Film critic Nathan Rabin has written a very funny memoir about his not-very-funny life.
In The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture, Rabin describes being abandoned by his mother, suffering severe depression and spending time in a mental hospital. His story is about staying sane by connecting with pop culture — Rabin eventually became head writer of the A.V. Club, the entertainment section of The Onion.
"I don't trust happiness or contentment," Rabin tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "I'm sort of a lifelong depressive. And I feel like my book — the dark secret of it — is that it's secretly a serious book about depression sort of nestled within this very kind of insane, profane dark comedy."
Rabin says he always felt like "everything was going to disappear tomorrow," and it has taken him a long time to get over that feeling.
"I am beginning to experience an emotion I believe you humans know as happiness and hope and optimism," he says. "And I know all of those things will come back to bite me and will come back to destroy me in the end. But I'm trying to savor the moment."
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