Izzy, Do We Have Any Trojans?: The Wit and Wisdom of Phil Freedman

Author Phil Freedman offers a humorous collection of 'wit and wisdom" from his local newspaper column, WHATEVER. Freedman published WHATEVER in a local paper in Aspen, Colorado, until his editor fired him for anti-semantic (please read the preceding word carefully) reasons. He subsequently published WHATEVER for three years on a weekly Web site. Izzy, Do We Have Any Trojans? is a compendium of the best of those columns.

Freedman is no James Thurber, but neither is Dave Barry. In fact, his readers have favorably compared Freedman with Barry, but his style is more thought provoking and reflects his academic background.

He uses sarcasm, irony (both steam and dry), wit (and without), cynicism, mysticism, insane-icism, mixed metaphor, oxymorons, regular morons, pun, parody, parable, alliteration, and even misquotes. When the situation invites, he enjoys playing with phonynyms. Phonynym, as you may have guessed, is a term for made-up words that don't exist. But don't look it up. Phonynym is a phonynym. His readers have referred to him as a 'word crafter." Others, as a 'word crap-per."