A CONGRESS OF WONDERS By Ed McClanahan Counterpoint, $20 Reviewed by Mary Jane Park A Congress of Wonders is a precise description for the bizarre characters Ed McClanahan has cooked up _ an oddball, grotesque assortment of people who bring to mind the Wookie bar in Star Wars, although McClanahan's bunch may be even more improbable. Congress comprises three intertwining tales and a few overlapping characters, most notably Philander Cosmo Rexroat, whose various business cards, if he had them, would read: the Right Reverend P. C. Rexroat, D. D.; Professor Philander Cosmo Rexroat, B. S., M. S. and Pee Aitch Dee; and P. Cosmo Rexroat, Doctor of Natural Theosophy, Chiropractic Science and Colonic Irrigation. He's a seasoned con artist who uses those various aliases to great financial advantage, lightening the pocketbooks of the spiritually bereft, the gullible and the infirm. McClanahan sets these tall tales in places in the rural South where crops fail and imaginations flourish, where economic disadvantage and physical affliction make for personal tragedy and public ridicule. He writes lavishly, using exaggerated phrasing to enormous comic effect. A Congress of Wonders is overblown trickery and violence, flowery expression, fire-and-brimstone morality and juicy tastes of the flesh. He has to be making this up, yet the stories ring oddly true. In trying to describe this short book _ barely 160 pages long _ I've thought of Mark Twain, William Kennedy Toole, Tom Robbins, even David Lynch. McClanahan's press material describes him as a Southern writer. Whether there is a uniquely Southern version of storytelling is an old argument and one for another day. A Congress of Wonders is indisputably funny and cruel, too. One hopes that McClanahan has not exhausted his capacity for entertaining. MEET THE AUTHOR Ed McClanahan will read and sign copies of Congress of Wonders at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Inkwood Books, 216 S Armenia, Tampa. Mary Jane Park is a features editor for the Times.