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Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations

by Simon Rich

Everyday absurdities, pushed to extremes

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Everyday absurdities, pushed to extremes

Simon Rich’s humor essays turn ordinary dilemmas into comic thought experiments, then widen the lens to include predicaments involving breakups, endangered animals, and the afterlife. The collection draws its material from situations that are recognizable in outline but become strange when their implications are followed through. Its framing links small social awkwardness with larger questions of mortality and fear, giving the essays a shared interest in the absurdities that can surface across a life.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers who enjoy humor essays built around unusual hypothetical questions.
  • Those interested in comic takes on everyday anxieties and social awkwardness.
  • Fans of humor that ranges from intimate dilemmas to mortality and the afterlife.

Themes

Everyday absurditySocial awkwardnessAnxiety and desperationMortality

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Book overview

In Ant Farm, former Harvard Lampoon president Simon Rich finds humor in some very surprising places. Armed with a sharp eye for the absurd and an overwhelming sense of doom, Rich explores the ridiculousness of our everyday lives. The world, he concludes, is a hopelessly terrifying place-with endless comic potential.

-If your girlfriend gives you some "love coupons" and then breaks up with you, are the coupons still valid?

-What kind of performance pressure does an endangered male panda feel when his captors bring the last remaining female panda to his cage?

-If murderers can get into heaven by accepting Jesus, just how awkward is it when they run into their victims?

Join Simon Rich as he explores the extraordinary and hilarious desperation that resides in ordinary life, from cradle to grave.

"Hilarious." -Jon Stewart
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