Congratulations, Who Are You Again? audiobook

School is back, which means our nation's motivational speakers are polishing their presentations to enthrall and inspire students across the land. These earnest TED Talker types — educators, athletes, activists — have touching and triumphant stories to share with young people, usually trafficking in beautiful abstractions about Hard Work and Believing In Yourself and other tropes of this tattered but durable thing we call the American Dream.I remember many such visitors to my public high school, long ago in Mississippi. One had been a Chicago Bear, another in the U.S. Navy. I fondly remember one who seemed a little angry — a progressive choice, we thought, for an inspirational speaker. The man wore a haunted visage. He had seen some ugly business. 'Nam? Smack?He explained why it was bad to drop out of school and how our lives would be ruined forever because we'd be poor and sad and stupid. He then pulled from his duffel bag a yellow novelty key as long as his arm, which he called "The Key to Success." "Does anybody know what the key to success is?" he said. We leaned forward in our bleacher seats, for we did not wish to be poor and sad and stupid. "A rich daddy!" somebody yelled out."You got to have skills!" said another."Like if you can weld!" someone clarified.The Key to Success is Welding, no that didn't sound right. The answer, he explained, was on the back of his magical homemade wooden key. If only he would tell us! All would be known! Finally, he turned the object around, on which he'd painted, in all-caps, "SELF-DISCIPLINE." We'd been hoping for something more like "WIZARDS" or "KARATE." Those were at least things you could get your head around. Eventually, after a few historical anecdotes about the virtue of self-discipline, we acceded, yes, this rare quality would save us from a lifetime of sad stupid non-success. I couldn't speak for my classmates, but I didn't want a normal life. I wanted Greatness, Fame, Medals, the End of the Rainbow. Who can say why? This strange fire was inside me, that's all I knew. No man in my family had ever even finished college.A quarter-century later, my own American Dream came true. I became an author and the first member of my family to have his name said aloud on National Public Radio, which felt amazing, and would have felt even more amazing if anyone in my family knew what that was. I won a crystal plaque that's so heavy and beautiful I'm embarrassed to display it. I have an agent. I write books. It really is amazing to me, what my life is now.Occasionally, I get invited to high schools and colleges to inspire students, and I feel an overwhelming compulsion not to mask the truth with inspiring abstractions. The first hard truth: There is no single Key — it's more of an Unwieldy Keyring of Success, the jangling hoop your assistant principal wore like a medieval weapon. Which key does one use first? What if you don't even know what to be successful at? Medicine, or music? Business, or boxing? Do you follow the sure thing, or the passion? What if one is very passionate about sure things? How to choose? This is America, the greatest nation in the history of the world, alongside Rome and perhaps Iceland, and in this great land, your dream can take many forms. You can do something wholesome and productive, like practice medicine in a place where they ride llamas, or build mattresses that never wear out, or you can do something evil, like make another Spider-Man movie. I was nearly thirty before I finally eliminated all my options, which included forensic psychologist (thanks, Silence of the Lambs!), weatherman (Groundhog Day), and disc jockey (Good Morning, Vietnam). The vocation of writing was a dark horse, emerging much later, after a nervous breakdown. Nobody warned me that I might be a husband and a father before finally learning what I was supposed to do with my life.One can be overwhelmed by all the career options, or one can embrace their dizzying innumerableness. That's why our first Key to Success is GRATITUDE AT HOW MANY CAREER OPTIONS YOU HAVE COMPARED TO YOUR PEASANT FORBEARS, by which I mean an awareness that for most of human history, your options would have been much simpler, back when you did whatever your parents did, which was usually to die of typhoid. If your mother was a subjugated washerwoman, then maybe, with hard work, you became a subjugated washerwoman-slash-leech-gatherer. Today, thanks to the Magna Carta, penicillin, and LinkedIn, there exist many kinds of subjugation to aspire to. Plagues no longer plague. Today, we are plagued with dreams. That's a blessing. You're probably good at lots.One must also possess A GENERAL TOLERANCE FOR LOWER BACK PAIN, because whatever you finally decide to be — even if you're smart and talented, according to your mother and/or your test scores — the actual manifestation of your dream will very likely not occur until you are at an age more associated with high blood pressure than youthful ambition. Every now and again, they do give Oscars to actual human babies, but these rare instances can damage the dreamer's sense of time and justice. How long would it take me to write a book? (I figured two years, three, tops. Stephen King said it should take about three months, which is how you know his real name is the Dark Lord Baphomet.) It took me ten years. I wrote that book. It's called The World's Largest Man. This is not that book. This is the book about that book, sort of, but not really?Nobody tells you that there's this thing called the Great American Dream Value Menu, and you pretty much only get to pick three items:Family (marriage, children, lawn care), Friends (beers, chicken wings on the grill), Health (exercise, clothes that don't make you angry), Status (money, cars that smell good), Avocations (volunteerism, the cello), andThe Dream (to write books, end whaling, build a car that runs on garbage)Most of us are lucky to get three of the above, and if you're a single parent, you pretty much only get to pick two, and if you're below the poverty line, you'll likely have to work very hard for just one, which means that every dreamer needs A WILLINGNESS TO FORGO WHAT MANY AMERICANS FEEL THEY DESERVE AS A HUMAN RIGHT, because you won't have it all. Nobody does, at least not until they're very old, at which point you lose your health and all your friends die.While you're busy neglecting friends and family in pursuit of your dream, you're going to require A CLEAR-EYED RECOGNITION OF YOUR CAPACITY FOR HURTING OTHERS. Nobody tells you that your dream will turn you into a vampire, even when it's a perfectly honorable dream. (Talk to a missionary kid.) Your ambition, noble though it be, will compel you to treat your loved ones as means or ciphers via manipulation or neglect. The capacity for evil exists in every human breast, especially in the hearts of dreamers. Guard against it at every turn. The dreamer also desperately needs a venue for the celebration of small victories on the way to the big victory, which will never come, because dreams don't so much come true as evolve and reproduce, birthing new and more complicated fantasies. It’s hard to know when to stop and celebrate with that beer. Accordingly, one of the most overlooked Keys to Success is FRIENDS WITH A POOL. You need a way to indulge in modest healthy pleasures on the regular, because joy now is almost always better than joy later. Pools, porches, boats, beaches, riding bikes with your daughters with a stereo strapped to the handlebars, these are as essential to the American Dream as hard work. Don't forgo them.Easily the most necessary item on our clattering keyring is READINESS TO BE WHOLLY TRANSFORMED INTO A NEW CREATURE. Ambition led me down many dark roads and into sloughs of despond. Dreaming is dangerous business. My illusions — regarding talent, money, how much the world would love me, and how good a husband and father I was — were pried from my white-knuckled hands by time and truth. The dream broke me. You can fight the breaking, or let it happen and be remade, kinder, gentler, less vampire-like.I could go on. One also needs MENTORS, HEALTH INSURANCE, and PEOPLE WHO WON'T LIE TO YOU ABOUT HOW BAD YOU ARE AT THE THING YOU WANT TO BE GOOD AT, but how can one say all this to anxious and eager young students? It might make them sad and stifle their dreaming. When I climb the stage and take in the exquisite hunger of all those faces, I think of the angry man with the yellow key — angry, I think, because he knew how impossible it was to illumine the multifarious unknowability of the American Dream to any child. The dream is a beautiful beast, magical and miraculous, with many faces and eyes and tentacles, and I am grateful that it has generated reasonable financial security for my family and provided me something useful and beautiful to do in my short time on this planet. With hard work and even harder lessons and the enduring love of people who kept me from going full-vampire, I've found a way to tame the dream-monster and live a relatively normal and happy life, which is exactly the thing I always thought I didn't want. Funny how that happens. So this book, Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, is about all that. If you liked this review, you probably won't hate the book, but you still might. I hope you don't. I love you guys!

I am the third of three first time author friends to read this book the week our first books came out in 2020. “Wait to read it then,” one said. “You will need it then,” the other chimed. They were right.This book spoke into the silence of the long, unglamorous road that is publishing your first book. It named the light that beckons me to birth something beautiful, the calling I can’t resist. It voiced the vulnerability of making, trusting it might matter to someone, and finding no amount of success will satiate. While Key’s story isn’t the *same* as mine (hello, Christian non-fiction books like This Too Shall Last don’t exactly earn 300k advances, and I did die inside for approximately 20 minutes after reading that particular part...), his words articulated a part of my story so few understand. I felt seen, from checking my Amazon ranking like I’m ardently waiting for the second coming of Christ, to the way I often had to apply gorilla glue to my ass to stay in my writing chair to get a pitiful 500 words written in a day to somehow meet 60k by my deadline. Here we are—writers, dark and full of desire, compelled to create by a light we sometimes cannot see...Except Key’s words punctuate that darkness and desire with the light of laughter. And after releasing my first book into the wild, I needed to cry-laugh my way back to the steady light that started this marathon in the first place.This book is not *just* for other authors. It’s for everyone with a dream. But, damn, this first time author is glad she could read this the week her dream baby monster started seeing the scary light of day.

Nobody tells you that someday someone will recommend this book to you and you'll read it to see what all the fuss is about and you'll be hooked by the first page and you'll laugh and you'll cry and your brain will melt with the wonder of it all and it might just change your life forever.Nobody tells you this.But it happens.

Harrison Scott Key wants to spare you none of the gory details of writing a book. Consider him a sarcastic tour guide who takes you behind the scenes of Walt Disney World, showing you the plumbing and wires it takes to make the magic appear, who makes you consider the sheer quantity of trash someone has to take out. As he talks about writing his first book (wildly funny, moderately successful), he lays out the cost, in almost excruciating detail, to both himself and his family. He doesn't shy away from sharing his own ambitions and insecurities, at every step of the process from writing all the way through his book tour. Most importantly, he's just plain funny. I've actually wished someone would write a book about being an unsuccessful writer, or a memoir about quitting on their dream of writing a book and being really happy that they quit. Congratulations, Who Are You Again? basically satisfies that longing: it makes me feel better for questioning whether I really want to write a book. It lets me off the hook. Watch his TED talk if you want to get a taste of how funny he is about ambition and disappointment pursuing the American Dream.Most of the books I read about writing (and I've read a fair number) have an encouraging air about them. "Write what you feel called to write" is the drumbeat undergirding every one of them, the climax to which each book crescendos. These books all guide you, more or less, through the glossy theme park of their own success. Call me crazy, but I prefer the behind-the-scenes tour any day.

Incredibly intelligent, and the funniest book I've ever read. Can't form words about how good it is.

Harrison Scott Key, Congratulations, Who Are You Again? A Memoir (New York: Harpers, 2018) , 347 pages including five appendices and no illustrations except an ink figure of a dog drawn by Beetle, the author’s daughter, while I waited for him to sign my book.Over the years I have enjoyed reading memoirs by authors as I learn how they approach the craft and gleam advice for myself. Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, Eudora Welty,’s One’s Writer’s Beginning, Robert Laxalt’s, Travels with My Royal: A Memoir of the Writing Life, and Dee Brown’s When the Century was Young are books that come to mind. I’ve also read many “how-to” books by authors who tell us how to approach the craft. Without looking at my shelf, I can recall Stephen King, On Writing; William Zinsser, On Writing Well; Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing; and John McPhee, Draft #4. All these authors of memoirs and how-to books have an impressive list of publications under their belt when they sat down to give advice on writing. Harrison Scott Key decided he’d write his how-to memoir immediately following the publication of his first book. But then, his first book won the Thurber Prize. The real question is “why, after having read so many books on the topic, I haven’t published a best seller?” I’m not going to answer that and will stick to critiquing Mr. Key’s book. I enjoyed Congratulations, Who Are You Again? even though I am not sure I would have called this a memoir. I’m not sure what it is. Part of the book reads like a “how-to” manual for becoming famous and having a best seller. Part of the book is the author’s quest to discover his life’s purpose as he charges through much of his 20s and 30s like Don Quixote. Part of this books appears to be a sure-fire way to receive a summons to divorce court. Another part of this book is Mr. Key’s depository for lists. And just in case you didn’t have your fill of lists within the text, Key fills his appendices with lists. What is it about all these lists? I was wondering why he didn’t include a grocery list, but concluded that maybe his wife, out of gratitude for now having more than one toilet in the house, has volunteered to shop for the family. But my hunch is that Mr Key’s lists are actually passwords. What a better way to keep them close at hand than to have a book he can pull off his shelf and quickly recall his password for Facebook or Twitter or maybe even First Chatham Bank.And, one final “what is it…” What is it about depressed people and pelicans? Key speaks of his interest in these “freakish and ungainly” birds while depressed. Personally, I find pelicans graceful. A former professor of mine, Donald McCullough, while dealing with depression, actually published a book titled The Wisdom of Pelicans. Like my former professor, I find pelicans graceful, not freakish. I’m not sure what’s wrong with Mr. Key. If pelicans are so depressing, maybe I should give up watching the birds fish. But that sounds too depressing.That said, this is a funny book. And writing a funny book is one of Mr. Key’s life goals. He’s now achieved this goal twice, first with The World’s Largest Man, and now with Congratulations. Although Key acknowledges his indebtedness to a host of authors, he never mentioned the fabulous 1940 movie, “Sullivan’s Travels,” staring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. In “Sullivan’s Travels,” McCrea plays a movie producer who wants to make a movie about the seriousness of the Great Depression in order to move people to respond in compassion. But after a misfortune, he has an epiphany and realizes people also need to laugh. Sullivan learns this wisdom after at the end of the film. Key comes this conclusion on page 49.My third complaint about Key’s writing (In case you weren’t keeping count: #1 complaint: Lists. #2 complaint: Rude remarks about pelicans) is his overuse of misdirects. Key will begin describing the great things that follow his things such as being published. Following such good news, Key rambles on about all the invitations to TV and radio shows to make an appearance. He seems to have a healthy crush on NPR’s Terry Gross. Others ask him to give keynote speeches. He’s also mugged by admirers on Savannah’s streets. Just when the reader is about to believe that there is a god who rewards hard work, the reader is redirected into what really happened. Usually nothing. The exception is an actual mugging on Savannah’s streets. Actually, Key never wrote about being mugged, but it could happen. These redirects were funny the first 57 times this reader fell for this comic technique, but the 58th time was just too much. As I was coming to the end of the book, I thought that if there was one more redirect, I’d rip the book apart and toss it out the window. Thankfully, being near the end, I was reading lists and it’s pretty hard to redirect a reader from one list to another. Who knew lists could be funny?Complaints aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and laughed a lot. My biggest take-away from Mr. Key is that writing is like giving birth. I’ve heard that before, but Key attaches his unique twist that refreshes this platitude: “Writing is like giving birth, and it is, it is just like giving birth, in the Middle Ages, when all the babies died.” (114). Writing is hard work, and such hard work in this case produces a book that the reader can easily read and enjoy.And one final comment for clarification. I am not the minister who accosted Keys in a restaurant asking to be included in his next book. Such a request is foolish for if Keys says the things he does about his wife and children, whom he obviously adores, what would he say about a coveting minister. Of course, the minister did find himself in the book, only he’s not identified. What fun is that?

Brilliant and funny and wickedly smart.

I believe I've found a new favorite memoir, someone high-five me.a quote from the book:"You are playing a game of chicken with your own doubts about your talent, and you cannot flinch, for if you keep doing it over, pressing down against the carbon-based matter of your brain, for days, weeks, months, years, one day you will open your skull and pull out a clown metaphor that will make whole rooms weep in recognition of their common humanity."... gosh, I didn't expect to absolutely demolish this in a day and a half, but I did. I'll be adding Harrison Scott Key to my mental list of favorite authors, contemplate writing a memoir at the tender age of fourteen, and be quoting this book eternally for the rest of my life, maybe? It's so, so well written, horribly funny, devilishly smart, writerly, sweet, cute, adult, and everything in-between. cANNOT recommend enough. (good bit of content though, keep that in mind) If I could shake this book's hand and give it a hug, I would. Bravo, Harrison Scott Key, Bravo.

Pretty good window into the soul crushing world of publishing, and the soul magnifying (and crushing) world of mining your past and your heart for words to stand others on their feet.Also, it's funny. Having met Harrison at a Walker Percy Weekend a few years back makes it even funnier.

I will read anything by HSK. His writing. His writing process.His writing about the writing process. His process for writing about the writing process. I am also now very self-aware about how I've behaved at book events. Thanks, Harrison.

Humorously insightful and inspirational. A must read for any writer, anyone who aspires to write, or anyone who wants to understand the writing process!

To get the most out of this book one needs to read The World’s Largest Man. This book is a funny and poignant memoir about Key’s struggles during the writing, publishing and promotion of that book. I enjoyed the reading!