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Vacationland
308 pages
A hilarious, painfully self-aware stroll through the haunted forest of middle age and the unforgiving beaches of New England.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like sitting on a rocky, freezing beach with a brilliant, deeply neurotic friend who is determined to make you laugh while confronting the void. The pace is steady and conversational, driven by a deadpan, erudite prose style that masks a profound vulnerability. It is an autumnal, mildly anxious reading experience, steeped in the realization that youth is gone and the body is failing. Yet, beneath the wry observations about terrifying wildlife, coastal elitism, and the horrors of freshwater clams, there is a beating heart of pure sincerity. It will delight fans of dry, self-deprecating humor who are ready to face their own mortality with a sigh, a chuckle, and a warm sweater.
- Mood
- mildly anxious
- contemplative
- cozy-yet-prickly
- autumnal
- Tone
- wry
- self-deprecating
- sincere
- deadpan
- melancholic
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- confronting middle age · the harshness of nature · white male privilege · fatherhood and family · inevitable mortality
- The writing
- Erudite and meticulously crafted, the sentences balance high-flown, slightly archaic vocabulary with razor-sharp comedic timing.
- The arc
- The journey shifts from a defensive posture of absurd, self-deprecating humor into a surprisingly tender, vulnerable acceptance of aging and the limits of one's own relevance.
- Who it's for
- Neurotic, self-aware readers navigating their own middle age who appreciate dry wit mixed with genuine existential reflection.
Content notes
- existential dread
- discussions of mortality
- aging
About the book
Although his career as a bestselling author and on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was founded on fake news and invented facts, in 2016 that routine didn’t seem as funny to John Hodgman anymore. Everyone is doing it now.
Disarmed of falsehood, he was left only with the awful truth: John Hodgman is an older white male monster with bad facial hair, wandering like a privileged Sasquatch through three wildernesses: the hills of Western Massachusetts where he spent much of his youth; the painful beaches of Maine that want to kill him (and some day will); and the metaphoric haunted forest of middle age that connects them.
Vacationland collects these real life wanderings, and through them you learn of the horror of freshwater clams, the evolutionary purpose of the mustache, and which animals to keep as pets and which to kill with traps and poison. There is also some advice on how to react when the people of coastal Maine try to sacrifice you to their strange god.
Though wildly, Hodgmaniacally funny as usual, it is also a poignant and sincere account of one human facing his forties, those years when men in particular must stop pretending to be the children of bright potential they were and settle into the failing bodies of the wiser, weird dads that they are.
Description from Open Library.
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