by Ian Frazier
1986, 123 pages, Picador

Don’t be put off by the title. Well, certainly, we encourage you to be turned off by the title, but just because it sounds like a how-to book authored by Oedipus, don’t let it deter you from picking it up. “Dating Your Mom” is actually a hilarious collection of essays by author and frequent New Yorker contributor Ian Frazier.

Don’t be put off by the author photo, either. Plenty of cool guys have ponytails. Well, OK, we can only think of one other (Jeremy Heflin, we’re talking about you). But, there are always exceptions to the rule. Ian Frazier happens to be one of them.
In the opening essay, “The Bloomsbury Group Live at the Apollo (Liner Notes from the New Best-Selling Album),” Frazier imagines the personalities of the infamous English writers’ collective, which claimed such luminaries as Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, performing a show at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, not so much as authors, but as rock stars. It’s a howlingly funny literary “Behind the Music.”

“Lytton Strachey, who has been more or less out of the funk-literary picture since his girlfriend threw boiling grits on him in his Memphis hotel room in March of 1924, proves here that his voice is still as sugar-coated,” the essay reads.

In “A Good Explanation,” Frazier offers up wild reasons why the power went out in New York (watch out for poisonous Mexican spitting mice) and his cockamamie recommendations in “A Reading List for Young Writers” are fantastic. (“Bleak House. This is the one with the car chase, right?”)

And, of course, we couldn’t go without mentioning the title essay. As you read it, you can’t help but wonder how he originally hit upon the subject. Frazier argues, “In today’s fast-moving, transient, rootless society, where people meet and make love and part without ever really touching, the relationship every guy already has with his own mother is too valuable to ignore.”
He goes on to name all the benefits of starting a relationship with the woman who gave birth to you. “Dating your mom seriously might seem difficult at first, but once you try it I’ll bet you’ll be surprised at how easy it is,” it reads.

Frazier is endlessly clever and chuckle-worthy, with a touch of twisted. He is one of America’s great contemporary humorists. His works are smart and funny without having to resort to obscenities or perverseness. (OK, the idea of dating your mom is perverse, but seriously, it’s still a tame piece.)

Comprised of essays written as far back as when David Sedaris was still losing his baby teeth, “Dating Your Mom” holds up just as well today as it did upon its original publication in 1986. One can imagine Calvin Trillin still patting him on the back every time they pass in the hall at the New Yorker.

Oooh, and he’s even left a space for notes in the back. Funny AND considerate. What a guy.