Point of View

In Naked Pictures of Famous People, satirist Jon Stewart seems out to prove true Marshall McLuhan's dictum, "the medium is the message." Stewart skillfully crafts stories around familiar formats that impose structure, including a series of first-person diary entries and a series of annual holiday update letters that show the writer's 180-degree change in outlook over the years.

Several times Stewart produces transcripts of events, including secret tape recordings made in the Oval Office, the freewheeling interchanges found in Internet chat rooms, a Larry King Live broadcast, and corporate memos dealing with a new television sitcom. The Larry King piece is particularly successful in capturing the host's well-known mannerisms, while the ABC Television memos show, in typical business doubletalk, how profit and prudery can and cannot coexist. Each capture a variety of first-person, present tense points of view, as do the personal correspondence of a fun-loving...