Kept forgetting to read this, it wasn't super enthralling. Some stories were funny but in a mildly annoying way. He really overindulges in esoteric, complicated vocabulary at the expense of readers' enjoyment and comprehension.

Alternately witty, scathing, insightful and darkly humorous, David Rakoff’s personal essay collections never fail to resonate with me. He is brilliant. I prefer listening to him read his own writings on audio, as his narration style adds so much to the print.

4.5 stars - Spotted this in a nearby Little Free Library recently. Couldn't resist picking it up because I had not read any of David Rakoff's written work and because I knew this also was a Chip Kidd cover design. The best of the essays echoed back to some of the classic episodes from This American Life. The final essay is harder to read because it tells the early first recovery from a disease that ended the author's life in 2012.

some of these essays were great, and some were so-so. I listened to this and felt like his performance was pretty uninspired most of the time. He comes to life when he is voice acting, but unfortunately, there is not enough of that.

3.5⭐️. Some true laugh out loud moments. Some surprisingly deep thoughts popping out at you here and there between the casual and funny observations. Makes me wonder if I should be writing down more things from my life but I can’t imagine mine is as exciting. I think I would have rated it a bit higher if so many of the references hadn’t become a little dated over the last 20ish years, and if I hadn’t needed a dictionary nearby at times.

I had bought Fraud a couple of years ago and finally made time to read it. I was drawn to it after reading the jacket copy because I, too, often feel as though I don't fit in anywhere and that I don't really belong. Figuring that such a book would benefit me, I went for it.

I don't regret reading it, though as an editor I was disappointed to see so many needlessly long or obscure words as well as massively overlong sentences. I understand that I'm not in my usual role of editing scientific material for readers' understanding, but still I maintain that longer sentences and longer words are harder to read. Writing that uses that approach feels forced to me and smacks of pretentiousness.

But then I'm not in David Rakoff's head, and I chuckled enough times in the book that I don't consider the time wasted. Some of the essays are stronger than others. I confess that I guffawed at his admittedly tasteless and presumably fictitious rendition of a wife whose husband had hit her but then apologized later. You'd have to see it. Domestic abuse is certainly no laughing matter, but 20 years ago maybe he got away with it because the context made it clear that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

Even so, I felt as though I found a kindred spirit and have ordered more of his books. I hadn't known that he died until I was midway through this collection, and his final essay about his struggles in chemotherapy was touching.

My fellow editors will appreciate that we can never really stop the meter from running. Oddly, in at least four places, the book uses em dashes when en dashes were clearly called for (all page numbers from the 2001 hardcover first edition):

• "A few weeks into my Psychic Secretary—hood, I sat in a movie theater packed to the rafters" (p. 34).
• "Things got pretty quiet after Columba, monster sighting—wise, until about 1933, when the first road was built around the Loch" (p. 135).
• "There are those who would say that my fear is an outdated remnant of a pre—Gilded Age New York, and perhaps it is" (p. 155).
• "Unlike certain Steven Seagal—moderated Buddhist retreats and Icelandic piano-teaching, elf-spotting living rooms I could mention, there is none of that falsely benign conception of nature as friendly, inherently good, tame, and prettified" (p. 182).

In any case, I'm looking forward to his other material and seeing how it compares.

Rakoff is one of my favorites but I haven't read him in a long time. I can't remember the introductory book I liked the most; these essays utilize his usual acerbic style, and while still humorous, slightly more bitter. His insight, both into himself and his environment, is always illuminating and intelligent and given that these essays were collected around the time he was first diagnosed with cancer which eventually killed him, it's not surprising that his mood was a bit dark.

I love David Rakoff's writing, but reading it is always challenging, knowing that he could still be here today. No one can replace Rakoff for me, though some say David Sedaris is similar. All due respect to Mr. Sedaris, but there's no comparison for me. Rackoff's writing is lyrical and witty to the point of making me angry that I can't come up with the lines that seem so effortless for him. The final essay in the book, which dealt with his battle with Hodgkin's, had a particularly striking effect on me knowing that his cancer would eventually come back and treatment wouldn't be successful. Fraud still had me laughing out loud, specifically these two quotes:
Talking about young girls coming into the ice cream shop to order special edition Annie ice cream - "Seven- and eight-year-old angels would skip into the store, all pigtails and horse love, and the scales would fall from their eyes as they spied the pink and white of the tubs of Annie, seeing them for what they were: blatant marketing; a pernicious inducement to submit to the patriarchy. These apple-cheeked youngsters became suddenly hardened and cynical. They took up smoking right there in line, laughing bitterly like baby Piafs, derisively ordering Futility Shakes and double scoops of Alienation Chip."
And this one, from an essay about a meditation retreat -
"Only one woman asks Seagal what she should do in the face of hate speech. She hears so much of it, primarily against blacks and gays. 'Well, I'm black and gay, and I'm proud of it,' says Seagal. The straight, white audience laughs appreciatively and applauds. Racism eradicated, we move on."

I read this book for my book club.

I didn’t find the book humorous, a couple of times I thought to myself, that was smart, but I don’t think I really laughed.

The highlight of the book is the author describing the origin of the term “23 skidoo” which I never knew.

The book is a series of unrelated essays, some on elves in Iceland, others on cancer, others on nature retreats.

I think my biggest problem was the author and I don’t think the same way. I don’t know of anyone who thinks this way though. Regarding the possibility of forced laughter, the author says:
“I’m suddenly reminded of that legendary medieval torture wherein infidels and malefactors, their chests constricted by tight leather straps, have salt poured on their feet. Goats are then brought in to lick the salt off and the victims expire in horrible, suffocating guffaws, unable to escape or draw their next breath.”
It seems a bit extreme.

In one paragraph we have the words jute, apparatchiks and gestalt. On one other page synecdoche, anodyne and thrum. I don’t know what any of these 6 words mean, and this was on three paragraphs. There’s an important lesson that when you have to explain the joke, it’s less funny. Similarly always using the dictionary function of my Kindle took away from the story. I don’t know what I would have done if I was reading the paperback.

The narrative felt strained, over-thought and over-worked while only being mildly amusing.

I just couldn't get into this book. I may try again later. Maybe I wasn't in the mood.

Rakoff's writing is, for those who have read Sedaris, reminiscent of Sedaris' style and wit. It is not Sedaris. Rakoff's works in this volume seem to be almost entirely a description of something or some experience that he set out to experience in order to describe it; while Sedaris' short works are more autobiographical - though they do contain a few Rakoff-like assignments. Sedaris, while pointing his acerbic laser gun at everyone, tends in the end to shine the most deprecatory light upon himself - coming off as charming. Though this book is called Fraud, seemingly referring to the writer, and while Rakoff is somewhat self-shaming, his most vicious poniards are directed outward, which, along with too many references I didn't get because I'm not cultured enough, lends his writing a less-likable air. Regardless, this book was quite enjoyable - and I'm planning on picking up his other work as well to see how he ages as a writer.

Full disclosure, I don't know who David Rakoff is, but after seeing the book pop up here and there I decided to jump in and try it as a story a day read. For various reasons that didn't happen and I just read a few essays every now and then. The recommendation I read was fully deserved and I thought the stories were very interesting, witty and just down right entertaining. I loved his story about Steven Segal, and his story about playing Freud in a shop window - the closing story about his time with a certain type of bank could go either way for some, but I thought was brilliant.
While I am paying special mention to the above essays, I really didn't think there was a weak one in the bunch. I'm glad to have finally discovered the author, and hope to read more of their work.

Recommended.