Cool, Calm & Contentious: Essays
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
“[Merrill] Markoe is easily as funny as David Sedaris. She’s capable of manic riffs and acerbic skewering. Still, her good nature shines through.”—The Washington Post
In this hilarious collection of candid essays, including two pieces new to this edition, New York Times bestselling author Merrill Markoe reveals much about her personal life—as well as the secret formula for comedy: Start out with a difficult mother, develop some classic teenage insecurities, add a few relationships with narcissistic men, toss in an unruly pack of selfish dogs, finish it off with the kind of crystalline perspective that only comes from years of navigating a roiling sea of unpleasant and unappeasable people, and—voilà—you’re funny! Cool, Calm & Contentious is honest, unapologetic, sometimes heartbreaking, but always shot through with Merrill Markoe’s biting, bracing wit.
“This has been a great year for funny women. . . . Let’s call Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling exhibits A and B. Both owe a debt to those who came before, including Merrill Markoe.”—The Boston Globe
“Markoe’s goal is to find the absurdity in everyday life. That, coupled with her sharp wit, makes her writing sublime.”—BookPage
“Laugh-out-loud humor.”—Tampa Bay Times
“Not only crazy-funny, but crazy-heartbreaking.”—The New York Times
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Merrill Markoe. (2011). Cool, Calm & Contentious: Essays. Random House Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Merrill Markoe. 2011. Cool, Calm & Contentious: Essays. Random House Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Merrill Markoe, Cool, Calm & Contentious: Essays. Random House Publishing Group, 2011.
MLA Citation (style guide)Merrill Markoe. Cool, Calm & Contentious: Essays. Random House Publishing Group, 2011.
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- bioText: Emmy Award–winning writer Merrill Markoe lives in Los Angeles, California, the garden spot of America, with four dogs and a man. She has authored three books of humorous essays and the novels Nose Down, Eyes Up; Walking in Circles Before Lying Down; and It’s My F—-ing Birthday and co-authored (with Andy Prieboy) the novel The Psycho Ex Game. A lot of additional information about her—including a long bio, goofy videos, etc.—can be found at merrillmarkoe.com. After great amounts of hesitation, she is also on Facebook. But since she thinks about pulling the page down on a daily basis, check fast.
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- “This is so well written. [When a book like this] comes along, it’s, like, ‘Thank you!’ What a great way to spend an afternoon, an evening, reading these essays. . . . Absolutely great.”—Jon Stewart
“[Merrill] Markoe is easily as funny as David Sedaris. She’s capable of manic riffs and acerbic skewering. Still, her good nature shines through.”—The Washington Post
In this hilarious collection of candid essays, including two pieces new to this edition, New York Times bestselling author Merrill Markoe reveals much about her personal life—as well as the secret formula for comedy: Start out with a difficult mother, develop some classic teenage insecurities, add a few relationships with narcissistic men, toss in an unruly pack of selfish dogs, finish it off with the kind of crystalline perspective that only comes from years of navigating a roiling sea of unpleasant and unappeasable people, and—voilà—you’re funny! Cool, Calm & Contentious is honest, unapologetic, sometimes heartbreaking, but always shot through with Merrill Markoe’s biting, bracing wit.
“This has been a great year for funny women. . . . Let’s call Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling exhibits A and B. Both owe a debt to those who came before, including Merrill Markoe.”—The Boston Globe
“Markoe’s goal is to find the absurdity in everyday life. That, coupled with her sharp wit, makes her writing sublime.”—BookPage
“Laugh-out-loud humor.”—Tampa Bay Times
“Not only crazy-funny, but crazy-heartbreaking.”—The New York Times - reviews
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- content: "Now that I've read Merrill Markoe's latest book, I've learned a lot--about virginity, fetishism, sociopaths and narcissists, and how she explained the BP oil spill to her dogs. Also that Merrill is funnier, smarter, and more honest than anyone any of us knows. Just accept it--I have."
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- source: George Meyer, writer, The Simpsons
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"Read this novel for its nose-to-the-ground wisdom, for its unsentimental take on family, and for the funniest, furriest pack of jokesters this side of the Marx Brothers."
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September 26, 2011
Though her last two novels were canine-centric, comedy writer Markoe (Nose Down, Eyes Up) primarily branches out to the human world in this witty, affecting collection of personal essays though her own pack of four dogs does make regular, usually brief, appearances throughout. In “Jimmy Explains His Wake-Up Technique,” flat-coated retriever Jimmy, Markoe’s surprisingly articulate canine, compares his kamikaze morning leap onto her bed as a “ballet.” But her most intimate essays recall her early years, as a high school student first in Florida and then outside San Francisco, in “When I Was Jack Kerouac,” and later as an art student trying her hardest to be rebellious in college at Berkeley in the ’60s, such as in “Virginity Entrepreneurs.” Humor—from a helpful list for everyday life in “How to Spot an Asshole” to her own take on the popular TV show The Dog Whisperer in “The Dog Prattler”—is interspersed with serious issues, from sexual assault to coping with a parent’s death. Several of her best pieces come from her experiences as a reporter on assignment, particularly in “Saturday Night with Hieronymus Bosch,” where she covered the Fetish Ball in L.A. (think latex and spanking), and “Roiling on a River,” about an all-women’s rafting trip (think healing circles). Markoe, the original head writer for Letterman, is acerbic without being corrosive, endearing yet never saccharine.
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November 15, 2011
Comedian Markoe, the original head writer for The Late Show with David Letterman, offers funny and frank pieces here on her mother, her dogs, and her love life. After her mother's death, Markoe found a collection of her mother's journals written during a time, 1959-89, when her mother did much world traveling. Through her mother's responses to tourist attractions (Venice's St. Mark's Square is "terribly over-decorated") and reading notes (Oliver Twist was not one of Dickens's "better works"), Markoe became aware of her mother's charm. Markoe discusses the 15 dogs she has owned since childhood, seeing them now as "exceedingly cooperative exchange students from another planet." On a serious note, she writes not only about losing her virginity during her "Berkeley years" but about being raped around that time as well. An exceptional collection of personal essays. [See Prepub Alert, 5/2/11.]--J.S.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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October 1, 2011
For most of her life, my mother was varying degrees of pissed off. So begins Emmy-award winner Markoe's raucous new collection of essays featuring self-absorbed parents, selfish dogs, and really, really bad dates. With a perfect blend of sentimentality and scathing humor, Markoe recounts a host of precarious scenarioslosing her virginity, attending a Fetish Ball at the Hollywood Athletic Club, preparing to evacuate her Malibu home during the 1993 fires. She revisits her college days as an art major at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became proficient at operating power tools and navigating the advances of a professor in the department. Fans of Markoe's novels, including Walking in Circles before Lying Down (2006), know about her deep and abiding love for dogs. Here she engages her devoted hounds in a hilarious heart-to-heart about narcissism (she also offers a pithy primer on how to spot narcissists of the human variety). Markoe is the consummate comedienne, and this wry, sly offering will leave readers longing for more.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
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“[Merrill] Markoe is easily as funny as David Sedaris. She’s capable of manic riffs and acerbic skewering. Still, her good nature shines through.”—The Washington Post
In this hilarious collection of candid essays, including two pieces new to this edition, New York Times bestselling author Merrill Markoe reveals much about her personal life—as well as the secret formula for comedy: Start out with a difficult mother, develop some classic teenage insecurities, add a few relationships with narcissistic men, toss in an unruly pack of selfish dogs, finish it off with the kind of crystalline perspective that only comes from years of navigating a roiling sea of... - sortTitle
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