All My Friends are Superheroes

On Saturday night at Diane's dinner party, my good friend Darryl lent me a book written by Andrew Kaufman (brother of his 'crazy friend Liz') called All My Friends are Superheroes. This wonderfully original and hilarious little book (106 pages) is published by Coach House Books, which is a miniscule independent publishing house that operates out of an actual old coach house in the Annex. After a little research (aka surfing), I learned that they published early works of Michael Ondaatje and Guy Maddin (crazy Canadian filmmaker).

I started reading this little treasure on the long subway ride from Victoria Park to Runnymede and I was engrossed. In a nutshell, the story is about a regular man who marries a superhero, The Perfectionist (her power is making everything perfect), but she is hypnotized to believe that he is invisible so she thinks he has abandoned her. The story is about trying to get her to see him before it's too late.

I won't spoil the story for you, but there is a fun part where he talks about you, the reader, finding your own superhero name. You need to boil down your personality and abilities into one phrase or image even if it's what you hate the most about yourself. That's tough. I'm not sure if I can come up with my own original one, but I think I resemble The Sloth the most (see page 74). You should read this book. It's amazing.