Congratulations, Who Are You Again?: A Memoir

by Harrison Scott Key Narrated by Josh Bloomberg

Overview

This funny and wise new memoir from Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, will inspire laughter and hope for anyone who's ever been possessed by a dream of what they want to be when they grow up.

Little-known author Mark Twain once said that the two most important days in your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why. He's talking about dreams here, the destiny that calls every living soul to some kind of greatness. What Mr. Twain doesn't say is: A dream is also a monster that wants to eat you. Nobody tells you this part of the American Dream - until now. In this new memoir, Congratulations Who Are You Again, readers join Harrison Scott Key on his outrageous journey to becoming a great American writer.

As a young boy in Mississippi, Harrison possessed many special gifts, such as the ability to read and complete college applications. And yet, throughout young adulthood, he failed at many vocations, until one day, after drinking perhaps too many beers and dusting off his King James Bible, he stumbled across a passage about a lonely pelican, which burst into flame inside him. In a mad blaze of holy illumination, Harrison realized his dream: to set the world afire with the light inside him. He would write a funny book. This was his dream.

With unforgettable wit and tenderness,*Congratulations Who Are You Again is Harrison's instructive tale of pursuing his destiny with relentless and often misguided devotion, transforming his life beyond all comprehension: He becomes a signer of autographs, a doer of interviews, a casher of checks that are ""worth more money than my father had ever imagined any of us might see, this side of a drug-related felony.""

On this journey, Harrison finds that as he gains the world, he stands on the precipice of losing everything that means the most: his family, his mind, his soul. Hilarious, honest, and absolutely practical, Congratulations Who Are You Again is a no-holds-barred look at the life of every ambitious human creature, whether you want to write books or make music, start a business or start a revolution. This is an audiobook for the dreamers.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Consistently funny…Congratulations, Who Are You Again? will have readers looking for more from this talented author. — Kirkus Reviews

“A keenly observed account of the publishing process…Hilarious and illuminating.” — Booklist

“In his second act, he takes you through his process of realizing that dream with charm and wit, offering entertainment and practical insight for anyone with a seemingly pie-in-the-sky wish list.” — Good Housekeeping

Good Housekeeping

In his second act, he takes you through his process of realizing that dream with charm and wit, offering entertainment and practical insight for anyone with a seemingly pie-in-the-sky wish list.

Booklist

A keenly observed account of the publishing process…Hilarious and illuminating.

Booklist

A keenly observed account of the publishing process…Hilarious and illuminating.

Kirkus Reviews

2018-09-03

Humorist Key (English/Savannah Coll. of Art and Design) follows up his Thurber Prize-winning memoir, The World's Largest Man (2015), with a book about the quiet indignities of being an author.

In his second book, following his collection of hilarious essays about his father, the acerbic and brutally honest author chronicles the abject lows and soulful highs of becoming a published writer. In gritty detail, Key ably deconstructs the messy arc of the writing and publishing process. Inspired by Douglas Adams but living under the pendulous weight of artists like William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, the author was in his late 20s before he finally committed to his dream of writing "a funny book." Tolerated by his eternally patient and lovingly sarcastic wife and three daughters, Key achieved his dream when HarperCollins bought the book for over $300,000 after a seemingly aggressive bidding war. The tales are consistently funny, as the author chronicles how he took his mother and daughters on a seemingly endless book tour while experiencing visions of being interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air and learning about the mortification of bookstore events. For all of his biting wit, Key's love of writing is what shines through in the end: "A story is an old-fashioned treasure hunt, and what makes it so very hard for the writer is that when you start to write, you don't necessarily know the nature of the treasure or even what the map looks like. All you need is a human with an empty place inside them they're hoping to fill. That's what a story is. We turn the page because we all have the hole in us, too, and we're all trying to fill it and we're hoping the story will give us some ideas about how to do that."

A solid sophomore outing that will have readers looking for more from this talented author.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173600707
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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