Self-Sabotage: And Other Ways I've Spent My Time

In the vein of works by Gary Janetti and Danny Pellegrino, a hilarious and deeply moving memoir-in-essays about dreaming big, making art, and trying to maintain your sanity in a truly madcap world.

Jeffery Self always knew he was born with something. What he didn't know was where that something would take him. He had his share of obstacles--the usual foibles of gay adolescence, amplified in the vast wasteland of the American South and the odd characters who peopled it. (To say nothing of the one mom in dance class who simply had it out for him. . .) Determined to make something of his talents, Jeffrey would journey from his home state of Georgia to New York to North Carolina to New York again to Los Angeles to New York yet again. In each place, he got one step closer to finding his destiny--while enduring a hearty dose of bipolarity for good measure.

In this, his first book for adults, Jeffery escorts us to shoddy college theater productions and parties thrown by Broadway stars, downtown comedy rooms and adventure-filled bedrooms--a series of unending adventures in his fervent pursuit of a life of creativity and Something Big. His quest for fulfillment and genius at self-invention would lead to acting stints on television and in film, a live comedy tour around the world, meeting his heroes, falling in love, getting his heart broken, breaking other people's hearts, hating himself, and on the best of days, finding stuff to like about himself, too.

A portrait of a young man becoming an artist, Self-Sabotage asks how you become the person you want to be when so much of yourself is a secret--and how you learn to accept yourself when it's not. Wise and profound, it is also, of course, side-splittingly funny.