Don't Get Too Comfortable : The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems
 
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ABOUT THE BOOK Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems FROM OUR EDITORS The title fits: David Rakoff specializes in making readers slightly uncomfortable. For years, he has been serving up sardonic essays on "first world problems" for upscale readers of GQ, Condé Nast Traveler, and Harper's Bazaar. His choice of topics is wildly eclectic; from plastic surgery to snack food on Hooters Air to the frozen realm of cryonics. FROM THE PUBLISHER The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems David Rakoff's collection of autobiographical essays, Fraud, established him as one of our funniest, most insightful writers. In Don't Get Too Comfortable, Rakoff journeys into the land of plenty that is contemporary North America. Rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly and wittily portrayed. Whether contrasting the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the good times and chicken wings of Hooters Air, portraying the rarified universe of Paris fashion shows where an evening dress can cost as much as four years of college, or traveling to a private island off the coast of Belize to watch a soft-core Playboy TV shoot, where he is provided with his very own personal manservant, David Rakoff takes us on a bitingly funny grand tour of our culture of excess, delving into the manic getting and spending that defines the North American way of life. Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism, and Rakoff is there to map that frontier. He sits through the grotesqueries of "avant garde" vaudeville in Times Square immediately following 9/11. Twenty days without food allows him to experience firsthand the wonders of "detoxification," and the frozen world of cryonics, whose promise of eternal life is the ultimate status symbol, leaves him very cold indeed (much to our good fortune). At once a Wildean satire of our ridiculous culture of overconsumption and a plea for a little human decency, Don't Get Too Comfortable isa bitingly funny grand tour of our special circle of gilded-age hell. FROM THE CRITICS Jonathan Yardley - The Washington Post He's funny…he's smart, and not merely does he not suffer fools gladly, he doesn't suffer them at all…The pleasures of reading what results when an exceedingly sharp pen encounters an exceedingly inviting target are not to be denied, and Rakoff offers many such delights in these pages. He also, by no means incidentally, has a humane view of human society at its most ordinary and unpretentious. But the bloated wallets and bloated egos are his subjects here, and he deflates them with precision and self-evident satisfaction. Jennifer 8. Lee - The New York Times Book Review …worth reading for the good bits, even though the book feels like a slack clothesline, tight at the ends and sagging in the middle. When it comes to this country's penchant for weirdness and overkill, Rakoff is a cannily satirical tour guide-a talent worth mentioning in the same breath as other quirky public radio writer-performers like David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell. Publishers Weekly The title of this collection of humorous essays could also serve as a warning label for its readers. They'll want to stay on guard as GQ writer-at-large Rakoff (Fraud) skewers everything and everyone he encounters. His writing is at its best when trained on the pompous and ostentatious: flying on the Concorde or visiting an exclusive, $1,300-a-night resort off Belize. While attending the Paris couture shows, Rakoff reveals the silliness of the whole enterprise with quips about Karl Lagerfeld's pre-weight loss "large doughy rump" and the "dry spaghetti" of one model's hair. In another piece, a prominent Beverly Hills plastic surgeon tells Rakoff, "this is the Dark Ages" for cosmetic surgery (meaning that f

Submitted On:

09 Sep 2007

File Author:

Rakoff, David

File Size:

1.19 MB