions.com/content_463128661636 ). My first choice, because she had seemed so excited about seeing it in print, was "The Truth About Chuck Norris," by Ian Spector, which she promised would be hilarious.

Largely it is. "The Truth About Chuck Norris: 300 True Facts About The World's Greatest Human," by Ian Spector is essentially a long list of jokes - many of which are crude - where the name Chuck Norris replaces other nouns or Chuck Norris is treated as a superhuman who does everything a little differently than any ordinary man. The book is a list of four hundred jokes, most of which are simple one-line jokes (like "Somewhere in the world, Chuck Norris is plowing a woman he does not love."), though a few are two paragraph stories involving the humorous exploits of Chuck Norris.

In order to understand "The Truth About Chuck Norris," all one truly needs to know about Chuck Norris is that his movies and television shows featuring Norris doing a roundhouse kick (don't ask me what it is!), he has an impressive, full beard, he is treated in all his works as an Alpha Male, and he now participates in infomercials for the Total Gym. With that knowledge, one has all they need to to understand any of the jokes in this short book. The jokes in this book alternate randomly between jokes that trade on any one of those facts specific to Chuck Norris and ones that are entirely generic.

So, for example, jokes include both lines like "Chuck Norris trims his beard with a rusted bayonet" and "Chuck Norris had sex with your wife while you were out of town on business." The humor tends to be about that crude, but considering the market for it, it is not like one needs sophisticated "The New Yorker" style wit. These are intended to be crude, manly jokes and it makes for a great "guy gift." Don't know what to get your bartender for his stay in the hospital after his liver transplant? "The Truth About Chuck Norris" is the next best thing to a visit from Chuck Norris himself (though he'd probably prefer a liver before either)! Have a coworker who likes jokes who was fired for his sense of humor? This is a great parting gift!

The book is a simple, fast read and there are a few sketches (Chuck Norris staring down Medusa might well be my favorite) for those who like their words broken up by pictures. Some of the humor borders on misogynistic (this fictional, factual, Chuck Norris punches women in the abdomen rendering them pregnant), racist (there are a few Vietnam references that are troubling) and might disturb the subject as he is mentioned in the preface to have appeared on a program talking about school prayer (though it doesn't say which side of that issue he was on . . .). In other words, despite the fact that it is juvenile masculine humor, it is intended for adults.

It should also be noted that Spector is more of an editor or compiler of these jokes as he discusses in the Introduction how he created a website where people all over the world contributed jokes and from that he culled these four hundred "best" jokes (one wonders what Chuck Norris would think of the others . . .). Because the book is written in a deadpan, one wonders if Spector truly were sued by Norris for publishing the book, though one supposes that if that were true, the book would have ended with "Chuck Norris is coming to roundhouse kick you for buying and reading this book." It did not.

The point here, as a friend of my fiance's noted after our trip, is that for anyone with the internet and time to kill, "The Truth About Chuck Norris" is ultimately redundant. One may get all of these - and more! - online for free by checking out the site listed in Spector's book. Chuck Norris might not care about trees, but I do. Then again, as an author, I also care about royalties, so I can see why Spector opted to publish this little collection.

Redundant or not, one cannot always carry the entire internet around and when that is the case (or when one needs a secret santa gift for their hardware store workers or construction buddies) "The Truth About Chuck Norris" might be the perfect answer. This is a fun read, but after one has heard these jokes, it is hard to imagine rereading the book.

For other humor books I have reviewed, please check out:
"The Sinner's Guide To The Evangelical Right" - http://www.epinions.com/content_293213277828
“Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them” - http://www.epinions.com/content_165278551684
“If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans” - http://www.epinions.com/content_414039379588