Will Not Attend
Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation
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- ¥710
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- ¥710
Publisher Description
“Damn, this book is good.”—Jon Stewart
“A biting, darkly hilarious collection of personal essays that begs to be read aloud.”—Chicago Tribune
Emmy Award–winning writer Adam Resnick began his career at Late Night with David Letterman before honing his chops in movies and cable television, including HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show. While courageously admitting to being “euphorically antisocial,” Resnick plunges readers deep into his troubled psyche in this uproarious memoir-in-essays. Shaped by such touchstone events as a traumatic Easter egg hunt and overwrought by obsessions, he refuses to be burdened by chores like basic social obligation and personal growth, adhering to his own steadfast rule: “I refuse to do anything I don’t want to do.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following in the recent movement led by David Sedaris and others of putting one's neuroses down on paper for the amusement of others, Resnick's first book celebrates a lifetime of social awkwardness, misanthropy, disinterest, and violating the unspoken rules of a normal culture. This sort of dark, uncomfortable comedy, similar to the TV shows (Get a Life, The Larry Sanders Show) and movies (Death to Smoochy, Cabin Boy) that Resnick has helped create and written for, is not for everyone. But his ability to give a cinematic feel to the most inappropriate moments, like the fact that his father sired six boys ("His magnificent balls had been set on this plant to produce males. It was as if nature itself, in all its ferocity, had chiseled two more glorious chunks from a monolithic rock"), is undeniable and often pretty darn funny. Though the stories track Resnick from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, not much personal growth is shown. That stasis is mined for laughs but can also make the stories bleed into one another. Thankfully, just as he portrays himself as cold, Resnick has a talent for bringing other characters especially his crotchety but passionate dad to life as comic and spirited foils for himself thereby keeping his stories more comedic than conceited.
