Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-
Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems (2005)-- Winner 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Humor
Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has
exploded into obliterating narcissism; our manic getting and spending have
now become celebrated as moral virtues. Whether contrasting the elegance of
one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the
good-times-and-chicken-wings populism of Hooters Air, working as a cabana
boy at a South Beach hotel, or traveling to a private island off the coast
of Belize to watch a soft-core video shoot—where he is provided with his
very own personal manservant—Rakoff takes us on a bitingly funny grand tour
of our culture of excess. He comes away from his explorations hilariously
horrified.
At once a Wildean satire of our ridiculous culture of
overconsumption and a plea for a little human decency, Don’t Get Too
Comfortable shows that far from being bobos in paradise, we’re in a special
circle of gilded-age hell.