Congratulations, Who Are You Again?: A Memoir

By Harrison Scott Key

A Good Housekeeping Book of the Month

This funny and wise new memoir from Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, will inspire laughter and hope for anyone who’s ever been possessed by a dream of what they want to be when they grow up.

Little-known author Mark Twain once said that the two most important days in your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why. He's talking about dreams here, the destiny that calls every living soul to some kind of greatness. What Mr. Twain doesn't say is: A dream is also a monster that wants to eat you. Nobody tells you this part of the American Dream — until now. In this new memoir, Congratulations Who Are You Again, readers join Harrison Scott Key on his outrageous journey to becoming a great American writer.

As a young boy in Mississippi, Harrison possessed many special gifts, such as the ability to read and complete college applications. And yet, throughout young adulthood, he failed at many vocations, until one day, after drinking perhaps too many beers and dusting off his King James Bible, he stumbled across a passage about a lonely pelican, which burst into flame inside him. In a mad blaze of holy illumination, Harrison realized his dream: to set the world afire with the light inside him. He would write a funny book. This was his dream.

With unforgettable wit and tenderness, Congratulations Who Are You Again is Harrison’s instructive tale of pursuing his destiny with relentless and often misguided devotion, transforming his life beyond all comprehension: He becomes a signer of autographs, a doer of interviews, a casher of checks that are "worth more money than my father had ever imagined any of us might see, this side of a drug-related felony."

On this journey, Harrison finds that as he gains the world, he stands on the precipice of losing everything that means the most: his family, his mind, his soul. Hilarious, honest, and absolutely practical, Congratulations Who Are You Again is a no-holds-barred look at the life of every ambitious human creature, whether you want to write books or make music, start a business or start a revolution. This is a book for the dreamers.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Nov 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780062843326

Harrison Scott Key

Harrison Scott Key is the author of The World’s Largest Man, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and Congratulations, Who Are You, Again?. Harrison’s TEDx talk about the challenges and rewards of creative ambition (“The Funny Thing About the American Dream”) is featured on TED.com, and his humor and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, Oxford American, Outside, The New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Bitter Southerner, Town & Country, The Mockingbird, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Image, Southern Living, Gulf Coast, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He has spoken and performed on radio (Snap Judgement, WNYC Studios) and for hundreds of festivals, bookstores, conferences, variety shows, and universities. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Reviews for Congratulations, Who Are You Again?

[bearlyr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Radical Islamic jihadists, not my favorite subject. But, as deplorable as I find this subject matter, this is a page turner! Mr. Sander does an excellent job of creating characters you'll find compelling, and the story is intriguing as well. This a tale all too terrifying in that it seems wholly plausible, seeing this spread across the front page of the news doesn't stretch one's imagination.

[atticusfinch1048 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Brother – Stunning Suspense ThrillerJoakim Zander came to prominence with his knock out debut The Swimmer, which I thought was a stunning thriller and would take some beating, he has put that to be bed with ease. The Brother is the follow-up and is one of the best thrillers of the year, it will simply take your breath away and breathless at the end.Zander has once again come up with a plot that is contemporary, without preaching at the reader, that is absorbing, thrilling and keeps you in suspense throughout. This is not a typical Scandi Noir thriller, this really is an international outlook in this book, that takes you to dark places without being dark.Yasmine has promised she would always protect her little brother Fadi, but it is five years since she left Bergort, a suburb of Stockholm. Her new life in New York is not everything it seems but she is surviving, just, when she receives new that her brother has been killed out in Syria and she devastated. When she receives a message from her mother with a picture of Fadi, she is convinced he is still alive and she needs to get back to Stockholm and find him.Accepting help, while supposedly working for a big agency in New York she is able to get back to Stockholm and find Fadi. What she finds is her old suburb suffering nightly riots, and Bergort is literally burning. Not everybody is pleased to see her back, especially as she gets messages to stop the search and go back to America.What we get is a thriller where the story is narrated by both Yasmine and Fadi, as the picture builds so we can understand how things are and how they had come to pass. At the same time a different thread is built around Klara, a researcher based in London, but from Sweden, and her story intertwines with the books main narrative.What the reader gets is an explosive story, a story of loss, jihad, Government Spy Agencies, and the people caught in the middle. As the story heads to its conclusion you really are not sure how this will end, for all three main characters, you hope for the best but fear the worst. This is an ambitious thriller that really does deliver on all levels and its breadth is wonderful and entertaining. The characters are believable and well written, and once again the research that has gone in to the writing of this book is really fantastic.Read The Brother and the suspense will keep you breathless and entertained, a really stunning Swedish thriller.

[decaturmamaof2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Really well-done, and very timely story arc. Zander is a strong writer with a good message