4.5 stars

I miss David Rakoff. I didn't realize how much until I finally read this book.

Some of the essays focus on post-9/11 NYC. Those days when Bush was President again, and like Cinderella's magic transformation, Giuliani turned into an overnight hero. Over the years I have tried to block that time period from my head with little (read: not one bit of) success. While reading those essays didn't bring me any joy, they were my favorite ones. Some other essay topics included a Midnight Madness Scavenger Hunt, fashion shows, Playboy bunnies, Hooters airlines, the Concorde's last flight, Martha Stewart and the joys of crafting, going on a fast under the guidance of a passive aggressive guru, learning about edible plants from a self-proclaimed "Wildman", gay Republicans, plastic surgery, cryonics, and the absurdity of fetishizing sodium chloride and water. My favorite one was his observations on "The New Weimar" in Times Square two months after the World Trade Center Attacks and his scathing review of "The Puppetry of the Penis."

Some of the topics are a bit dated now. I haven't thought about Martha Stewart in years, I practically forgot the The Puppetry of the Penis was a thing that actually happened, and Yves Saint Laurent is not only retired but, like Rakoff, no longer walking among us. But Rakoff's writing style and insights somehow make it all fresh and interesting again. It's a wonderful and quick read that reminded me how much I enjoy reading essay collections.

This book, by the late David Rakoff (d. 2012) is absolutely one of the funniest books I've ever read. He was the successor to S.J. Perelman--brilliant, full of unexpected comparisons, having a vocabulary beyond just about anything I've read. I was thrilled when I got about 80 percent of his literary/popular culture references, so diffuse are they. What a book!

This was the first "fun" read I've had in a while. Very amusing, laugh-out-loud in parts, nonfiction articles. My first time reading Rakoff, and I'm looking forward to more of his work.

I listened to the last disc of the audiobook while walking in the park this afternoon, still trying to absorb the sadness of his death. David Rakoff has made me guffaw so loudly (sometimes in public, since I'm often listening to him read his essays on my iPod), and he has made me cry, and he has made me think. Most of all, he has made me marvel over how extravagantly, unfairly smart he is, how he manages to be both savage to the deserving (Paris Hilton, Log Cabin Republicans, the producers of The Swan) and unexpectedly generous with everyone else. Few stylists in this or the previous century can turn a phrase so beautifully, make sense of senseless events without being reductive or dogmatic, shape paragraphs so that they cohere but still manage to surprise. His arguments are elegant without ever seeming contrived. Even though he admits, in a very funny essay about his obsession with doing Martha Stewart-ish craft projects, that he finds writing excruciatingly difficult ("Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick."), he writes so gracefully, with such apparent ease and wit, that it's hard to believe him. His sentences seem as natural as a Fred Astaire routine: You know a lot of work went into them, but you sure don't notice the sweat. The Italian courtiers had a word for it: sprezzatura. Rakoff had sprezzatura in spades.

The last essay in this volume, about cryogenics and our pathetic lust for eternal life, gave me a real pang because I really do find myself wishing that someone could somehow deep-freeze his brain or load it onto a hard drive for the benefit of future generations. We're all the poorer for not having any more Rakoff books to look forward to. But even though I'm sad that he had to die so young, I'm grateful that he left us with three terrific books and several wonderful radio segments. He doesn't need a stupid cryogenic vault at Alcon. His voice was so distinctive, his bile so brilliant, his humanity so all-encompassing, that I know he'll live on in the heads of anyone who has ever heard or read him. It comforts me to think that whenever I start to miss That Voice, I can invite it to inhabit my consciousness anytime I choose: all I have to do is pick up one of his books, and there it is.