For humor, I rather liked the end of chapter 1:
Interestingly enough, precisely the moment I believed I was going to die
was the moment that changed my life forever. If you want to learn how,
dear reader, skip ahead to the last chapter, as long as you promise to read
the rest.
Now, if you don’t read the rest, you won’t find out how I arrived at
that moment in my life, being administered last rites in the ER and all that
cosmic jazz related to it. (5)
I like how this sentence subtly pokes fun at his audience on several different levels. For the academics, it’s a joke about how they are always skipping around, using the index, and trying to remember where that one line in that one book is. He’s telling us how to skip around in his own book…and exactly what we’ll miss reading it that way. Skipping around is also something that internet culture promotes, so it pokes a little fun at a postmodern reading style at well. Finally, he turns the climax of the story, the live-or-die moment in the ER, into a sort of teaser, which reminds me of TV trailers. Tune in tonight at 8…
