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Only in the dangerous water-cooler chatter that is small-press Canadian publishing can one discover a book brimming on the fake wood edge of vocational apocalypse. Smack dab in the midst of global economic meltdown (where daily plant layoffs are as common on evening news reports as the weather) comes Overqualified, a collection of wry, clever and demoniacal job-application letters, teeming with knife-edged malice and stomach-tearing hilarity.

• Overqualified, by Joey Comeau, ECW Press, 96 pages, $14.95

At its micro-narrative core, Overqualified is a cover letter-based novel that negotiates a freedom for individual reaction to the oppressive routine of the job search.

As a narrative arch, the epistolary form is used to isolate intent and focus on two characters: Joey and potential employer.

Some pieces are picturesque snapshots, written around products that the author has or is using, such as the letter to Airwalk, a popular skateboard-shoe manufacturer based in the United States. Picking the mind of the shoe giant, Comeau tries to make a connection: “I want a piece of everything today. Do you get like this?”

Comeau shows a softer, more earnest side at times; take the lyrical letter to the University of Victoria for the position of linguistic professor. Coming off as a romantic bard, Comeau notes “that language's love is me, for real.”

Comeau's mind trick is hard at work, knowing full well the reader plays a hand in the con, that our minds are partially trained to imagine the hapless employer reading the sanity-chaffing letter stained with the author's personal back stories and barbed asides.

“ The results, beyond hilarity, are a sense of relief that this person isn't working for you, and that you are not this person applying for the job.”

His letter to Yahoo Inc., for example, reads like an Internet prison letter, with inmate Comeau weighing in on his time logged in on the information superhighway, where he pretends to be a 14-year-old lesbian “having relationship problems.” He goes on to confess that he uses this identity and plays chess and makes lewd comments to other gamers. In another missive, he writes, “Corporations have been collecting from me for years. So I have started calling them. I'm tired of being afraid. It's time they were afraid of me.”

Comeau's convivial prose, a confluence of faux naiveté and blatant intent to disarm, is controlled nicely throughout this mild temper tantrum.

It is the timely subversion of the nature of consumer feedback and anonymity that is Comeau's best stroke, the classic “Is your refrigerator running?” joke turned into something inherently rude, yet an example of how Comeau's anti-hero tries to discover ways of relating to job descriptions through his own personal experiences. These experiences may explain how he would perform or understand the job requirements at hand, but the oversharing simply makes him look like a total psycho.

The results, beyond hilarity, are a sense of relief that this person isn't working for you, and that you are not this person applying for the job. The nihilistic parody never tires (even Goodyear gets a turn in the hoax), because Comeau changes things on the fly for every one of these little nasties. Comeau, like Prometheus before him, is playing with a medium he believes to be, in some ways, essential to survival: employment.

Overqualified successfully deludes the fear of the faceless corporate entity by empowering the faceless applicant who has nothing to lose except securing a job he or she probably doesn't want. If Comeau's rebel-yell manifesto catches on like old Prometheus's gift did all those years ago, human resources will never be the same again.

Nathaniel G. Moore once wrote a humour book called Bowlbrawl about a man who worked as a deranged bowling promoter. His next book, Wrong Bar, is scheduled to be published in the fall.