by the Onion A.V. Club

(Three Rivers Press) $16

The A.V. Club is The Onion's dirty little secret weapon. A consistent source of smart, funny arts writing that focuses on legitimately interesting writers and performers, the entertainment section of "America's Finest News Source" is the part of the paper you can actually read all the way through. And while a collection of The Onion's nonsatirical writings might seem about as tantalizing to some as a book of Playboy essays, this compulsively readable compilation of interviews published over the past 10 years makes it clear that the green lady is good for more than just funny headlines.

The title refers to the relative longevity of the obscurely famous--artists who stick around, hovering on the fringes of the Entertainment Industrial Complex, making work that is beloved by splinters of the mass audience. Unlike your typical celebrity profile subjects, figures like these--from Andy Partridge to Andy Richter, from Jello Biafra to Billy Barty--are intriguing not just for their proximity to the world's stage, but for their distance from it. The selection of subjects is appropriately idiosyncratic, raising brows high, low, and middle, but what unites them all is the balance of success and failure they represent.

All the interviewees (from Jello Biafra to Mr. T) are treated with the same respectful interest. If they seem unusually well-spoken, it's due at least partially to the smart, sensitive questions, and to the fact that the editors let them speak at length. Onion profilers are skilled at steering conversations with people they admire--conversations which inevitably involve a bit of performance on both sides of the tape recorder--into areas that force the subjects to reach beyond stock responses and reveal how much insight (or how little) they have into the two things almost all public figures seem to be most concerned with: themselves, and their processes. SEAN NELSON

The Flattened Missive

by Nico Vassilakis

(Off Press--contact subtext@speakeasy.org for more information) 50¢

"This seems sort of like your thing, right?" asks Charles Mudede, handing me a small green pamphlet washed in unremarkable Arial typeface. What Mr. Mudede forgets, as he assigns me the task of writing a 200-word book review (roughly one-eighth of the entire tome's length), is that, based on principles too complicated to really elaborate upon in such limited space, I maintain a stalwart stance of book hatred. Rather than disappointing one of my superiors, however, I accept Mr. Mudede's demands, tongue clenched firmly in teeth.

And my reward? "cough, cough. the plumage decorates the inner lung of alfonso. neon fiancée of squeegee brothel." Poet and Subtext reading series cofounder Nico Vassilakis' The Flattened Missive, six pages of obtuse rhythmic prose, is writing for the sake of adjective--an unfortunate literary device I feel particularly qualified to comment on, as it's something of which I am often accused. And while this can lend itself to evocative imagery of conflict throughout, it also embraces a top-heavy sort of self-indulgence, with forced vocabulary and an uncentered substance flopping its weight in too many directions for solid focus. But I guess that's what one has to expect when garnering the bulk of one's literary depth from little green pamphlets. ZAC PENNINGTON

The Hipster Handbook

by Robert Lanham

(Anchor Books) $9.95

It had to happen. Just like the preppies who were satirized in Lisa Birnbach's priceless The Official Preppy Handbook in 1980, the hipster phenomenon was ripe for the ribbing. I'm just not sure analyzing the hipster, broken down into disparate personality types--the Unemployed Trust Funder, the Clubber, the Loner, the Schmooze, etc.--in The Hipster Handbook by author Robert Lanham, is worthy of such meticulous scrutiny. While preppies were intriguing because of their wealth, secret rituals, and legendary parties featuring famous politicians as guests, hipsters are boring, their culture is everywhere you look in this area (save for maybe Kirkland), their parties rarely celebrate anything of note, and the famous guests are DJs and club owners. According to Lanham, "deck" is slang for cool, and "fin" means lame. Drunky beverages are called "Bronson" or "chowder," and "Nancy" means nice ass. What the fuck? Who is this guy, who thought this book should be anything more than a feature in Details, and has anyone in the hipster-laden Pike/Pine corridor gone out for a Bronson? Jesus, even I can't get past page seven. KATHLEEN WILSON