The Uncollected David Rakoff: Including the entire text of Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish

by David Rakoff, Timothy G. Young (Editor)

Overview

Bestselling and Thurber Prize–winning humorist David Rakoff was one of the most original, delightfully acerbic voices of his generation. Here, in one place, is the best of his previously uncollected material—most never before published in book form.
 
David Rakoff’s singular personality spills from every page of this witty and entertaining volume, which includes travel features, early fiction works, pop culture criticism, and transcripts of his most memorable appearances on public radio’s Fresh Air and This American Life.

These writings chart his transformation from fish out of water, meekly arriving for college in 1982, to a proud New Yorker bluntly opining on how to walk properly in the city. They show his unparalleled ability to capture the pleasures of solitary pursuits like cooking and crafting, especially in times of trouble; as well as the ups and downs in the life-span of a friendship, whether it is a real relationship or an imaginary correspondence between Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss (co-authored with Jonathan Goldstein). Also included is his novel-in-verse Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish.
 
By turns hilarious, incisive and deeply moving, this collection highlights the many facets of Rakoff’s huge talent and shows the arc of his remarkable career.

With a foreword by Paul Rudnick.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307946478
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/27/2015
Series:	Anchor Books Original Series
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	976,471
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David Rakoff is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: the essay collections Fraud, Don’t Get Too Comfortable, and Half Empty, and the novel in verse Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish. A two-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, he was a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s This American Life. His writing frequently appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Wired, Salon,GQ, Outside, Gourmet, Vogue, and Slate, among other publications. An accomplished stage and screen actor, playwright, and screenwriter, he adapted the screenplay for and starred in Joachim Back’s film The New Tenants, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. He died in 2012.

Read an Excerpt

"Goodbye to All of You"
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Uncollected David Rakoff"
by .
Copyright © 2015 David Rakoff.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by Paul Rudnick

My Sister of Perpetual Mercy
Sagrada Família
My First New York
An Open Letter to My Sisters
Goodbye to All of You
A Former Smoker Cheers
Diary, 1998
What’s Up, Dike?
The Wizards of Id
Laura Bush
The Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name
David Rakoff: Essayist, Mountaineer, “Comic Saint,” Fresh Air Interview
Fu Fighters
Evergreen Safari
Northern Composure
A Basket Case in North Carolina
Traveler’s Tale: A New Yorker Is Born
Walk This Way
I Like My Dog. Yours? Not So Much.
King of the Forest
Tweenage Wasteland
Unaccustomed as I Am . . . : How to Give a Wedding Toast
David Rakoff’s Half Empty Worldview Is Full of Wit, Fresh Air Interview 1
The Craft That Consumed Me
The Waiting
When Bad Things Happen to Do-Good People
Author David Rakoff Calms Himself by Keeping a Full Pantry
Oh! The Places You Will Not Go!, This American Life (Co-written with Jonathan Goldstein)  
Stiff as a Board, Light as a Feather, This American Life
Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish 

Editorial Reviews

The dizzying work of the late, preposterously talented Rakoff has finally been corralled in an anthology of profound entertainment.”
     —O, The Oprah Magazine, "10 Titles to Pick Up Now"

“A candid, hilarious, self-effacing grab bag of writings on subjects—the art of the wedding toast, tween angst, Frank Sinatra, friendship, New York tourists, and Rakoff’s many adventures abroad and on public radio—that tickled the prize-winning humorist.”
     —Elle

“A must-read for Rakoff enthusiasts. It includes all manner of LOL material. . . . Some of the wit on display here reminds [us] of vintage Fran Lebowitz. . . . But Rakoff's best stuff emanates from his big gay self. . . . All in all, a veritable Rakoff cornucopia.” 
     —Bay Area Reporter

“An eclectic anthology of ephemera . . . and personal insights. . . .  A haunting epitaph to a talented writer. . . . Any Rakoff completist won't want to overlook this essential collection.”
     —Out.com, “10 Books We’re Excited for This Fall”
 
"The shorter works—fiction and essays—of prize-winning author Rakoff needed to be collected. Here, in prose touching and thoughtful, detailed and just hinted at, he limns what it has meant to become a New Yorker; to come out as a gay man; to suffer the heartbreak of friendships when AIDS was new and, perhaps, scarier—in other words, a life well lived, with fleeting moments carefully observed. This wide-ranging collection encompasses all that brought Rakoff renown. . . . [And] will suit readers who seek thoughtful essays and the grace and the humor, in top form, of a top writer.”
     —Booklist
 
“[An] enjoyable anthology. . . . Rakoff writes with eloquence and grace. His voice is a sui generis mix of humor and misery. . . . Fans of David Sedaris and Jon Ronson will find the book a fine addition to Rakoff’s hilarious body of work; its publication further highlights the loss of his truly original outlook.”
     —Library Journal
 
“One of our funniest writers.”
     —People
 
“Rakoff can issue 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

From the Publisher

09/01/2015
Fans of former This American Life radio commentator Rakoff (1964–2012) will recognize the writer's (Fraud; Half Empty; Don't Get Too Comfortable) voice in this enjoyable anthology of previously uncollected essays, stories, interview transcripts, and more. Themes of family, friendship, and life as a gay man in the 1980s and 1990s run throughout, but dominant is the experience of illness. Whether describing his own Hodgkin's lymphoma (a disease whose radiation treatment later caused a fatal recurrence of cancer in 2012) or the impact of AIDS on his adopted New York, Rakoff writes with eloquence and grace. His voice is a sui generis mix of humor and misery, as when he writes, "the two default directories of my emotional life are to either make jokes about something or to be sad about something and sometimes simultaneously. Sad jokes." VERDICT While the selections can be hit or miss, fans of David Sedaris and Jon Ronson will find the book a fine addition to Rakoff's hilarious body of work; its publication further highlights the loss of his truly original outlook.—Doug Diesenhaus, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Library Journal

2015-06-23
A posthumous, clearinghouse collection by the writer and NPR humorist. When Rakoff died of cancer in 2012, he achieved an even higher profile with the publication of his well-received novel in verse, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish (2013), in which much of the bittersweet power stemmed from the fact that the author was in the midst of contemplating his own mortality. The original Kirkus review said that it "provides a fitting memorial to a humorist whose embrace of life encompassed its dark side," and it is republished in its entirety as the closing piece here, comprising almost a quarter of this collection's contents. A couple of lengthy interviews with NPR's Terry Gross also fill a large portion, as Rakoff discusses collections or pieces that aren't in this "uncollected" anthology. There are also transcripts from a few of the author's This American Life contributions, with one finding him responding with the verse of Dr. Seuss to Kafka's Gregor Samsa on his plight as a cockroach (which now seems like a prelude to the verse novel). The rest of the collection is scattershot—travel pieces, op-eds, memoir, one fictional short story, an online diary. Perhaps the best of these stand-alone selections is "The Love that Dare Not Squeak Its Name," originally from Salon, in which Rakoff's interpretation of E.B. White's Stuart Little as a seminal gay icon will make it difficult for readers to see the mouse-child in any other light. In the interviews with Gross, she stresses how "really funny" Rakoff is, and his performances with her confirm it, but humor is rarely the focus of the written pieces and only occasionally the byproduct. Rakoff completists will want this, even though it'll give them two copies of the novel that they already own. A hit-and-miss selection that is more of a footnote to Rakoff's career than a summary of it.

Kirkus Reviews