Misfit

A tour-de-force of comedy and reflection about growing up in the 70's and 80'sfrom the beloved stand-up comic and creator of The Great Depresh

For years, Gary Gulman had been the comedian's comedian, beloved for his delight in language and his bracing honesty. As Jason Zinoman wrote in the New York Times: "Gulman's finest jokes don't hit you in the gut so much as tickle your brain. They have a literary quality, a rhythm, and an ear for language."

But then in 2019, Gulman's HBO special, The Great Depresh, became a cultural sensation, earning Gulman wide acclaim and a huge new audience. He has subsequently appeared as a regular on popular television shows and sold out Carnegie Hall.

In The Great Depresh, Gulman described a mental health crisis so severe that at age 46 it landed him in a psychiatric ward and then back in his mother's house and his childhood bedroom. And that's where Misfit begins.

But this is no ordinary book on growing older and growing up. Gulman has an astonishing memory and takes the reader through every year of his childhood education with obsessively detailed stories that are in turn alarming and riotously funny. As we meet his neighbors, teachers, heroes, and antagonists, we get a portrait of a young comedian who is often his own worst enemy. It is also chock-full of 70's and 80's nostalgia that will appeal to those who lived it and those who are fascinated by it.

This is a portrait of a comedian as an awkward young man, written as only Gary Gulman could write it.