Every day, David Rees sharpens the pencils. Rees, best known for his acerbic "Get Your War On" comic strip, which savagely lambasted Bush-era politics with simple clip art illustrations, moves into the technical manual section of your bookstore with this detailed how-to guide. Alternately, How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants could be shelved in humor, and there's the beauty of it--this is simultaneously a startlingly knowledgeable textbook and a bull's-eye mockery of startlingly knowledgeable textbooks.
If anyone had wondered what Rees had been doing since ending his comic in 2009, it's now clear: he's been learning inside and out the finer points of pencil types, different sharpening tools and methods and likely much more than even the most enthusiastic pencil aficionado would be expected to know. Every page of How to Sharpen Pencils reads like an instruction manual for treading the narrow line between a self-serious, erudite textbook and an outright mockery of everything that anybody anywhere might take seriously. "Warm-up exercises" (with pictures) are followed by a considered breakdown of the different mechanisms available for sharpening; a safety-oriented guide to sharpening with a pocket knife leads into a discussion on mechanical pencils. ("Mechanical pencils," Rees determines, "are bulls**t.") There is never any danger of forgetting that Rees is operating with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, but don't be surprised if sales of the El Casco M430-CN double-burr hand-crank pencil sharpeners go through the roof. --Matthew Tiffany, counselor, writer for Condalmo