Don't Get Too Comfortable

david rakoff

The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems

David Rakoff’s collection of autobiographical essays, Fraud , established him as one of our funniest, most insightful writers. In Don’t Get Too Comfortable , Rakoff journeys into the land of plenty that is contemporary North America. Rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly and wittily portrayed.

Whether contrasting the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the good times and chicken wings of Hooters Air, portraying the rarified universe of Paris fashion shows where an evening dress can cost as much as four years of college, or traveling to a private island off the coast of Belize to watch a soft-core Playboy TV shoot, where he is provided with his very own personal manservant, David Rakoff takes us on a bitingly funny grand tour of our culture of excess, delving into the manic getting and spending that defines the North American way of life.

Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism, and Rakoff is there to map that frontier. He sits through the grotesqueries of “avant garde” vaudeville in Times Square immediately following 9/11. Twenty days without food allows him to experience firsthand the wonders of “detoxification,” and the frozen world of cryonics, whose promise of eternal life is the ultimate status symbol, leaves him very cold indeed (much to our good fortune).

At once a Wildean satire of our ridiculous culture of overconsumption and a plea for a little human decency, Don’t Get Too Comfortable is a bitingly funny grand tour of our special circle of gilded-age hell.

Genres nonfictionhumoressaysmemoiraudiobookcomedyshort storiesadulttravellgbt

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2005

Literary awards

lambda literary award,

This edition

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover
Published: September 20, 2005 by Doubleday Canada
ISBN: 9780385661850
ASIN: 0385661851
Language: English

About the author

david rakoff

David Rakoff (November 27, 1964 – August 9, 2012) was an essayist, journalist, and actor. Originally from Canada, Rakoff was a graduate of Columbia University, he obtained dual Canadian-American citizenship in 2003, and resided for much of his life in New York City. His brother Simon is a stand-up comedian.

Rakoff wrote for the New York Times Magazine, Outside, GQ, Vogue and Salon. He was a frequent contributor to the radio program This American Life on Public Radio International.

Rakoff's essays have been collected in the books Fraud and Don't Get Too Comfortable and are largely autobiographical and humorous. He was openly gay, and his writings have been compared to those of essayist and friend David Sedaris. Rakoff was even mistaken for Sedaris once while performing in a storefront window; both authors have written about this incident in their books.

Rakoff was featured in the This American Life episode 305, the holiday show on December 23, 2005, and episode 156, "What Remains", broadcast 21 March 2000. He was the only individual to host in place of Ira Glass a This American Life episode (Episode 248 - "Like It Or Not"). Rakoff made several appearances on the The Daily Show, and voiced the reading part of Thomas Jefferson for Jon Stewart's, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction.

Rakoff's acting roles included the Off-Broadway comedy play, The Book of Liz, authored by friends David and Amy Sedaris, the film Strangers with Candy, also co-written by Amy Sedaris, and a cameo in the film Capote.