All right. So the man can juggle topics. He can talk about the state fair, mathematics and the human condition, all in the same essay and all with style. I'll give him that. I'll even concede that Wallace is brilliant in his own way. The way he looks at things in this book is ... well ... interesting at times.

But to call him the most hilarious writer of our generation is overdoing it a little.

From the critics to the guy at the bookstore counter, it seems everyone I know is enamoured of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. In fact, the bookstore clerk ran out behind me to grab a hardcover copy of it from the sales rack after my purchase (thankfully, on sale for $4.99 at a major retail chain) so that he could have it in a more permanent form. If he'd given me a day or so, I'd have gladly given him mine.

Maybe I'm too far removed from his base, which seems to be a midwest twenty-something generation, cynical and analytical simultaneously. His essay on the state fair in Illinois is pretty dead-on from the state fairs I've seen, and he's right, the corn dogs and baton twirlers are the best things about it. Still, I didn't find it funny as much as I found it to be true. For some, I guess this is humor.

The title essay comes on the heels of an in-depth essay about David Lynch and expressionism, and another heady piece about a tennis player that discusses freedom and discipline. Needless to say, as a tired reader, I was looking for some humor in the last work, hoping that I hadn't wasted the five bucks the book cost. There were moments -- mostly in the footnotes -- where I chuckled. That's about it. His discussion of the tone of the vacuum toilets (something a friend and fan told me to watch for) seemed like a sophomoric attempt at laughs, and just made me race that much faster toward the end.

I'm not saying that the book is worthless. I'm not saying that the author is worthless. But in my opinion, it -- and he -- are overrated, and I'd gladly have taken my dollars elsewhere.

Sorry, those of you who worship at the Generation X altar -- this book just didn't do it for me.