From the inside flap
“Marc Maron was a
parent-scarred, angst-filled, drug-dabbling, love-starved comedian who dreamed
of a simple life: a wife, a home, a sitcom to call his own. But instead he woke
up one day to find himself fired from his radio job, surrounded by feral cats,
and emotionally and financially annihilated by a divorce from a woman he
thought he loved. He tried to heal his broken heart through whatever means he
could find─minor-league hoarding, Viagra addiction, accidental racial-profiling,
cat-fancying, flying airplanes with his mind─but nothing seemed to work. It was
only when he was stripped down to nothing that he found his way back.
“Attempting Normal is
Marc Maron’s journey through the wilderness of his own mind, a collection of
explosively, painfully, addictively funny stories that add up to a moving tale
of hope and hopelessness, of failing, flailing, and finding a way. From standup
to television to his outrageously popular podcast, WTF with Marc Maron,
Mac has always been a genuine original, a disarmingly honest, intensely smart,
brutally open comic who finds wisdom in the strangest places. This is his story
of the winding, potholed road from madness and obsession and failure to
something like normal, the thrillingly comic journey of a sympathetic fuckup
who’s trying really hard to do better without making a bigger mess. Most of us
will relate.”
Review
The target audience for Attempting
are readers who relate to darkly and situationally funny, blunt,
existential-hell and ultimately meaningful-in-a-small-way tales told by a
smart, well-intentioned and self-admitted (ex-)fuckup. If you’re looking for light,
joke-a-minute setups, watch a Jerry Seinfeld standup special. I didn’t laugh as
much as I hoped to while reading Attempting but I am not disappointed by
this─hearing (imagining) Maron’s well-edited voice as he related stories from
his life, imagined and otherwise, made this an even better book. If you’re new
to Maron’s work, I’m not sure this is the best introduction to him. Watching
one of his standup specials or listening to his WTF podcasts are
recommended (his most recent specials are streaming on Netflix), so you can hear,
know his voice before committing time and/or money to an excellent, jokes-baked-in-existentialism
and healing-for-fuckups work. Borrow this
from the library or buy it used before committing serious cash to it, lest Attempting
turns out to not be your idea of smart-minded entertainment.
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