{"product_id":"my-childhood-in-pieces-a-stand-up-comedy-a-skokie-elegy","title":"My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom the award-winning poet, dark comic microbursts of prose deliver a whole childhood, at the hands of an aspiring middle-class Jewish family whose hard-boiled American values and wit were the forge of a poet's coming-of-age.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"My grandparents taught me to write my sins on paper and cast them into the water. . . . They didn't expect an entire book,\" Hirsch says in the \"prologue\" to this glorious festival of knife-sharp observations. In microchapters--sometimes only a single scathing sentence long--with titles like \"Call to Breakfast,\" \"Pay Cash,\" \"The Sorrow of Manly Sports,\" and \"Aristotle on Lawrence Avenue,\" Eddie's gambling father, Ruby, son of a white metal smelter, schools him and his sister in blackjack; Eddie's mom bangs pots to wake the kids to a breakfast of cold cereal; Uncle Bob, in the collection business, is heard threatening people on the phone; and nobody suffers fools. In this household, Eddie learned to jab with his left and cross with his right, never to kid a kidder, and how to sneak out at night.\u003cbr\u003e Affectionate, deadpan, and exuberant, steeped in Yiddishkeit and Midwestern practicality, Hirsch's laugh-and-cry performance animates a heartbreaking odyssey, from the cradle to the day he leaves home, armed with sorrow and a huge store of poetic wit.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0593802829\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780593802823\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Hirsch, Edward\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Knopf Publishing Group\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Knopf Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Jun 2025)","offer_id":46080344195269,"sku":"9780593802823","price":29.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780593802823.jpg?v=1776036530","url":"https:\/\/www.inveni.store\/products\/my-childhood-in-pieces-a-stand-up-comedy-a-skokie-elegy","provider":"Inveni","version":"1.0","type":"link"}