You are a complete disappointment : a triumphant memoir of failed expectations

My father was having a hard time speaking.He was on his deathbed, quite literally, in an Arizona hospital room—the best money could buy, with all sorts of tubes exploding out of his arms, monitors beeping and buzzing, nurses bustling in and out to check the connections and interpret the blizzard of numbers that flashed on and off like Christmas lights on a Matterhorn of rack-mounted biotech, a pinball parlor’s worth of LED readouts that could just as easily have been designed to read EXTRA BALL or SPECIAL WHEN LIT. He was breathing erratically through a milky plastic oxygen mask that was growing thick with condensation.He waved me over to the bed.“I’m glad you’re here,” he began. “There is something I want to tell you.”I sidled up close to hear what he had to say.There was a soft sucking sound from inside the mask, and the low whistle and shhhhhhhhh of an air valve doing its thing. His eyes were clear, lucid blue.“You,” he said, “are a complete disappointment.”He sucked another lungful of oxygen out of the mask, and his eyes opened up like saucers. He was just getting started.“You are a failure,” he leveled, gaining strength. “You think you are a hotshot in New York writing books, but you’re not. No one wants to read your shit. It’s obvious you don’t even like yourself,” he added, before turning to my younger brother, the Wall Street macher who was standing next to me, wearing a dirty T-shirt from a recent Who reunion concert, cargo shorts, and those trendy, Fruity Pebbles®–colored plastic clogs. “It’s been a pleasure to watch you grow up,” he said to him. "A fine storyteller, quick and witty" explores his relationship with his verbally abusive father in a memoir at once hilarious and heartbreaking ( Booklist ). "You are a complete disappointment." On his deathbed, Mike Edison's father gasped those words to his son—and that was just the beginning of his devastating salvo. For anyone who has ever suffered from parental bullying, this often-hilarious yet intensely heartbreaking memoir from the former High Times publisher will provide both solace and laughter. It begins with a child's hunger for love and acceptance and continues through years of withering criticism, perverse expectations, and unfounded competition from a narcissistic father who couldn't tolerate his son's happiness and libertine spirit. In the end, the author unravels a relationship that could never be fixed—but perhaps didn't need to be. In the spirit of Augusten Burroughs by way of Jeannette Walls, Edison's memoir is a candid, devastating, and deeply funny read. "[The author] gives the heavy stuff appropriate weight without letting it pull down the lighter moments, like his father's memorable outburst over a meatball pizza. Edison's soul-searching creates a moving tribute to being oneself." — Booklist "His candor and honesty will no doubt connect with many readers who also feel doomed to fail their fathers. Edison's own demonstration of the long, difficult, but sometimes humorous road toward compassion will pave the way for others to follow in his footsteps." — Rain Taxi