Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Memoirs

THE JOKER

Andrew Hudgins

Both funny and thoughtful, THE JOKER: A Memoir uniquely combines autobiography with an exploration of how jokes educate us about the taboos and mores of our time.

Andrew Hudgins tells of his life as an inveterate joker, and what he learned and mis-learned from jokes about life, sex, race, love, marriage, and death. Hudgins’ writing is often hilarious, but the book is also loaded with jokes—good jokes, bad jokes, sweet jokes, and sick jokes, all lovingly told by an author who relishes telling them. Hudgins grew up in a stern, unhappy family, with his parents secretly grieving the death of a daughter whose existence they kept secret. Hudgins discovered laughter on his own, and in learning jokes, he learned how to make friends and he learned about sex, which his parents had told him nothing about, as well as the intricacies of race and racism in the Civil Rights era South.

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Book Published 2013-06-11 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

To read this is to be in the company of a wonderful raconteur and story teller, while also being enthralled by the freshest honesty, by vast knowledge, and by the deepest insight not only into our own social constructs and habits of thought and feeling, but also the life and intelligence of one of our finest poets. I tell jokes; I have been called a joker. But I just tell them. Andrew Hudgins understands the heart of where they come from, and he is eloquent and beautifully uncompromising about it, as he gives us the journey of his own life. THE JOKER is an absolutely brilliant book, as necessary as it is pleasurable.

An acclaimed poet proves his versatility in his gut-busting memoir on jokes.…His often-bawdy material probes depths far beneath the jokes themselves, providing opportunities to examine his life through a humorous lens.…He possesses the skills to prompt readers to examine their own complex relationships with chuckles, guffaws and groans. A humorous, cerebral and daringly written memoir.

I’ve been a fan (more like, passionate admirer) of Andrew Hudgins's poetry for twenty years. I've been a witness--and occasional victim--of his perverse and compulsive joking for nearly as long. Now he's brought the two talents together into one book. I read it squirming, but I read it all, and without looking up. This is a writer who has something to say about humor, its mystery and chaos, and what they mean to our lives. That he is often very funny is pure lagniappe. Now I will leave before he makes a dirty joke involving the word ‘lagniappe.

Imagine a cold wet finger shoved in to your ear. Imagine chewing through a crumpled ball of tin foil. Imagine chugging a Coke with a wasp buzzing in it. This does not even begin to describe the wonderfully vile discomfort you might feel when caught in the grip of Andrew Hudgins's mind, a funhouse full of trap doors and perilous slides and mirrors that carry cruel reflections. He is one of the funniest, filthiest, smartest people I have ever met -- and this book is a treasure, a golden whoopie cushion, pearled set of chattery teeth.