3 out of 5
You know that person at work, or that you remember from school, or who’s in your social group – or wherever, since we all know someone like this – who says a joke with a knowing smile, seeking your shared appreciation of something they feel is so very clever but just, like, isn’t all that funny? That’s maybe Matt Kracht, all throughout his illustrated “Guide to Dumb Birds,” the whole joke of which can be summarized by looking at the scribbled nicknames Matt gives some feathered fiends on the front and back cover: ‘White-breasted Butt Nugget’ and ‘Eastern Kingbutt.’
Okay, fair, I’m all in on dumb potty humor, and the book is all in on it, giving each bird a similar tee-hee joke name, often with swears because fifth grade was the best time for jokes, and then the description blurb and identification continue the shtick, e.g. the ‘Pine Shitkin’ is a jerk who makes painfully high-pitched noises and is colored like yellow shit streaks.
In isolation – which is presumably how you’re supposed to “read” this, as a coffee table, pick-up-and-put-it-down chuckle – this structure works. Humor is obviously subjective, and my preference for crass humor has a pretty narrow range for when I consider it “smart,” and I’ve outlined my take on Kracht’s overall approach: it’s way too nudge-you-in-the-rubs winking and on the nose for me, but I’m also focusing on its more egregious examples, while, frankly, about half the book is much more droll and that does make me laugh. I just have trouble remembering that when the next few pages annoy me. But again – that’s me reading this as a book, and that’s probably not best.
So setting aside the subjectivity, there’s truth in advertising: I mentioned the front and back cover examples, and if you laugh at those, the content is a match. Furthermore, there’s really a lot of delightful design effort put into this (credited to Jenna Huerta), sized as a pocket-ish 6″x4″ with a really quality square binding, fully designed endsheets, and lots of “extras” besides just the bird lists: some cheeky bird watching tips, a runthrough of bird feeders, and etcetera. The humor is, again, pretty consistent (and consistently balanced between the droll and dumb) in all of these sections, which I appreciate, as it means Matt and his editors pursued the bit 100%. And, well, the book also can serve as an approximate guide, with Matt’s perfectly serviceable (and charming) colored pen / pencil illustrations, with the jokey bird descriptions essentially accurate.
Where I’d still knock the rating down, though, is that I don’t know that it takes the joke… far enough? Like the birds are split up into different groupings, including one called – ahem – “Fuckers,” and two out of the three are called just that, while the third one is called… a Shitsucker. Like, do the joke. That’s where the consistency feels a bit lazy, and when you do read it cover to cover, it’s clearly not really serviceable as much of a guide, either, as the bird watching and feeding advice falls into that same kind of shoulder-shrug gag take most of the time. I know it’s not supposed to be a real guide, but my point is that while I think it’s nice that the overall snarky tone is clear throughout, there was opportunity to push the obnoxiousness further, or do a kind of Devil’s Dictionary and be oddly useful while being a joke at the same time.
Plus: no page numbers on the table of contents. That’s like an automatic minus one star.
I had some giggles from this, and I accept that was probably the pitch. It’s silly; it’s dumb; and the team put a lot of work into making something silly and dumb look good.
