Books like Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories

This book was recommended to me last summer by a former teacher who is also an Episcopalian minister. In December, I entered a "Secret Santa" drawing involving alumni of my alma mater (Grinnell College whaaaaat) and, per statistical probability, drew a woman I'd never met (Which is a good thing! This is why we do this in the first place, to meet other alumni/ae we don't know, and make great connections while impressing them!)Anyway, she described herself as a "book slut", which is great, because so am I, and I decided to go with a New Orleans theme for my package (that's where I live). Ellen Gilchrist seemed an obvious and safe choice (again, recommended by a former teacher/minister who compared her to Tolstoy). So I threw "Victory Over Japan" in a shoebox alongside a wireframe saxophone from the French Market, a fancy postcard, and a gospel/blues album.A few months after I shipped this collection off to aforementioned stranger (and mother of two), I read it myself. Oh man. I've certainly read worse and I probably wouldn't have been struck by it if I'd been in a vacuum, so to speak, but somewhere between the old southern woman graphically masturbating to Tom Selleck and the incestuous, drug fueled, menage a trois, I sat bolt upright and announced "I SENT THIS TO A COMPLETE STRANGER. FOR A CHRISTMAS PRESENT."So, don't send this to anyone you don't know for a Christmas gift, but you should read it for yourself if you want to laugh out loud a lot. The Traceleen chapters are wonderful (and not as offensive as I'd been worried they would be), and Rhoda is a knockout--the title story may be the best in the collection. It's Philip Roth meets Flannery O'Connor.Hit 'em with a mountain!