Due to my ongoing love affair with This American Life (six years and counting!) I have read a huge number of books by TAL contributors. Everything by David Sedaris. Everything by Sarah Vowell. Everything by Dan Savage. Curtis Sittenfield. Mike Birbiglia. Anne Lammott. Sandra Tsing-Loh. Chuck Klosterman. I have read at least one book by each of them. I seek TAL-adjacent essays, podcasts, blogs, short stories, journalism, and movies whenever I can. I've seen at least six TAL speaking tour show things. Um, what was the point of this detour? Oh yeah, I was ready to love this book.
And I did! David Rakoff is amusingly self-loathing. "Beloved by all and yet loved by none" might be one of the most savage (self) put-downs I've ever heard, and as a piece of personal insight, maybe up there with another Rakoff bon-mot I heard, live on tour in 2007, on his agreement, via the US citizenship pledge, to take up arms against the enemy: this is grass soup. If we get to the point where 45 year old asking-and-telling gay Canadian New York Jews are required to join the army, we are well beyond fucked. Might as well be a recipe for delicious grass soup during a famine.
(I would like to circle back here, and point out once again how completely awful Marieke Hardy is when in relief against a really funny, really revealing author)
This book makes me think I almost want therapy now, just to see if I have hidden depths. I bet I don't. I think I have hidden shallows. But I do have "issues", and hoping that I might one day be as wise and honest about myself as David Rakoff is in this book is a pretty high commendation.
Trying to read some fiction next, but I'm mostly in a "flicking though" stage. That's where I just read and re-read chapters from old faves, magazines, or various makeup, fashion and parenting guidebook type things I have lying around the house. But since I'm working on a project (this!) I'll try and snap out of it.
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