Something That May Shock and Discredit You
-
-
4.7 • 9 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
“One of our smartest, most inventive humor writers, Ortberg combines bathos and the devotional into a revelation.” —Jordy Rosenberg, The New York Times Book Review
From the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and Merry Spinster, writer of Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column, and cofounder of The Toast comes a hilarious and stirring collection of essays and cultural observations spanning pop culture—from the endearingly popular to the staggeringly obscure.
Daniel M. Lavery is known for blending genres, forms, and sources to develop fascinating new hybrids—from lyric rants to horror recipes to pornographic scripture. In his most personal work to date, he turns his attention to the essay, offering vigorous and laugh-out-loud funny accounts of both popular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, family dynamics, and the many meanings of faith.
From a thoughtful analysis of the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV’s House Hunters, and featuring figures as varied as Anne of Green Gables, Columbo, Nora Ephron, Apollo, and the cast of Mean Girls, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a hilarious and emotionally exhilarating compendium that combines personal history with cultural history to make you see yourself and those around you entirely anew. It further establishes Lavery as one of the most innovative and engaging voices of his generation—and it may just change the way you think about Lord Byron forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Slate advice columnist Ortberg (Texts from Jane Eyre) brings the full force of his wit and literary depth to this genre-bending essay collection. Describing it as "memoir-adjacent," Ortberg intersperses searingly honest passages about his journey as a transgender man with laugh-out-loud funny literary pastiche. In "Lord Byron Has a Birthday and Takes His Leave," the poet histrionically threatens to die gloriously in Greece to avoid reaching the mortifying age of 40. Sir Gawain tries to escape the sexual hijinks cooked up by Lady Bertilak and the Green Knight in "Sir Gawain Just Wants to Leave Castle Make-Out." Amid the literary fun, Ortberg reflects upon gender identity. Finding the national conversation about transgender people too child-centric he only realized he was one at age 30 Ortberg instead returned to the scriptures of his youth to find himself in "stories of transformation... already familiar" to him. In the most moving chapter, he drops the artifice of humor and lays bare his anguish at severing his relationship with his mother as her daughter, with the two finding solace in the story of Jacob and Esau two brothers who make peace but not before Jacob changes his name, and thus identity, to Israel. Ortberg provides an often hilarious, sometimes discomfiting, but invariably honest account of one man's becoming.
Customer Reviews
How does Daniel make me laugh AND cry so hard?
Equally poignant and mischievous, lighthearted and serious, wry and genuine. This might be one of my favorite books I’ve ever read; the process of existing and understanding ourselves as we are is complex and dichotomous. This book captures that perfectly.