all the folks involved with this incredibly tasteless book.
How to Get Fat is one of a series of so-called "self hurt" books. We know they're supposed to be funny because of the Dick-and-Jane-style illustrations. Other titles in the series include How to Get Into Debt, How to Drive Like a Maniac, and How to Traumatize Your Children. Now there's a knee-slapper. They're all published by an outfit called Knock Knock, which describes itself this way:
We are Knock Knock, a semi-spanking-new design company with aspirations to greatness. We concoct, manufacture, and distribute witty objects of cosmopolitan panache. . . . Our customers comprise the impish, the dapper, the droll, the young-at-heart—those who feel misunderstood by Santa-inflected wrapping paper and maudlin gilded greeting-card sentiments that rhyme. . . . Knock Knock seeks to integrate art and commerce—creating original, authentic, noncynical products that support themselves in the marketplace so that we don’t have to deal with “clients.”. . . Rather than a product category, material, or target market, Knock Knock’s unifying force is a sensibility. Also, we read a lot.
I'm all for poking fun at ourselves, but this one just doesn't seem funny. The humor here derives from the usual assumption that being thin is a choice and that any idiot would certainly choose it. It's really nothing more than a po-mo diet book.
Should you feel like weighing in on this book, you can contact the publisher at info@knockknock.biz or call (800) 656-5662.
