Title: The Book of Eli
Author: Sam Moffie
Publisher: Mill City Press
ISBN: 9781936107353
Pages: 147, Paperback/Kindle
Genre: Fiction/Humor
Reviewed by: Barbara Miller, Pacific Book Review
Book Review
The Book of Eli, by Sam Moffie begins with a monologue about Eli done in such a humorous fashion! I could imagine the introduction being performed by someone like Jerry Seinfeld or possibly the late Rodney Dangerfield as a stand-up act. Hilarious! It even gets funnier as it continued on, making it impossible to put down. Of course, no comic humor is without countless references to sex, as Eli himself was a self-proclaimed adulterer. As Sam Moffie so eloquently stated, Eli was a very respectable citizen. He loved his wife, provided for his family, didn’t cheat on his taxes, paid as much as he could afford to all charities, called his parents daily (while they were alive), took out the garbage late in the evening so his neighbors wouldn’t see the trash cans, washed his hands after going to the bathroom, squeezed toothpaste from the bottom, always put down the toilet seat, however, he had sex with women other than his wife as often as he could; so 9 out of 10 isn’t bad.Eli, being a sexaholic, had his challenges, but the orgasmic benefits of “hitting a home run over the fence,” as he put it (many times and in many ways), were worth the risk. When he did get caught by his wife, he was truly sad; sad he got caught. Incorrigible and relentless in his pursuit of carnal knowledge he lived his life until one day – bingo, he died. This was when the book took on a Charles Dickens’ type of twist. One where, if casted as a movie, Eli, the Warren Beatty of Shampoo character changed into the Jim Carrey of Bruce Almighty, complete with Orson Wells playing God – or was that Groucho Marx? You’ll see what I mean when you read this book.
The dialogue between Eli and Julius, his guide through heaven, constitutes the majority of the galley to The Book of Eli and allows a tremendously imaginative comic relief to the serious philosophical issues and historical analysis of society – and just about everything else Sam Moffie can think of. At one point Julius is walking through a locker room with Eli, glancing at the names on the lockers of dead people when they come across one with Peter O’Toole on it, who isn’t yet dead but has a reserved locker. “Did you ever notice that the name Peter O’Toole is a double phallic?” asked Julius. There is even a guest cameo appearance by Jesus, and he had plenty of “Jewish Jokes” up his sleeve. Really, you have to be pretty open minded to allow for this type of sacrilegious humor to entertain you, and I can see how some people will be turned off by Sam Moffie’s sense of humor. But to each their own, and Moffie has the skill to present his work in a clearly non-prejudiced fashion. That is, if you poke fun at everything and everyone, in a comic license sort of way, you’re let off the hook of being called a bigot. So be it.
The Book of Eli is strong humor for those strong enough and thick skinned enough to take it. It is definitely “out of the box” thinking, some heavenly original humor from the excellent mind of the immaculately conceived character Eli. The only thing noticeably absent from the book was the Latin phrase; Eli, Eli lema sabachthani. When you think about it, it’s hard to make that line funny.
