Wigfield: The Can Do Town that Just May Not is the 2003 literary brainchild of Second City alums Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, and Stephen Colbert. After two mildly successful runs at cable television together -- with a sketch show, Exit 57, and a series, Strangers With Candy, both cancelled by Comedy Central -- they turned their collective attention toward print. Of course, Colbert is now infamous for his bloviating pundit character on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. But, fans of his recent work would be shocked at his work in Wigfield.
Narrator Russell Hokes is an ambitious, albeit lazy and incompetent, journalist looking for an idea for a book. A shot in the dark lands him with an advance, a deadline for 50,000 words, and a vague idea about dying small towns. He finds the inspiration he needs in the town of Wigfield -- a quarter-mile stretch of highway dotted with shady shops and strip joints. It turns out the government is threatening to tear down the Bulkwaller Dam and flood the town to drive out its constituency of transients and misfits. So, Hokes interviews each of the residents of the self-described town, letting them tell their stories themselves, and finds himself involved in the campaign to save their home.
The writing is as sharp as one would expect from this trio. The characters are surprisingly developed and completely original and believable. That’s probably because the town and the people in it are loosely based on a town that Colbert visited while filming a story for The Daily Show. The highlight is the interaction of Wigfield’s three self-declared mayors, one of which is a mentally handicapped man with a briefcase full of fudge. The conflict and history between the characters just keeps unfolding as Hokes makes his way through town, and he slowly learns who these people really are and what they’re really doing in Wigfield.
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