Something That May Shock and Discredit You - Hardcover

Lavery, Daniel M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1982105216 ISBN 13: 9781982105211

Publisher: Atria Books, 2020

Synopsis

From the writer of Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column and “literally the funniest person on the internet” (Rachel Fershleiser, coeditor of the New York Times bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning) comes a witty and clever collection of essays and cultural observations spanning pop culture—from the endearingly popular to the staggeringly obscure.

Sometimes you just have to yell. New York Times bestselling author of Texts from Jane Eyre Daniel Mallory Ortberg has mastered the art of “poetic yelling,” a genre surely familiar to fans of his cult-favorite website The Toast.

In this irreverent essay collection, Ortberg expands on this concept with in-depth and hilarious studies of all things pop culture, from the high to low brow. From a thoughtful analysis on the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV’s House Hunters, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a laugh-out-loud funny and whip-smart collection for those who don’t take anything—including themselves—much too seriously.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Mallory Ortberg is the “Dear Prudence” advice columnist at Slate, the cofounder of The Toast, and the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and The Merry Spinster.

Review

“A delightful hybrid of a book...blends genres with expert facility....Throughout, Ortberg's writing is vulnerable but confident, specific but never narrow, literal and lyrical. The author is refreshingly unafraid of his own uncertainty, but he's always definitive where it counts....You'll laugh, you'll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Ortberg brings the full force of his wit and literary depth to this genre-bending essay collection, [which] intersperses searingly honest passages about his journey as a transgender man with laugh-out-loud funny literary pastiche....an often hilarious, sometimes discomfiting, but invariably honest account of one man’s becoming.” ––Publishers Weekly

“Like all of his work, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a stand-alone pillar in Ortberg’s remarkable canon, one in which the lines typically drawn around topic and genre are obliterated, resulting in a wide-open field of possibility.” —Electric Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 1982105216
• ISBN 13: 9781982105211
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256