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Tuesday, Nov 26, 2002 7:47 PM UTC

“Letters to Wendy’s” by Joe Wenderoth

Today I had a Biggie. Usually I just have a small and refill -- why pay more? But today I needed a Biggie inside me. Some days, I guess, are like that.

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Joe Wenderoth is the author of two poetry collections, “Disfortune” (1995) and “It Is If I Speak” (2000), both published by Wesleyan University Press. “Letters to Wendy’s” is his first work of fiction. He teaches at Southwest State University in Minnesota.

“Letters to Wendy’s” is a collection of ficticious diary entries, written on Wendy’s restaurant customer-comment cards. “Tell us about your visit,” these cards encourage, and Wenderoth took the fast-food chain up on its offer. Hilarious, bizarre and tragic, the genre-bending novel traces a year in the life and thoughts of an unnamed narrator obsessed not only by Biggies and Frosties but also by consumerism, sex and mortality.

Joe Wenderoth read from “Letters to Wendy’s” at KGB Bar in New York recently, as part of the bar’s Monday Night Poetry series. Featured here is the entire reading [in two parts], including Wenderoth’s introduction and an opening poem, which he dedicated to the “anniversary of John Berryman being drunk once.”

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