Half Empty - Rilegato

Rakoff, David

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0385670303 ISBN 13: 9780385670302

Casa editrice: Doubleday Canada, 2010

Riassunto

The inimitably witty David Rakoff, This American Life stalwart and bestselling author, looks at the modern world and his own life in defense of the commonsensical notion that you should always assume the worst.

In this deeply funny memoir, David Rakoff examines his own life and the realities of our sunny, gosh-everyone-can-be-a-star contemporary culture. He finds that, pretty much as a universal rule, the best is not yet to come, adversity will triumph, justice will not be served, and your dreams won't come true. Although David has a long-nurtured abhorrence of "inspirational" memoirs, much of the book recounts his own personal experiences: the moment when being a tiny child no longer meant adults found him charming but instead meant other children found him a fun target; the late evening in Manhattan when he was young and the city seemed to brim with such possibility that the street shimmered in the moonlight — as he drew closer he realized the streets actually shimmered with rats in a feeding frenzy. He also weaves in his brand of acute and Oscar Wilde-worthy cultural criticism (the sad state of the outdated "House of Tomorrow" at Disneyland, for one). It all adds up to proof of the proposition: Always be a pessimist, and you'll never be disappointed.

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Recensione

"Rakoff has a self-awareness that could be recreated only by a team of geneticists working in a lab. . . . File Rakoff under 'essayist, brilliant'."
— The New York Times

"[Rakoff] seems like the kind of person one would want to be seated next to at a dinner party--quick with repartee and a scathing put-down, but also capable of deep insight."
— Winnipeg Free Press

"[Rakoff] wields his talent for the sharpest, most adroit social and personal commentary like it's nothing, confirming that he can do the hard work of both fiction and journalism at once."
— Eye Weekly
From the Trade Paperback edition.

L'autore

DAVID RAKOFF is the author of the New York Times bestselling Don't Get Too Comfortable and Fraud. He is a writer-at-large for GQ magazine, and a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and Public Radio International's This American Life. He has also written for Outside, Vogue, The New York Observer and Salon.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Doubleday Canada
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0385670303
• ISBN 13: 9780385670302
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 240