(Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions

Synopsis

How does Steve Almond get himself into so much trouble? Could it be his incessant moralizing? His generally poor posture? The fact that he was raised by a pack of wolves? Frankly, we haven’t got a clue. What we do know is that Almond has a knack for converting his dustups into essays that are both funny and furious. In (Not that You Asked), he squares off against Sean Hannity on national TV, nearly gets arrested for stealing “Sta-Hard” gel from his local pharmacy, and winds up in Boston, where he quickly enrages the entire population of the Red Sox Nation. Almond is, as they say in Yiddish, a tummler.

Almond on personal grooming: “Why, exactly, did I feel it would be ‘sexy’ and ‘hot’ to have my girlfriend wax my chest? I can offer no good answer to this question today. I could offer no good answer at the time.”
On sports: “To be a fan is to live in a condition of willed helplessness. We are (for the most part) men who sit around and watch other men run and leap and sweat and grapple each other. It is a deeply homoerotic pattern of conduct, often interracial in nature, and essentially humiliating.”
On popular culture: “I have never actually owned a TV, a fact I mention whenever possible, in the hopes that it will make me seem noble and possibly lead to oral sex.”
On his literary hero, Kurt Vonnegut: “His books perform the greatest feat of alchemy known to man: the conversion of grief into laughter by means of courageous imagination.”
On religion: “Every year, when Chanukah season rolled around, my brothers and I would make the suburbanpilgrimage to the home of our grandparents, where we would ring in the holiday with a big, juicy Chanukah ham.”

The essays in (Not that You Asked) will make you laugh out loud, or, maybe just as likely, hurl the book across the room. Either way, you’ll find Steve Almond savagely entertaining. Not that you asked.

David L. Reynolds - Library Journal

A digressive series of hysterical letters to Oprah Winfrey sets the familiar yet frenzied tone of this essay collection. Through autobiographical anecdotes, New York Timesbest-selling author Almond takes us on a coast-to-coast tour of American pop culture. His talent for writing short stories (e.g., "My Life in Heavy Metal"; "The Evil B.B. Chow") is fueled by an obsessive-compulsive passion for truth (e.g., Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America). Whether describing the backlash of a politically motivated open letter of resignation from Boston College (published in the Boston Globe) or analyzing the life of an Internet blogger in a somewhat Freudian fashion (an essay first published on Salon.com), he exposes the absurd realities of modern society. High levels of uncensored wit and wisdom-e.g., an in-depth comparison of Republican politics to Dante's Inferno-will incite riotous laughter in some while tempting to incite real riots among the politically conservative. Almond is leading a life as interesting and entertaining to read about as are the lives of fellow pop-lit contemporaries Dave Eggers and David Sedaris. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/07.]