Senseless behavior—that’s mishegas. According to Harley Dresner, it means life with overbearing, obstreperous, melodramatic parents and a pugilistic, caffeine-addicted, octogenarian uncle. Blend Jerry Seinfeld’s and Raymond Barone’s parents together and the result is the Vesuvian mess that Dresner calls his family. In one vignette, social graces are callously thrown to the Las Vegas desert wind when Gerry and Uncle Bernard offend everyone from hotel receptionists to street hookers. Furthering reading finds doctoring for sport a new American pastime through obsessions with colonoscopies and wars waged against phlegm. Dresner’s unmistakable, take-no-prisoners sarcasm and wit shine through this dysfunctional Cruise to Nowhere. His memoir is a fresh, laugh-out-loud study of life-long relationships that proves one can embrace familial roots while maintaining perspective—and sanity. Readers will revel in the uncomfortable, squirming circumstances in which a family routinely embroils a child. Anyone who wouldn’t dream of running away from the family they would love to escape understands Mishegas.
