daniell's review against another edition
4.0
Half Empty is more of the same from David Rakoff, which in his case is a very good thing. Of Rakoff's three volumes this one is the most contemplative, the most lesson-learning, and the most like a memoir. In it there are elements of "David the delusional poser" (Fraud) and "David the chronicler of fallen humanity" (Don't Get Too Comfortable), and Half Empty adds the wrinkle of "David the one for whom things would not go as expected."
If one image could summarize the entire book, it would be the following:
"
There are some moments in life that are perfect. Not necessarily wonderful, but that hew so closely to some Platonic or ruminated-upon version of themselves that one almost can't believe they are happening. In fact, one doesn't believe they are happening. As a freshman in college, for example, walking along 112th Street of a winter's evening, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine just up ahead, I looked over to my left at the garbage bags in the empty lot at the corner. In the fading purple gloaming, their surfaces swirled, they seemed to be undulating. I remember thinking to myself, What an amazing trick of the light, because it is almost as if those garbage bags were simply covered with live rats, but of course, they're not, because to see that with my own eyes would be too horrible, too scarring, too much exactly what I fear at this moment on this dark New York side street. Ergo, here be no rats.
On I marched right up to those selfsame Hefty bags which, of course, were covered, teeming with starving rats who squeaked en masse, a horrible, squealing rodent choir, that scattered upon my approach, some of them almost running over my boots.
"
(36)
In the title's words, the glass is half-empty. It's half empty when you are hired to act the part of the dramatic gay decorator alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, because you will flake out when the cameras come around and you realize you can only act on stage. It's half-empty when your cancer may have moved to your lung, you may have a few months to live, you may have your left arm amputated, or upon receiving a second opinion you find that the mass is benign, for now. It's half-empty when you attend New York City's first (and last) annual Exotic Erotic Ball and Expo, where the only thing more fagged out than the attendees is the event itself. Same goes for the real life of an artist in NY (contra Rent), the graveyard of dreams that is the Hollywood walk of fame, the sheer noise and bother that is Disneyland, and the quintessentially-American Salt Lake City. Well, except when you think you're in the middle of Nothing Important Utah Desert and then notice what's there.
Check it out, it's cool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Jetty
In the same essay where he was hired as an actor, then found incompetent and paid to leave, he details his relationship with author Oliva Goldsmith, one that tracked with most other relationships she had: benevolent intimacy, rejection. Post-disaffection, as she's in the hospital he remarks, "Do you think being in a coma will affect the quality of her writing?"
When Rakoff's legacy is considered I estimate he will not be remembered as a giant of letters, literate though he is. However depressed or pessimistic he was, he never despaired, and if his writing is a lesson in anything then it's a lesson in finding happiness is discomfort, disease, and rejection. I suspect this man did not die with regrets about fulfilling his potential, or some positive-thinking crap like that.
If one image could summarize the entire book, it would be the following:
"
There are some moments in life that are perfect. Not necessarily wonderful, but that hew so closely to some Platonic or ruminated-upon version of themselves that one almost can't believe they are happening. In fact, one doesn't believe they are happening. As a freshman in college, for example, walking along 112th Street of a winter's evening, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine just up ahead, I looked over to my left at the garbage bags in the empty lot at the corner. In the fading purple gloaming, their surfaces swirled, they seemed to be undulating. I remember thinking to myself, What an amazing trick of the light, because it is almost as if those garbage bags were simply covered with live rats, but of course, they're not, because to see that with my own eyes would be too horrible, too scarring, too much exactly what I fear at this moment on this dark New York side street. Ergo, here be no rats.
On I marched right up to those selfsame Hefty bags which, of course, were covered, teeming with starving rats who squeaked en masse, a horrible, squealing rodent choir, that scattered upon my approach, some of them almost running over my boots.
"
(36)
In the title's words, the glass is half-empty. It's half empty when you are hired to act the part of the dramatic gay decorator alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, because you will flake out when the cameras come around and you realize you can only act on stage. It's half-empty when your cancer may have moved to your lung, you may have a few months to live, you may have your left arm amputated, or upon receiving a second opinion you find that the mass is benign, for now. It's half-empty when you attend New York City's first (and last) annual Exotic Erotic Ball and Expo, where the only thing more fagged out than the attendees is the event itself. Same goes for the real life of an artist in NY (contra Rent), the graveyard of dreams that is the Hollywood walk of fame, the sheer noise and bother that is Disneyland, and the quintessentially-American Salt Lake City. Well, except when you think you're in the middle of Nothing Important Utah Desert and then notice what's there.
Check it out, it's cool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Jetty
In the same essay where he was hired as an actor, then found incompetent and paid to leave, he details his relationship with author Oliva Goldsmith, one that tracked with most other relationships she had: benevolent intimacy, rejection. Post-disaffection, as she's in the hospital he remarks, "Do you think being in a coma will affect the quality of her writing?"
When Rakoff's legacy is considered I estimate he will not be remembered as a giant of letters, literate though he is. However depressed or pessimistic he was, he never despaired, and if his writing is a lesson in anything then it's a lesson in finding happiness is discomfort, disease, and rejection. I suspect this man did not die with regrets about fulfilling his potential, or some positive-thinking crap like that.
lola425's review against another edition
4.0
I read this before the new Sloane Crosley so it probably affected my review of the book. I dig Rakoff's vibe, he always seems simultaneously above it all and yet still squarely in the middle of wherever he finds himself.
oohsarracuda's review against another edition
4.0
The last essay will sock you right in your solar plexus, and hard. It's worth it.
It is sad, very sad indeed, that this is the last we will have from Mr. Rakoff.
It is sad, very sad indeed, that this is the last we will have from Mr. Rakoff.
jmdavis413's review against another edition
3.0
Ditto for what I said about the other book "Don't Get Too Comfortable...." but it kept spiraling down with the pessimism, which I am all fine with and then to get slapped with the "I got cancer" part was weird. It wound up being an almost uplifting end in an odd sort of way, not a hey I lived- life is great all is wonderful fa la la way - but in a nice realist sense of I like living, I want to live, so going on living is a good thing while I still can keep living on.
harbo101's review against another edition
3.0
Became interested in David Rakoff after hearing an interview on NPR which had been re-aired after his death. I found it similar to Augusten Burroughs's essay collections, but not as entertaining for me as Burroughs. The final essay, however, was extremely touching.
kiramke's review against another edition
4.0
I think I started this a year ago? But I did enjoy each essay, individually.
trilobite's review against another edition
4.0
Talk about your run-on sentences. If anyone EVER gives you smack about run-on sentences, act like your coughing and say, "Rak-OFF" really loud. Let me demonstrate with a paragraph in which Rakoff describes how he feels when he ends things with his therapist of ten years. But wait, I misspoke, it's not a not a paragraph, it's a single sentence:
"Should you happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless, hair-trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness--a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest Self which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of the kitchen chair---then this confirmation that you have triumphed again and managed to gull yet another mark, except this time it was the one person you'd hoped might be immune to your ever-creakier, puddle-shallow, sideshow-barker variation on "adorable," even though you'd been launching this campaign weekly with a single-minded concentration from day one...well, it conjures up feelings that are best described as mixed, to say the least."
"Should you happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless, hair-trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness--a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest Self which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of the kitchen chair---then this confirmation that you have triumphed again and managed to gull yet another mark, except this time it was the one person you'd hoped might be immune to your ever-creakier, puddle-shallow, sideshow-barker variation on "adorable," even though you'd been launching this campaign weekly with a single-minded concentration from day one...well, it conjures up feelings that are best described as mixed, to say the least."