‘The Librarianist’ Could Stand To Be Stranger

As Patrick deWitt’s The Librarianist rolls along, readers might wonder if the Canadian humorist has finally settled down to write a “normal” novel. DeWitt has made his name peddling in surreal quirk, or as the The New Yorker calls it, “stealth absurdism.” His oeuvre traces the footsteps of a Tom Robbins or perhaps a Roald Dahl, the surface world a cellophane-thin façade stretched across humanity’s unabashed weirdness.