No One Asked for This

by Cazzie David

Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. From writer/director Cazzie David comes a series of acerbic, darkly funny essays about anxiety, social media, misanthropy, and growing up in a wildly eccentric family.
For Cazzie David, the world is one big trap door leading to death and despair and social phobia. From shame spirals caused by hookups to panic attacks about being alive and everyone else having to be alive too, David chronicles her life’s most chaotic moments with wit, bleak humor, and a mega-dose of self-awareness.
In No One Asked for This, David provides readers with a singular but ultimately relatable tour through her mind, as she explores existential anxiety, family dynamics, and the utterly modern dilemma of having your breakup displayed on the Internet. With pitch-black humor resonant of her father, comedy legend Larry David, and topics that speak uniquely to generational malaise, No One Asked for This is the perfect companion for when you don’t really want a companion.
"Blisteringly honest...kind of like if a David Sedaris book was written by an anxiety-ridden millennial who grew up in Hollywood."—Entertainment Weekly
"Cazzie David is the delicious antidote to the poison of basic influencer culture. This book will make all misanthropes feel seen and loved—well, seen and tolerated."—Diablo Cody, screenwriter and author of Candy Girl

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780358197027
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/17/2020
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	184,512
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 5.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

CAZZIE DAVID is the creator, writer, and star of the critically acclaimed web series Eighty-Sixed. She is a columnist at Graydon Carter’s Air Mail and has written for Vanity Fair, the Hollywood Reporter, Glamour, InStyle, and Vogue.

Editorial Reviews

A BEST BOOK OF THE FALL AS SEEN IN: PureWow * Pop Sugar * HelloGiggles * Bustle "Cazzie David is the delicious antidote to the poison of basic influencer culture. This book will make all misanthropes feel seen and loved—well, seen and tolerated."  —Diablo Cody, screenwriter and author of Candy Girl “If you think you’re having trouble copy with the day-to-day trials and tribulations, think again. This book will make you laugh, think, but mostly feel better about your own sanity.”  —Chelsea Handler, comedian and New York Times bestselling author of Life Will Be the Death of Me…And You, Too! "Cazzie David is one of the funniest, most original writers of this up-and-coming generation. This book couldn't have come at a better time."  —Amy Schumer, comedian and New York Times bestselling author of The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo "Cazzie David's gimlet-eyed worldview produces observations so sharp and so funny they will literally make you gasp with laughter and shock at once. No One Asked for This is an incisively funny look at a specific moment in time and in that strange expanse of early adulthood. Every page wraps unguarded insights in a delicious shell of acid-tongue wit. I ate this book up!" —R. Eric Thomas, bestselling author of Here for It, or How to Save Your Soul in America   "It would be far more convenient for everyone involved to hate this and Cazzie David herself, but of course, she doesn’t make anything easy. Unfortunately, these essays are an astute portrait of the mortifying ordeal of being known, capturing the embarrassment of a life reluctant to be lived. These essays are an inner monologue on its best behavior–sitting around with a friend in comfortable silence, or meeting that one person at a party and sighing, “Oh, thank god.” Here, everyday observations are sprinkled with brutal honesty, a refreshing break for people whose instinct, and respite, is preferring to not."  —Darcie Wilder, author of literally show me a healthy person "The sharp, anxiety-fueled essays in Cazzie David's No One Asked for This are exactly what the world needs after a year like 2020. David tackles social anxiety, shame spirals, and existential dread with the kind of gallows humor that will surely make her famous dad, Larry David, proud." —PopSugar, Best New Books of November "Full of darkly funny reflections on her life. From shame spirals caused by hookups to panic attacks about being alive, David chronicles her life's most chaotic moments with wit, bleak humor and self-awareness." —PureWow, 9 Books to Read in November “[A] darkly funny collection of essays…You’ll desperately want to be David's best friend, which is probably exactly what she was hoping wouldn’t happen. The next time you feel like indulging a pang of nihilism, this will fit the bill.” —HelloGiggles, The 10 Best New Books To Read in November "Blisteringly honest...kind of like if a David Sedaris book was written by an anxiety-ridden millennial who grew up in Hollywood." —Entertainment Weekly "[David] will make you bark with laughter in these essays about family, relationships and the perils of social media." —People Magazine —

From the Publisher

2020-09-08
Dark humor is pushed to its limits in this debut collection of essays.

David, the 26-year-old co-creator of the web series “Eighty-Sixed” and daughter of Larry David, mines her anxiety and depression for material in essays that often lean more disconcertingly sad than funny. Several of the pieces are prefaced by excerpts from a 2007 neuropsychological evaluation of the author, and the collection features three sets of “Tweets I Would Tweet If I Weren't Morally Opposed to Twitter,” which include “Ways I like to pass time: Think of all the ways I can kill myself without leaving the room I'm currently in,” and “The human body is amazing; I can't believe I can have this level of internal anguish and not have imploded yet.” While some readers may find these observations sarcastically amusing, others may genuinely worry about the author. Other essays are clever: “I have urban dictionary open and I’m ready to sext”; “What if I just gave in and made my Instagram bio ‘Larry David’s daughter.’ ” In the longest piece, David explores a high-profile breakup, documenting her ex's failings as a “cripplingly codependent” individual given to blackouts and self-harm and recording her sorrow during a post-breakup safari trip to South Africa with her family. “I wanted to self-induce a coma and not wake up for years, but even years didn’t seem like it would be enough time,” she writes. In another selection, the author makes a list of things showing that “God Is Definitely Real,” which include puppies and kittens, fruit, coffee, mint, and “alcohol/weed.” The majority of David’s commentary is more banal than inventive: After getting a cat to ease her anxiety, she got anxious about the cat’s inevitable death. She reports that social media can be mind-numbing. She shares her unhappiness about being “almost pretty” and her “self-loathing” about realizing that “my taste in men is straight-up trash.”

The few amusing bits aren’t worth enough to slog through the rest.

Kirkus Reviews