My Heart Is an Idiot, Davy Rothbart
My Heart Is an Idiot, Davy Rothbart
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My Heart Is an Idiot
Essays

Author: Davy Rothbart

Narrator: Davy Rothbart

Unabridged: 8 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/04/2012

Synopsis

Davy Rothbart is looking for love in all the wrong places. Constantly. He falls helplessly in love with pretty much every girl he meets—and rarely is the feeling reciprocated. Time after time, he hops in a car and tears across half of America with his heart on his sleeve. He's continually coming up with outrageous schemes, which he always manages to pull off. Well, almost always. But even when things don't work out, Rothbart finds meaning and humor in every moment. Whether it's humiliating a scammer who takes money from aspiring writers or playing harmless (but side-splitting) goofs on his deaf mother, nothing and no one is off-limits.
But as much as Rothbart is a tragically lovable, irresistibly brokenhearted hero, it's his prose that's the star of the book. In the tradition of David Sedaris and Sloane Crosley but going places very much his own, his essays show how things that are seemingly so wrong can be so, so right.

About Davy Rothbart

Davy Rothbart is a frequent contributor to This American Life and a variety of magazines, the founder of Found Magazine and the editor of its various bestselling anthologies, and the author of The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas. He was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he still lives.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on June 13, 2014

If you want a handful of life lessons (sixteen in fact) on how to fuck up more than a few relationships with a road map and GPS satellite in your hip pocket to comfort you on your dark days, then MY HEART IS AN IDIOT could provide you better comfort than a blanket, a glass of warm milk, and your fav......more

Goodreads review by Leo on March 28, 2017

Spoiler alert: the heart's not the idiot part of him.......more

Goodreads review by Melissa on October 17, 2012

If your heart is also an idiot, you'll relate with this book. Davy Rothbart seems to get passed over by the ladies more often than most. Maybe it's because he's so earnest about falling in love with almost every girl he meets that the girls sense it is impermanent? Or just because nice guys finish la......more

Goodreads review by Roxy on November 05, 2013

3.5 stars. It's a quick read. At first I didn't care too much for the book. His stories were good and the book well-written, but neither blew me out of the water. They sometimes felt a bit exaggerated, like those who collect stories tend to do now and then. And I didn't love his character- maybe if......more

Goodreads review by Clark on February 22, 2013

I only read this 'cause I had to interview the dude for the Press Street Room 220 blog. I didn't dislike it as much as I expected to. It's kind of like reading a blog by someone who's funny and has some good stories. Hey do you think that blogs help save paper from making books like this? Or is that......more

Quotes

“THIS BOOK IS F---ING GREAT! Nobody writes quite like Davy Rothbart, because nobody lives quite like Davy Rothbart--a true and funny ragged-hearted seeker of ecstasy, mystery, and human connection. My Heart Is an Idiot contains some of the most perfect and heartbreaking writing that I have ever read.” —Elizabeth Gilbert

“Welcome to the newly remodeled Heartbreak Hotel, where Davy Rothbart is concierge. He'll also unpack your underwear, restock your minibar, and do stand-up comedy in the lounge.” —Tom Robbins

“In Davy Rothbart's essays on heartache, mad love, the low life, and the high life, everybody is fascinating; everybody has something to say. The sentences speed you along down one narrative highway after another, and your tour guide is smart and funny and a real democrat: he has a sweet-tempered openness to experience that wins you over. This book breathes new life back into the personal essay, and these essays are a trip. Take that trip.” —Charles Baxter

“Tender, cool, funny, and utterly engaging, Davy Rothbart writes with a kind of warmth and cockeyed energy that make you love him. This book is marvelous.” —Susan Orlean

“An intriguing hybrid of timeless Midwestern warmth and newfangled jive talk.” —Sarah Vowell

“Davy Rothbart has the humor and purity of heart you want and need in an observer of contemporary American life. Without guile and with a belief in small towns, underdogs, love at first sight, the pull of the road, and the soulfulness of strangers, Rothbart is a kind of new-styled Bill Moyers--genuine, wide-eyed, and hopeful.” —Dave Eggers

“I believe in Davy. He's a force to be reckoned with.” —Ira Glass

“Davy's as real as it gets. This is a badass book.” —Kid Rock

“Davy's my kind of storyteller--honest, hilarious, deeply feeling, and slightly cracked. This is the fresh voice we've been looking for.” —Jim Carroll, author of The Basketball Diaries

“Davy writes with his whole heart. These stories are crushing.” —Arthur Miller on The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas

“It's always exciting to discover a talented new writer. Davy writes with such energy, wit, and heart.” —Judy Blume on The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas

“Like Kerouac's best novels, these stories are breezy and energetic dispatches from obscure corners of the country... Rothbart mines his material to heartbreaking effect.” —The Washington Post on The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas

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