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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 081
EAN: 9780767916035
ISBN: 0767916034
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: September 12, 2006
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: September 12, 2006
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
David Rakoff takes us on a bitingly funny grand tour of our culture of excess. Whether he is contrasting the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the good-times-and-chicken-wings populism of Hooters Air; working as a cabana boy at a South Beach hotel; or traveling to a private island off the coast of Belize to watch a soft-core video shoot—where he is provided with his very own personal manservant—rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly skewered. Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism; our manic getting and spending have now become celebrated as moral virtues. Simultaneously a Wildean satire and a plea for a little human decency, Don’t Get Too Comfortable shows that far from being bobos in paradise, we’re in a special circle of gilded-age hell.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Why does this guy live in the US since he does nothing but rip on our country. He seems jealous and queeny. David Sedaris has similar books but they are actually funny and a bit more humble.
Rating:  -
It's impossible, as many reviewers have noted, not to review Rakoff without mentioning Sedaris. Rakoff is Betty to Sedaris' Veronica - Sedaris is more famous, more popular, has the better press. And yet I've always been a Betty man myself.
Unlike Sedaris, Rakoff describes the things he is reviewing and the actions he is seeing and performing, not just how he felt about them. His insights are profound and amusing. Other people have commented on the Hooters Air section of the book and it's a good one. But the Log Cabin Republicans part is actually one of my favorites. Rakoff is able to show you why he thinks these people are crazy without making them into caricatures. You leave this book having a more tolerant opinion of the people described in it, but you also got in some good laughs at their expense or (more often than you'd think) at Rakoff's. The laughs, though, are in good fun.
Rating:  -
If you are going to have a pissy, gay, ex-Canadian New Yorker write about what is wrong with the USA, especially its overconsumption and extravagant wealth, then the book produced better be funny. This one isn't. Instead, it just comes across as pissy. The first few dozen pages or so have some amusing little vignettes, but after a while, one realizes that these stories go nowhere. Reminds me of another dud I recommend readers avoid: Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon.
Rating: -
rakoff writes like sedaris on a nasty pill. sharp and laugh out loud funny, it viciously cuts through the pomposity of consumerism. if you are easily offended, read something else.
Rating:  -
I think the David Sedaris comparison has been made, but it's unavoidable. The voice of David Rakoff is very similar: witty, sharp, biting, dry, highly observant. However, whereas Sedaris writes about organic experiences--things that occur naturally in his life, most of Rakoff's experiences are "experienced" purely for the sake of writing about them. He actually sets out to find odd experiences so he can write about them and it feels a little stilted and distant. Sedaris' writing feels more salient, and perhaps a bit more raw, because it's often emotional--it's biased observation. Rakoff feels emotionally distant from his writing--perhaps because it is so contrived, or appears so. There's no faulting his technique--the writing just doesn't connect to its audience. Just my opinion.
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