The power of the price clubs and discounters to move huge numbers of certain books is giddily unnerving for book publishers.
What links Joshua Ferris's dazzling debut novel of office politics, Then We Came To The End, with this, his somewhat unnerving second book, is an atmosphere of parable.
So extreme can these mannerisms become that the experience of reading "Stupidity" can be a bit unnerving: the book's central concept often seems as useful to describe the irrelevancies and flaws of the text as, some may find, to describe the limitations of this particular critic.
What is a bit unnerving about the book is the way the illustrations were produced, using a form of what was called nature printing.
I return to it every three or four summers, the closest thing in my life to a pilgrimage, and whenever I do, I'm reading a different novel, but one as fresh and funny and strangely unnerving as the book that switched on the lights of my youth.
And to answer the first part of your question, yes, it's a bit unnerving now that the book is coming out.
Also new this month: unnerving short stories and a book about a C.I.A. agent who just can't stay out of trouble.
Although the British director's film covers basically the same terrain as Halperin and Wallace's book, its final effect is more unnerving.
The unnerving photos featured here, exclusively on LIFE.com, are from his new book, "The Invisible Empire: Ku Klux Klan".
