Presented as a collection of articles about apocryphal artworks, exhibitions, books, and other cultural phenomena, "Sunsets and Dogshits" follows the convention of a collected writings book. Most pieces adopt a well-recognized formata catalog essay for an exhibition, a book review, or an item of sports correspondencebut at the same time they incorporate incongruous elements or attempt to see things from inverted perspectives. For example, "The Hudson Variation" is a review of a book about chess hooliganism, while "Whipping Boys" imagines the criminal memoir written from the viewpoint of professional victims, and "The George Carnegie Award" is a critical review of the writers shortlisted for the best use of a semicolon in the English language. Witty, trenchantly funny, and flittingly flirting with genres as diverse as poetry, philosophy, biography, cookbooks, volumes on municipal architecture, government investigations into national disasters, and technical manuals, "Sunsets and Dogshits" occupies a unique place in modern fiction."
