A very funny book that’s mostly not racist! Which is pretty good considering Jack Handey is of a certain age and of a certain bent and could have made this a lot more racist. A low bar.
This is a fake novel about a trip to Hawaii paid for by the narrator’s recently divorced friend. Hawaii is recreated as a kind of mid-colonial cesspit (hence the stench), full of mystery and intrigue. So in some ways this is a kind of fake adventure novel ala HR Haggard and kind of a fake noir book. It’s a lot like Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid in this way. It’s kind of a spoof, but more so it’s absurdist literature and each line could be a part of the plot, or it could be a one-liner, a deadpan bon mot, or a complete reversal or erasure of the plot up until now.
It’s very funny.
But it’s not very good. Not as a novel and not as a book. It’s kind of what I thought Drew Magary’s novel The Hike was going to be like, but that novel, as random as it sometimes felt, clearly had a plan, an idea, and had a very satisfying ending. I choose that book because like this it felt arbitrary at times, and like this one, I was laughing out loud through most of it.
I wouldn’t have even finished this had it not been read by Jack Handey, who as a narrator is perfectly suited to his own writing. It’s almost like a Deep Thoughts segment writ large.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Stench-Honolulu-Tropical-Adventure/dp/1455534536/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1S91EPMJBF6RY&keywords=the+stench+of+honolulu&qid=1552327023&s=gateway&sprefix=the+stench+of+hon%2Caps%2C207&sr=8-1)