Chatting Books online Day 82. Today's recommended book comes from an author that brought down the house with laughter at The Walker Percy Weekend several years ago and was scheduled to join us again this coming Saturday to regale us once again, until a certain virus got in the way of our fun. Harrison Scott Key's newest book "Congratulations, Who Are You Again?" is his second memoir (he shared the story of growing up the son of "The World's Largest Man" in his first very funny and very touching first memoir). And while I am mentioning that be sure and read his essay in "Southern Writers on Writing" (Day 49 of Chatting Books Online) , laugh-out-loud funny essay about being a "memoirist" - how do you even pronounce that anyway?
Sometimes the publisher's descriptions of these books are just too good not to share and this is one of those cases so though this is a little long here is the description.
This funny and wise new memoir from Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, will inspire laughter and hope for anyone who's ever been possessed by a dream of what they want to be when they grow up.
Little-known author Mark Twain once said that the two most important days in your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why. He's talking about dreams here, the destiny that calls every living soul to some kind of greatness. What Mr. Twain doesn't say is: A dream is also a monster that wants to eat you. Nobody tells you this part of the American Dream -- until now. In this new memoir, Congratulations Who Are You Again, readers join Harrison Scott Key on his outrageous journey to becoming a great American writer.
As a young boy in Mississippi, Harrison possessed many special gifts, such as the ability to read and complete college applications. And yet, throughout young adulthood, he failed at many vocations, until one day, after drinking perhaps too many beers and dusting off his King James Bible, he stumbled across a passage about a lonely pelican, which burst into flame inside him. In a mad blaze of holy illumination, Harrison realized his dream: to set the world afire with the light inside him. He would write a funny book. This was his dream.
With unforgettable wit and tenderness, Congratulations Who Are You Again is Harrison's instructive tale of pursuing his destiny with relentless and often misguided devotion, transforming his life beyond all comprehension: He becomes a signer of autographs, a doer of interviews, a casher of checks that are "worth more money than my father had ever imagined any of us might see, this side of a drug-related felony."
On this journey, Harrison finds that as he gains the world, he stands on the precipice of losing everything that means the most: his family, his mind, his soul. Hilarious, honest, and absolutely practical, Congratulations Who Are You Again is a no-holds-barred look at the life of every ambitious human creature, whether you want to write books or make music, start a business or start a revolution. This is a book for the dreamers.
This 368 pages paperback sells for $15.99 a copy.
