[Jeff’s] crazy idea actually worked.” —The Oprah Blog
“You can either make fun of Jeff, One Lonely Guy (it would be very easy to parody) and reject its self-help earnestness or you can respond as I did: transported by a healing work of art despite (or because of) the enormous amount of pain surging through it. The symphony of voices here is an overwhelming reading experience. This short book is also a verification of a legitimate new form of narrative; it’s the definitive document so far of where our medium is heading. I’ve never read anything like it.” —Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho
“OMG I love this!! It’s so Russian—very reminiscent of the Chekhov story “Complaint Book” (entries in a complaint book at the railway station).” —Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed
“With Reality Hunger, David Shields offered us a manifesto, which unlike most manifestos, actually changed the world. Here, teaming up with Ragsdale and Logan, Shields embodies his ethos: we have crossed over the threshold, and are now—strangely, terrifyingly, beautifully—in this transformed world.” —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
“The lit equivalent of a kiss-and-tell reality show and a frightening, utterly riveting thriller. This is not a pretty book, but it shows us the world we live in: unbearable everyday humanity, unwashed, unvarnished, completely captivating.” —Frederick Barthelme, author of Natural Selection
“A Goldman Sachs trader gave [Jeff] updates on the Occupy Wall Street protests. Others gave advice, and many vented about their own issues…People phoned from as far as Japan and Saudi Arabia.” —New York Post
“But black-box confession isn’t new to the computer age, and the main thing that distinguishes Jeff’s activities from the work of a priest or a counsellor is his lack of training. His callers know that. Many have aired their problems previously through professional channels and now want to connect with someone who’s like them—someone who has nothing practical to offer but who may understand…They text Jeff. They don’t sit by themselves for months staring at their coffee tables.” —Nathan Heller, The New Yorker
“In Jeff, One Lonely Guy we are light years removed from the Orwellian Big Brother. Instead we relate face-to-face—more accurately, device-to-device—with the man with the iPad in the café, the woman on the train clicking through her cell phone, the executive who can’t stand to be away from his Blackberry for one minute, the teen who sends hundreds of texts a day. Alas, technology tempts us with the potential for genuine interaction. Or does it? The text messages and voice-mails Ragsdale receives are also a form of one-way traffic, flavored less by the give-and-take of personal interaction and more a form of self-engagement.” —The Huffington Post
“The experience of reading it can be close to revolutionary.” —Bookforum
