Books by Kevin Shay
Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's, Humor Category
by Dave Eggers, Kevin Shay, Lee Epstein, Suzanne Kleid, John Warner
Now more than ever, Americans are troubled by questions. As sweaty modernity thrusts itself upon us, the veil of ignorance that cloaked our nation hangs in tatters, tattered tatters. Our “funny bones” are neither fun nor bony. Glum is the new giddy, and the old giddy wasn’t too giddy to begin with.
What can be done to stop this relentless march of drabbery? Not much. Nothing we can think of. It’s pretty much too late. The light of August turns to the overcast skies of autumn, and the taunting sting of winter cannot be far ahead on the highway of the road on the horizon. Who can sing a song without words? Maybe Bobby McFerrin, but is there anyone else? Where do we go when the party is over? Perhaps the afterparty. But what comes after the afterparty?
Questions, there are so many questions, and then some queries, arriving via fax. To these we respond in the only way possible: Talk to the hand, because the face ain’t listening. Nevertheless, we present the pages within as an offering of peace, as a message of hope, and as a perfumed hankie of love—a hankie drizzled with the intoxicating aroma that has only one name: ha-ha-oopsie.
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The End As I Know It: A Novel of Millennial Anxiety
by Kevin Shay
An edgy and hilarious novel about one young man’s attempt to alert his friends to the cataclysm sure to arrive on New Year’s Eve, 1999
It’s 1998. Or, as Randall Knight sees it, Y2K minus two. Randall, a twenty-five-year-old children’s singer and puppeteer, has discovered the clock is ticking toward a worldwide technological cataclysm. But he may still be able to save his loved ones—if he can convince them to prepare for the looming catastrophe. That’s why he’s quit his job, moved into his car, and set out to sound the alarm. The End as I Know It follows Randall on his coast-to-coast Cassandra tour. His itinerary includes the elementary schools that have booked him as a guest performer and the friends and relatives he must awaken to the crisis. When nobody will heed his warning, Randall spirals into despair and self-destruction as he races from one futile visit to the next. At the end of his rope, he lands with a family of newly minted survivalists in rural Texas. There, he meets a woman who might help him transcend his millennial fears and build a new life out of the shards of his old one.
Like Walter Kirn’s novel Up in the Air, The End as I Know It is a high-concept look at American culture that is by turns hilarious and poignant, and it manages to recall a memorable period in very recent history while at the same time shedding light on our current social moment.
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