Don't Get Too Comfortable - by David Rakoff (Paperback)

About the Book

Rakoff takes readers on a bitingly funny grand tour of the culture of excess. He shows that far from being bobos in paradise, mankind is in a special circle of gilded-age hell.

Book Synopsis

A bitingly funny grand tour of our culture of excess from an award-winning humorist.

Whether David Rakoff is contrasting the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the good-times-and-chicken-wings populism of Hooters Air; working as a cabana boy at a South Beach hotel; or traveling to a private island off the coast of Belize to watch a soft-core video shoot--where he is provided with his very own personal manservant--rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly skewered. Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism; our manic getting and spending have now become celebrated as moral virtues. Simultaneously a Wildean satire and a plea for a little human decency, Don't Get Too Comfortable shows that far from being bobos in paradise, we're in a special circle of gilded-age hell.

Review Quotes

"If I were to die suddenly while the reading of this book were in my recent memory, I would probably beg to be reincarnated as a bird so that I could eat seed out of Rakoff's hand. I can't write a more loving review than that." --Popmatters

"A cannily satirical tour guide." --The New York Times Book Review

"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." --Washington Post

"The belly laughs start on page 7 and occur regularly throughout Rakoff's frequently impertinent, occasionally irascible, yet always inimitable take on contemporary American society." --Booklist

"Impuslively readable . . . completely and utterly original." --Kirkus Reviews

"Rakoff's strength is the turn of phrase that deftly and wittily dissects its subject at a stroke." --Chicago Tribune

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.