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    The World's Largest Man: A Memoir
    The World's Largest Man: A Memoir
    The World's Largest Man: A Memoir
    Audiobook9 hours

    The World's Largest Man: A Memoir

    Written by Harrison Scott Key

    Narrated by Harrison Scott Key

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious, Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father-a hunter, a fighter, a football coach, "a man better suited to living in a remote frontier wilderness of the nineteenth century than contemporary America, with all its progressive ideas, and paved roads, and lack of armed duels. He was a great man, and he taught me many things: how to fight, how to work, how to cheat, how to pray to Jesus about it, how to kill things with guns and knives and, if necessary, with hammers."

    Harrison, with his love of books and excessive interest in hugging, couldn't have been less like Pop, and when it became clear that he was not able to kill anything very well or otherwise make his father happy, he resolved to become everything his father was not: an actor, a Presbyterian, and a doctor of philosophy. But when it was time to settle down and start a family of his own, Harrison started to view his father in a new light, and realized-for better and for worse-how much of his old man he'd absorbed.

    Sly, heartfelt, and tirelessly hilarious, The World's Largest Man is an unforgettable memoir.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 1, 2017
    ISBN9781541473683
    Author

    Harrison Scott Key

    Harrison Scott Key is the author of The World’s Largest Man, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and Congratulations, Who Are You, Again?. Harrison’s TEDx talk about the challenges and rewards of creative ambition (“The Funny Thing About the American Dream”) is featured on TED.com, and his humor and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, Oxford American, Outside, The New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Bitter Southerner, Town & Country, The Mockingbird, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Image, Southern Living, Gulf Coast, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He has spoken and performed on radio (Snap Judgement, WNYC Studios) and for hundreds of festivals, bookstores, conferences, variety shows, and universities. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

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    Reviews for The World's Largest Man

    4.5/5

    43 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Harrison Scott Key is phenomenally funny, gifted, smart and vulnerable. I LOVE all his work!!! More, please!!
    • 3/5
      I loved the first 13 chapters! They were laugh out loud funny, with just the right amount of cynicism and sentimentality. Mississippi is truly another country, maybe even another planet(my mother was born and raised there but she always told people she was from Memphis, that says a lot).

      What happened after Chapter 13? He got married, his wife finally got pregnant, they moved to Savannah, they had kids, they had marriage problems, blah blah blah. Yep, with the exception of chapter 18, chapters 14 through the end of the book could have been anybody's life, living in any state in America. And I really did not need to have an entire chapter about potty training his daughter, yeah everyone who has kids has to go through this and no it is not fun (altho I think most of us get our kids fully trained before they are 5, unlike the author and his wife)-Really 5?! Nor did I need an entire chapter of his wife's pregnancy and 32 hours of labor with no drugs.

      And of course the last chapter is devoted to rhapsodizing about what a great, wonderful dad he had. That's nice, but a little sentimental goo goes a long way.

      So here's my recommendation. Read the first 13 chapters chapter 18, then stop and you will think the book deserves 5 stars. I wish had.
    • 5/5
      Key is a very funny guy. But in this memoir about his growing up in Mississippi and tales of an often strained and awkward relationship with his father, he can also move you to tears. I wanted to read this book after reading his second book (due out in November 2018) - CONGRATULATIONS, WHO ARE YOU AGAIN? - which was largely about the writing and publishing of THIS book, and his adventures in academia, higher education, and crippling student loan debts. I thoroughly enjoyed THE WORLD'S LARGEST MAN, but I may have liked the newer book even more. It took Harrison Scott Key years to find his "voice," but now that he has, he's rockin' it. One of the best - and funniest - books about fathers and sons that I've read in recent years. Very highly recommended. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
    • 4/5
      "You ever speak to old Lamar Bibbs?" Pop would say."Not since him and Gola Mae went down yonder after the thing up at the place," Monk would say.The younger me would perk up, eager to hear some gothic fable drawn from the mists of Mississippi Hill Country lore. Perhaps a story about a mule trampling a baby, or the time when everyone got the yellow fever and died.But all was quiet. Monk would be leaning over and staring at his folded hands, as though he had be bludgeoned with a skillet, while Pop would be studying his dentures, which he held in his palm like a small, wounded vole. Then he would put them back into his mouth, having divested them of any lingering corn.Harrison Scott Key tells the story of his own boyhood, where he lived with his family in rural Mississippi. His father was a force of nature, a man who was going to mold his son into his own image; a sports-playing, animal-hunting man's man. This worked well enough with his older brother, but Harrison mainly wanted to read books and go grocery shopping with his mother. Even as he did his best to thwart his father's ambitions, he still lived under the shadow of his father. I was always coy about my books, afraid Pop would find them effeminate. In our family, the only books men read were in the Bible and you weren't supposed to do it for fun. You did it because Jesus would hurt you if you didn't.This is a very funny book. It's fatal flaw is that it often reaches for humor when it should reach for something more honest and heart-felt. Key occasionally moves in that direction; a later chapter about his marriage approaches real depth, but for the most part, this remains just a funny book about being bad at hunting and about a boy trying to become a man, when the example of manhood in front of him is far from who he wants to be. Pop didn't have friends, which he believed were things meant for women and children, as were holidays and happiness. A real man didn't need all that. All a man needed was a gun and a wood stove and maybe, if things got bad, a towel for the blood.
    • 4/5
      This book by Key is well worth reading. It tells the, often humorous, story of his relationship with this father. There are many trials and tribulations and misunderstandings, even yes, some hatred. BUT, there is also at the end a more complete understanding of the love that has bound them together over all the years. His family was raised quite differently from many and he had his struggles to grow beyond his upbringing, and this story is well worth the read. I enjoyed it.J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" and "To Whom It May Concern"
    • 5/5
      Pretty dang funny. It's a testament to Key's writing ability that he turns normal life experiences i.e. dealing with your parents, hunting, getting married, etc into hilarious anecdotes. The things that make these stories a bit off-kilter is the fact the author grew up in Mississippi, which while this is not a Faulkner novel, it is populated with some bizarre characters.Key writes in deadpan, absurdist style that reminded me of Jack Handey (Deep Thoughts of SNL). If you like David Sedaris, you'll like this book. The only difference is you get the impression that you'd much rather hang out with this author than Sedaris. To get an idea of the author's writing before you pick up the book, search "Fifty Shades of Greyhound" about the author's interstate bus trip. I highly recommend this book for those who enjoy either memoir or books about South.