“All the great laughs come from the minds of misfits.”
[misfit by Gary Gulman]
When I went to preorder Gary Gulman’s new memoir, misfit, I thought $28 was too much. A day later I decided that this is what money is for:
to support an artist I love
to learn something about a craft I take seriously
and to have a book to read while Florida thunderstorms make every September night a perfect opportunity to sit out on the back porch with a cigar and Vicky’s dog, Kavi. (New World Cameroon, girlfriend, Yorkshire Terrier).
Thunderstorms make a great soundtrack for misfit. Their lightning bolts bursting with as much energy as Gulman’s prose. The thunder applauds the punchlines and witticisms that erupt from every memory shared.
Subtitled “growing up awkward in the ‘80s,” misfit contains all of the tropes of a comedic memoir:
• embarrassing moments mined for amusement and meaning;
• characters that pass through our lives get literary revenge, praise, and definition;
• and the relatable day-to-day upbringing that explains so much about the comedian that our author became.
But misfit is one thing more: a demonstration of recovery from a sickness that has no obvious cure. Depression.
Between the chapters laid out by grade level, Gulman enters into a diary the recent steps and actions he took to overcome America’s most fatal pandemic: mental illness.
Moving back into his childhood room, visiting friends and allies from his childhood, and remembering his youth first hand, Gulman does more than memorialize the wisdom and strength these people, places, and events brought him long ago. He applies them.
A proud testimony to the power of love, family, and friendship, misfit shows the reader how to use the tools we all have available to us to face our harshest demons and come out ahead.
Gary Gulman is one of my favorite comedians and performed my favorite “bit” of all time: State Abbreviations.
Gary’s comedy proves you can talk about anything with stand-up comedy, so long as it is you who is talking about it.
I cried through the last chapter of misfit, all while cracking up. If my neighbor saw me reading misfit they’d think I’d just saw an iguana get stuck by lightning. At least that would explain my emotional fit and the dead lizard in my backyard.
Honest, caring, and hilarious. These three words describe Gary Gulman’s unrequited-love-letter to the eighties, as well as my fifth grade teacher, Ms. T. Two of my favorite things.
Gary Gulman, congratulations on an amazing book that wasn’t written for me but I found a way to make about myself anyways.