Misfit: Growing Up Awkward in the '80s

Books

For years, Gary Gulman had been the comedian's comedian, acclaimed for his delight in language and his bracing honesty. But after two stints in a psych ward, he found himself back in his mother's house in Boston-living in his childhood bedroom at age forty-six, as he struggled to regain his mental health. That's where Misfit begins. Then it goes way back. This is no ordinary book about growing older and growing up. Gulman has an astonishing memory and takes the reader through every year of his childhood education, with obsessively detailed stories that are in turn alarming and riotously funny. We meet Gulman's family, neighbors, teachers, heroes, and antagonists, and get to know the young comedian-in-the-making who is his own worst-and most persistent-enemy. From failing to impress at grade school show-and-tell to literally fumbling at his first big football game-in settings that take us all the way from the local playground to the local mall, from Hebrew School to his best (and only) friend's rec room, ...