Why Are You So Sad? Why Are You So Sad?

Why Are You So Sad‪?‬

A Novel

    • 3.9 • 14 Ratings
    • $4.99
    • $4.99

Publisher Description

"Jason Porter could find a place on the shelf beside Richard Brautigan, George Saunders, and David Sedaris. This is a quick, odd, wonderful book, one that pinned me back on my heels and made me laugh."
–Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin


Have we all sunken into a species-wide bout of clinical depression?
 
Porter’s uproarious, intelligent debut centers on Raymond Champs, an illustrator of assembly manuals for a home furnishings corporation, who is charged with a huge task: To determine whether or not the world needs saving. It comes to him in the midst of a losing battle with insomnia — everybody he knows, and maybe everybody on the planet, is suffering from severe clinical depression. He’s nearly certain something has gone wrong. A virus perhaps. It’s in the water, or it’s in the mosquitoes, or maybe in the ranch flavored snack foods. And what if we are all too sad and dispirited to do anything about it? Obsessed as he becomes, Raymond composes an anonymous survey to submit to his unsuspecting coworkers — “Are you who you want to be?”, “Do you believe in life after death?”, “Is today better than yesterday?” — because what Raymond needs is data. He needs to know if it can be proven. It’s a big responsibility. People might not believe him. People, like his wife and his boss, might think he is losing his mind. But only because they are also losing their minds. Or are they?

Reminiscent of Gary Shteyngart, George Saunders, Douglas Coupland and Jennifer Egan, Porter’s debut is an acutely perceptive and sharply funny meditation on what makes people tick.

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2014
January 28
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
208
Pages
PUBLISHER
Penguin Publishing Group
SELLER
PENGUIN GROUP USA, INC.
SIZE
1.2
MB

Customer Reviews

AsMeAsAllowable ,

Why are you so sad?

Hilarious descriptive on today's insistence upon conformity, lack of imagination and total dissociation from self. A persons desire to realize his own emotion, once considered integral to self actualization is now considered crazy and subjected to a demeaning, purposeless life or risk jail and stigma. Well written, well thought out and i feel as though in some way, I've had the last laugh. Brilliant!

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