Cast in the form of a hilariously ribald parody of a literary quarterly, ?"The Tar Baby"?is a brilliant, audacious, story-filled novel populated by an array of brawling academics and earthy townies. A commemorative issue honoring the late Anatole Waxman-Weissman, the book/journal parodies a number of academic fads and concerns as the various contributors expose their and their subject's many idiosyncrasies while pursuing their own private agendas.
Be it known that The Tar Baby, while just as jovial but much randier, has nothing to do with Uncle Remus. It's the quarterly of a little, very literary magazine of Galapagos Junior College (California) and this book will appear with some eye-catching visual effects beginning with the little black bare-assed boy with cheeks who is just as well off without a diaper considering the number of referrals to what it might have been loaded with. This particular issue is a memorial to Anatole Waxman-Weissman, 1931-1972, a lexicographer and logomachist who devoted his life to variant versions of a work (full of "cloacal musings") on Wittgenstein before he ended it by walking into a bus (deliberately?). The issue contains comments on both the contribution of this "booby hatch philosopher" as well as his early on rite de passage in the hands of the ladies in a nearby motel bordello - he marries the daughter of its housemother who runs off with a plumber. Along with a good deal of infighting among departmental thick heads as well as the brawling of the natives, this is tilled in via bits and pieces - pieces which might include anything from a recipe for turtle pie to an account of the Tong War of 1858. Will there be any exegetes? It's hard to say since the level is quite high and quite low at the same time - think of it as both scatologica slapstick and an academic sendup which is funny, in spots. (Kirkus Reviews)
