The funny man is a middling comic in an unnamed city. By day he takes care of his infant son, by night he performs in small clubs, sandwiched between other aspiring comics. His wife waits tables to support the family. It doesn't sound like much, but they're happy, more or less. Until the day he comes up with it. His thing. His gimmick. And everything changes. He's a headliner, and the venues get bigger fast. Pretty soon it's Hollywood and a starring role in a blockbuster, all thanks to the gimmick. Which is: He performs with his fist in his mouth to the wrist. Jokes, impressions, commercials--all with his fist in his mouth to the wrist. The people want him--are crazy for him--but only with his fist in his mouth. And the funny man, he is tired of having his fist in his mouth. Thus, as the novel begins, his career's in tatters, his family's left him, and he's on trial for shooting an unarmed man six times. But for the second time in his...

The stories in John Warner's Tough Day for the Army move from hilarious and biting to unsettling and sad-sometimes within the span of a few pages. Mining the absurdities, confusions, and hypocrisies of our contemporary times, these stories raise questions such as: What would happen if Jesus Christ played minor league hockey before he became the Son of God (Second Careers)? What would you do if a group of poets in search of inspiration appeared on your farm "Poet Farmers)?Many of the stories upend expectations of the act of storytelling, as in Corrections and Clarifications, written entirely in the form of newspaper corrections, or Return-to-Sensibility Problems after Penetrating Captive Bolt Stunning of Cattle in Commercial Beef Slaughter Plant #5867: Confidential Report, which begins as a straightforward account of slaughterhouse operations but quickly devolves into something wholly surprising and different...