Everything Is Wrong with Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong

by Jason Mulgrew

Overview

“People who grow up like this tend to become agoraphobics, serial killers, or really funny writers. Mulgrew, I think – hope? – is the last of these three things. His stories of childhood made me laugh out loud.” — Rob McElhenney, star, creator, and producer of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

“The somewhat alarming, always interesting world inside Jason’s brain has now been strewn across the pages of a book. Godspeed, reader.” — Steve Hely, author of How I Became a Famous Novelist

Jason Mulgrew’s wildly popular blog “Everything Is Wrong With Me: 30, Bipolar and Hungry,” gives rise to a memoir of startling insight, comedy, and irreversible, unconscionable stupidity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061766657
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/02/2010
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jason Mulgrew is the New York Times bestselling author of Everything Is Wrong with Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong. He was named one of People's "50 Hottest Bachelors" (seriously). He lives in New York.

What People are Saying About This

Steve Hely

“The somewhat alarming, always interesting world inside Jason’s brain has now been strewn across the pages of a book. Godspeed, reader.”

Editorial Reviews

The somewhat alarming, always interesting world inside Jason’s brain has now been strewn across the pages of a book. Godspeed, reader.” — Steve Hely, author of How I Became a Famous Novelist

From the Publisher

The somewhat alarming, always interesting world inside Jason’s brain has now been strewn across the pages of a book. Godspeed, reader.

Steve Hely

Blogger Mulgrew, an Irish Catholic son of working-class South Philly, grew up in the early 1980s. In his irreverent, self-deprecating, but frequently funny first book, based on his blog, he revisits his childhood and adolescence. Following in the footsteps of his storytelling father, who hung out with other guys in dive bars, the author encountered (and makes somewhat cursory use of) characters like the local kleptomaniac, a neighbor’s teenaged uncle, who expanded on lessons in hustling previously laid down by a numbers-running grandfather, and the friend who launched further escapades in both entrepreneurship and juvenile pyromania. Mulgrew doesn’t dwell sentimentally on his parents’ rocky relationship, and in comparison to the seemingly endless run of adventures in ersatz jock-and-studhood, there’s relatively little about his mother or his siblings. Instead, the book takes readers deep into a traditional, working-class social world where sports, Jackass-type pranks, and loyalty reigned. True to the lad-lit form and content, the narrative is often downright crude, with a Maxim-article tone. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Blogger and "Internet quasi-celebrity" Mulgrew delivers a bumptious memoir celebrating his wildly dysfunctional-but fun-childhood as a nerdy kid in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood. The author is the son of a macho, chain-smoking laborer who declined to stop partying even after suffering a broken neck from an ill-advised late-night dive into shallow water in one memorable anecdote. Mulgrew's world was characterized by bookies, casual violence and rampant alcoholism, but his tone is light, even celebratory, as he lovingly details the outrageous personalities of the larger-than-life characters who populated his gritty neighborhood. The author failed to excel at such locally exalted vocations as athletics or hell-raising, so he threw himself into more quiet pursuits like selling illegal fireworks and hustling at video-hockey tournaments. Mulgrew documents his struggles with Catholicism, Little League, attracting girls and maintaining respect in an entertainingly hapless fashion, but the narrative fails to cohere as a fully dimensional portrait or offer much insight into the social and family dynamics that engendered such goofy behavior. Ultimately it becomes just one thing after another-random fights, drinking binges, mysterious stab wounds, trips to jail. One comic set piece stands out: a Scotch bonnet pepper-eating tournament that leaves its participants writhing in agony, leaking mucous and begging for water and ice cream. Mulgrew includes many embarrassing family photos to buttress his remembrances, and the affection he feels toward his wayward subjects is palpable. However, the author's reflexively snarky, self-deprecating voice-typical of Internet quasi-celebrity bloggers-becomestiresome over the course of the book. Fitfully funny, long on snark, short on substance. Author events in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia

Kirkus Reviews