Monday, August 31, 2020

Attempting Normal by Marc Maron

(hb; 2013: nonfiction, humor)

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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