Oh my GOD! Somebody finally GETS it!

Reviews, I'm here to tell you, suck. When they're good, they're never quite good enough, and when they're bad, you're convinced that they've just ended your career.

Humor writing is particularly ill-starred in this regard (as it is in every regard save making readers laugh). Nothing is more subjective and personal than somebody's sense of humor, and a mismatch can entice the most reserved reviewer to new heights of disdainful venom. And if you're actually trying to do something new or difficult, treading new ground or combining things that haven't been combined before, you're just asking to get creamed. I don't try to do new things on purpose--I know it's no way to get rich or popular--but I can't help myself. I get bored. You'd get bored, too, if you had to read my stuff as much as I do. Hell, maybe you get bored already.

As a rule, I ask all my publishers not to pass along reviews. This, plus the fact that humor tends not to get reviewed in the first place, keeps me in a barely manageable state of self-loathing. I may well suck as hard as I suspect, but as long as I don't know it for sure, I can scrounge up the optimism to keep trying. Things are better, of course, when you have a runaway hit; after you've made the bestseller lists, you might get a mention, but it's usually of the sniffy "people will buy anything" variety. But that's easy to take when you know actual people--not just publishing volk--are reading and liking your work.

Still, it's freakin' AWESOME when somebody actually gets it, and no more so than with a unique beast like Freshman. Here's what my new favorite publication, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, said about Freshman:

"...That's the plot, but mayhem and hijinks are the story in this parody that blends Animal House antics with tony Jeeves and Wooster sensibilities. The sometimes bawdy, sometimes sophisticated comedy takes on the absurdities of the very rich and their pretentious traditions with sunny alacrity and an acerbic bite...The real audience for this is the twenty-something crowd, either in the midst of or just over their own college daze--for them the guffaws are loud, constant, and gut-shaking as Gerber delivers his over-the-top send-up of the freaks, geeks, and other creatures of the night that thrive on or around college campuses.—KC"

Thank you, KC, whoever you are! You just made my day!

By the way, when I was poking around the Bulletin's website, I found this amusing bit of humor.