By David Rakoff
Book Review
I always kind of dread the moment when someone will see me reading a book and ask what it’s about. Asking me if the book is any good is perfectly fine, but if you want me to sum it up in a sentence or two I’m probably going to be hesitant. Sure, there are plenty of bits of fluff out there, and I read them from time to time, that can be explained in just a couple of words like “murder mystery” or “legal thriller”, and that really tells you all you need to know about that particular novel. But with the good stuff, the books that are really worth reading and talking about, describing the crux of the plot can be a bit more daunting and great pieces of writing can get boiled down to “It’s about a family. And stuff.” When people asked me what Don't Get Too Comfortable was about, it was even harder because the book is not a novel but rather a collection of essays that are sort of loosely tied together by their theme. So, I usually said, "Middle class
Let me say, before I get into this, that the book is a great read. Rakoff is an excellent writer whose breezy style is very easy to fly right through while actually feeling like you’re reading something a bit intellectual. It’s not often you find a book that gives you the sensation of real literature, while also feeling like a bit of light reading. You might find yourself hitting the dictionary a few times (or, more realistically, just skipping past words you don’t know) but it never becomes anything resembling a slog through pages and pages of, say, The Scarlet Letter. However, it's this very breeziness that works against the book on a certain level.
Purportedly, all of the essays here are dealing with the idea that those of us in the middle and upper classes have reached a point where we yearn for a simpler, more austere life that in many ways is something of a bizarre, almost perverse reflection of how lower class people live. This paragraph from pages 28-29 (of the hardback edition) sums it up nicely:
It’s nice to have nice things. Creature comfort is not some bourgeois capitalist construction, but framing it as a moral virtue sure is. It’s what the French call Nostalgie de la Boue: a fond yearning for the mud. Two things have to be in place to really appreciate this particular brand of gluttony posing as asceticism. First, you have to have endured years and years of plenty, the mud a long-distant, nearly forgotten memory. One must have decades of such surfeit under your belt that you have been fortunate enough to grow sick of it all. …And second- and this is what really separates the men from the boys- in order to maintain a life free of clutter and suitable for a sacred space, you’ll need another room to hide your shit.
Sounds like a great point that would make for a great book, right? And it is, in those instances when that’s what the essays are about. And the essays are all great even when they stray from this point. The only problem here is that every once in a while you get reminded, while enjoying some great writing about a trip to Brazil or a meeting with the Log Cabin Republicans, that there’s supposed to be an overarching theme working here when you had pretty well forgotten about it for the past 50 pages or so.
I can absolutely recommend Don’t Get Too Comfortable because it's a fantastic read and you will undoubtedly enjoy it as much as I did. It's just a shame that the central point he seems to be making never gets made, or even focused on, for any length of time. If it hadn’t been there, I think I would have liked the book even more, but the feeling of getting cheated out of a thorough argument brought it down just a little bit for me.
Suitable for kids?: There’s a bit of cursing, as you may have noticed above, and the author is very open about his homosexuality, but overall the concern here is not if it's okay for your kid to read it but whether they're mature enough to get anything out of it. I would say wait until high school when the teenage angst kicks in.
Rating: 4/5
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