AUTHOR’S NOTE:
I have changed the names of some people and some places because my editor made me.
About the Author
CYNTHIA KAPLAN is a writer and an actress. She is the author of Leave the Building Quickly, and she lives in New York City with her husband and children.
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Praise for
why I’m like this
“Quick-witted, neatly written, and unapologetically grandiose…. In the spirit of Dorothy Parker…[Kaplan] renders weird and rowdy scenarios with style.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Striking a note somewhere between David Sedaris and Anna Quindlen, Kaplan spins traumas personal and professional for maximum laughs…. A literary star.”
—People
“Knee-slapping hilarious.”
—USA Today
“It’s the heartfelt accounts of the ups and downs of day-to-day life that catch you off guard and make you shake your head with recognition…. Among the stories…there are wonderfully rich and tender epiphanies.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Alternately hilarious and poignant, these stories make you laugh and then cry…. Kaplan has a great ear for the spoken word, the cadence of modern speech. Many of the stories demand to be read out loud.”
—Boston Globe
“This is a charming collection of essays in the spirit of David Sedaris…. The essays read like a novel.”
—CBS’s Early Show
“Cynthia Kaplan [has] enough moxie, along with splendidly cultivated scenes of irony and absurdity, to invite the whole world in. She does this with a voice that is alternately funny, bitchy, thoughtful, whiny, and wholly believable.”
—Hartford Courant
“A perfect beach read. Kaplan’s collection of autobiographical essays is heartfelt and laugh-out-loud funny.”
—Buffalo News
“Funny and poignant.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“[One of] America’s nine funniest writers…. A spot-on favorite with women who grew up during the 1960s and 1970s, Kaplan at her best reads like a black-market episode of The Wonder Years.”
—Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine
“Why I’m Like This is an impressive debut, and Kaplan has a wonderfully natural comic style.”
—Detroit Free Press
“Kaplan goes straight to the funny heart of things…. I can’t imagine a mother who wouldn’t die laughing.”
—New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Kaplan is smart, funny, brave, and totally original. It’s an amazing collection, one you’ll want to read again and pass on to all of your friends. You’ll think you’re reading David Sedaris; it’s that good.”
—BookSense.com
“Nightmarish and hilarious…. Written with such fierce denial and tenderness…. [Why I’m Like This] made me cry out loud.”
—Chicago Public Radio’s Network Chicago
“Kaplan makes it perfectly clear why she’s like this—with an acerbic grace all her own…. Even if where she’s taking you is someplace you’ve yet to arrive or will never go in her capacity, you will feel as if you are there alongside her…. She’s that good.”
—News Enterprise (Hardin County, Kentucky)
“A fine achievement, Why I’m Like This will reach a wide and appreciative audience.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Cynthia Kaplan is so delightful a writer, so funny and smart and tart, I’m sure her family won’t even notice that she’s turned on them.”
—Dorothy Gallagher, author of
How I Came into My Inheritance
“With her unique brand of humane observation and wit, Kaplan has written a book for the ages, a book that will no doubt be passed on, from hand to hand, in family after family, by people who recognize some heretofore-unearthed part of their own history or selves in the stories she tells.”
—Beth Kephart, author of A Slant of Sun
“Funny, sweet, weirdly life affirming, and painfully true…. Cynthia Kaplan’s prose generates the rarest kind of laughter—the kind that makes you cringe in recognition, then thank the writing gods that somebody else out there gets it.”
—Jerry Stahl, author of
Permanent Midnight and Plainclothes Naked
“If you have a best friend who is the funniest person you know, who you call just to cheer yourself up, her name must be Cynthia Kaplan. The rest of us can happily make due with reading this delightful book.”
—Cathleen Schine, author of The Love Letter
“Cynthia Kaplan’s gift is her ability to take on life’s absurdities and come out a winner. Her stories are sharp, touching, and deliciously ironic, but most of all they are true in every sense of the word. Why I’m Like This is a rollicking tour through the wild and crazy landscape of today’s world—a necessary book for all of us who sometimes question why we’re like this.”
—Debra Ginsberg, author of Waiting and Raising Blaze
“A self-assured, unified work that’s sexy in the best sense: mature, candid, and real. Often compared to David Sedaris, [Kaplan], the actress/writer, combines droll humor with hard-won sentiment.”
—Seattle Weekly
“What makes [Kaplan’s] true stories so compulsively readable are [her] razor-sharp prose and contagious sense of humor…. Kaplan’s writing is laugh-out-loud funny. Right up there with nonfiction writers such as David Sedaris and Cynthia Heimel.”
—Richmond.com
Copyright
WHY I’M LIKE THIS. Copyright © 2002 by Cynthia Kaplan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition February 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-190039-6
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