Synopses & Reviews
David Rakoff's bestselling collection of autobiographical essays,
Fraud, established him as one of today's funniest and most insightful writers. Now, in
Don't Get Too Comfortable, Rakoff moves from the personal to the public, journeying into the land of unchecked plenty that is contemporary America. Rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly and wittily skewered.
Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism; our manic getting and spending have now become celebrated as moral virtues. Whether contrasting the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the good-times-and-chicken-wings populism of Hooters Air, working as a cabana boy at a South Beach hotel, or traveling to a private island off the coast of Belize to watch a soft-core video shoot where he is provided with his very own personal manservant Rakoff takes us on a bitingly funny grand tour of our culture of excess. He comes away from his explorations hilariously horrified.
At once a Wildean satire of our ridiculous culture of overconsumption and a plea for a little human decency, Don't Get Too Comfortable shows that far from being bobos in paradise, we're in a special circle of gilded-age hell.
Review
"There are times when you wish Rakoff would have given himself more room, but there's something to be said for a writer who refuses to pad. The self-lacerating wit of David Sedaris mixed with the biting commentary of Dan Savage only completely and utterly original." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Rakoff knows the incantatory power of a story well-told, the art of keeping words aloft like the bubbles in a champagne flute. He possesses the crackling wit of a '30s screwball comedy ingenue, a vocabulary that is a treasure chest of mots justes, impressive but most times not too showy for everyday wear." Los Angeles Times
Review
"To be sure, Rakoff can issue a withering snark with the best of them. But once his rapier wit has sliced the buttons off his target's clothing, revealing the quivering, vulnerable mass within, his fundamental sense of decency gets the best of him." Salon
Review
"Rakoff's humor is acidic without being poisonous, snarky without sacrificing emotional generosity. And with gentle precision, Rakoff manages to paint phrases, gestures, and situations...As a storyteller, Rakoff makes believers of us." The Boston Phoenix
Review
"Sounding like the love child of Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde and All About Eve's Addison DeWitt, [Rakoff] is smug, insufferable and self-infatuated to a fare-thee-well. He's magnificent." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Review
"There's another side to Rakoff the Outraged. In spite of himself, a sweetness comes through...He can make you laugh, and then, suddenly, there comes a passage that touches you with wonder." Gotham Magazine
Review
"It is not unusual to find a humorist that is funny. But it is unusual to find a humorist that is smart and wry and sensitive as well. We find all that in David Rakoff." Charleston Post and Courier
Review
"...Rakoff's cogent observations are delivered with a comforting mixture of appropriate moral outrage and unabashed mocking wonder, as he unfailingly elicits the inherent truths behind our most cherished and churlish institutions." Booklist
Synopsis
Rakoff's collection of autobiographical essays, Fraud, established him as one of this country's funniest, most insightful writers. Now he journeys into the land of plenty that is contemporary North America.
Synopsis
On the heels of his Emmy-winning It Gets Better campaign, columnist and provocateur Dan Savage weighs in on such diverse issues as healthcare, gun control, and marriage equality with characteristic straight talk and humor.
Dan Savage has always had a loyal audience, thanks to his syndicated sex-advice column Savage Love,” but since the incredible global success of his It Gets Better projecthis book of the same name was a New York Times bestsellerhis profile has skyrocketed. In addition, hes written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Onion, GQ, The Guardian, Salon.com, and countless other widely read publications. Savage is recognized as someone whose opinions about our culture, politics, and society should not only be listened to but taken seriously.
Now, in American Savage, he writes on topics ranging from marriage, parenting, and the gay agenda to the Catholic Church and sex education.
Synopsis
On the heels of his Emmy-winning It Gets Better campaign, columnist and provocateur Dan Savage weighs in on such diverse issues as healthcare, gun control, and marriage equality with characteristic straight talk and humor.
Dan Savage has always had a loyal audience, thanks to his syndicated sex-advice column Savage Love,” but since the incredible global success of his It Gets Better projecthis book of the same name was a New York Times bestsellerhis profile has skyrocketed. In addition, hes written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Onion, GQ, The Guardian, Salon.com, and countless other widely read publications. Savage is recognized as someone whose opinions about our culture, politics, and society should not only be listened to but taken seriously.
Now, in American Savage, he writes on topics ranging from marriage, parenting, and the gay agenda to the Catholic Church and sex education.
About the Author
David Rakoff is a regular contributor to Public Radio International's This American Life, GQ magazine, and Outside. He has also written for the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, the New York Observer, and Salon, among other publications. He lives in New York City.