Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon

Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon: Joe Queenan's America By Joe Queenan Hyperion, $21.95

Patrick Swayze and Garth Brooks.

Danielle Steel and Geraldo Rivera.

Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Plop plop, fizz fizz. Still no relief.

The dark heart of Americana is enough to turn even the mostintrepid soul into a cultural Kurtz, left to mutter, like JosephConrad's anti-hero, "The horror! The horror!"

But the humorist Joe Queenan is made of sterner stuff. At 21 hesaw the neon light, meekly accepting "the fact that this society wasdominated by the likes of William Shatner, not William Shakespeare."

One day Queenan summoned the …