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David Rakoff
David Benjamin Rakoff (November 27, 1964 – August 9, 2012) was a Canadian-born American writer of prose and poetry based in New York City, who wrote humorous and sometimes autobiographical non-fiction essays. Rakoff was an essayist, journalist, and actor, and a regular contributor to WBEZ's This American Life. Rakoff described himself as a "New York writer" who also happened to be a "Canadian writer", a "mega Jewish writer", a "gay writer", and an "East Asian Studies major who has forgotten most of his Japanese" writer.
David Rakoff was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the youngest of three children. His brother, the comedian Simon Rakoff, is four years older than David. Their sister, Ruth Rakoff, author of the cancer memoir When My World Was Very Small, is the middle child. Rakoff and his siblings were close as children. Rakoff's mother, Gina Shochat-Rakoff, is a doctor who has practised psychotherapy and his father, Vivian Rakoff, is a psychiatrist.[citation needed] Rakoff wrote that almost every generation of his family fled from one place to another. Rakoff's grandparents, who were Jewish, fled Latvia and Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century and settled in South Africa. The Rakoff family left South Africa in 1961, for political reasons, and moved to Montreal for seven years. In 1967, when he was three, Rakoff's family relocated to Toronto. As an adult, he identified as Jewish.
Rakoff attended high school at the Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, and graduated in 1982. That year, he moved to New York City to attend Columbia University, where he majored in East Asian Studies and studied dance. Rakoff spent his third year of college at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and graduated in 1986. He worked in Japan as a translator with a fine arts publisher. His work was interrupted after four months when, at age 22, he contracted Hodgkin's disease, a form of lymphatic cancer he referred to as "a touch of cancer". He returned to Toronto for 18 months of treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Rakoff later served on the board of directors of North Carolina's John C. Campbell Folk School.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Rakoff worked for 13 years in the publishing industry, including as a publishing assistant and a publicist. He worked at a literary agency for 3 years and then as an editor and communications manager for 9 years at HarperCollins,. For a period starting when he was 25, Rakoff wrote freelance while working in the publishing industry. Eventually he was able to earn a living from his writing, becoming a full-time writer in 1998. While Rakoff was working in publishing, he wrote Q and A interviews entitled "The Way We Live Now", which appeared in The New York Times Magazine from 1999 to 2002.
Rakoff said that he owed David Sedaris and Sedaris' producer, Ira Glass, his entire career. Rakoff wrote to Sedaris in 1992, after hearing him read on the radio his essay, "Santaland Diaries", about being a Christmas elf, which was to make him famous. That day, Rakoff wrote to Sedaris immediately to ask if he could publish Sedaris' works (which he later confessed he had no intention of doing, since he was desperate to leave publishing). They became friends, with Rakoff doing work in the theatre with Sedaris, first directing a play written by Sedaris and his sister Amy Sedaris, and later acting in their plays. Through Sedaris, Rakoff met Ira Glass, who was then a junior reporter on the NPR radio program Morning Edition. When Glass began This American Life, Rakoff became involved with the new show at its inception. Sedaris encouraged Rakoff to go on public radio, where Sedaris himself had achieved fame: at his urging Rakoff took work to This American Life, starting with "Christmas Freud", an account of Rakoff's job impersonating Sigmund Freud in the window of Barneys department store during the holidays.[citation needed]
Rakoff was a prolific freelance writer and a regular contributor to Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, Outside Magazine and The New York Times Magazine. His writing also appeared in Business 2.0, Details, Harper's Bazaar, Nerve, New York Magazine, Salon, Seed, Slate, Spin, The New York Observer, Vogue, Wired and other publications. He wrote on a wide and eclectic range of topics.
Rakoff published three bestselling collections of essays, which include his own illustrations. Both Fraud (Doubleday 2001) and Don't Get Too Comfortable (Doubleday 2005) were awarded a Lambda literary award (which recognises excellence among LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives), both times in the "Humor" category. Half-Empty (2010) won the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor.
Fraud includes essays that are largely autobiographical and humorous. Rakoff stated, in relation to the theme of the book, "The central drama of my life is about being a fraud, alas." He went on to say "That's a complete lie, really; the central drama of my life is about being lonely, and staying thin, but fraudulence gets a fair amount of play." He has said that he thought of other titles for Fraud, like "Smart mouth" and "The jig is up". Rakoff described the first-person essays that comprise the collection as more inwardly focused than his later work. The work contains material from public radio's This American Life and from Outside and Salon, which was significantly lengthened and re-written, as well as a few new pieces.
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David Rakoff
David Benjamin Rakoff (November 27, 1964 – August 9, 2012) was a Canadian-born American writer of prose and poetry based in New York City, who wrote humorous and sometimes autobiographical non-fiction essays. Rakoff was an essayist, journalist, and actor, and a regular contributor to WBEZ's This American Life. Rakoff described himself as a "New York writer" who also happened to be a "Canadian writer", a "mega Jewish writer", a "gay writer", and an "East Asian Studies major who has forgotten most of his Japanese" writer.
David Rakoff was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the youngest of three children. His brother, the comedian Simon Rakoff, is four years older than David. Their sister, Ruth Rakoff, author of the cancer memoir When My World Was Very Small, is the middle child. Rakoff and his siblings were close as children. Rakoff's mother, Gina Shochat-Rakoff, is a doctor who has practised psychotherapy and his father, Vivian Rakoff, is a psychiatrist.[citation needed] Rakoff wrote that almost every generation of his family fled from one place to another. Rakoff's grandparents, who were Jewish, fled Latvia and Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century and settled in South Africa. The Rakoff family left South Africa in 1961, for political reasons, and moved to Montreal for seven years. In 1967, when he was three, Rakoff's family relocated to Toronto. As an adult, he identified as Jewish.
Rakoff attended high school at the Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, and graduated in 1982. That year, he moved to New York City to attend Columbia University, where he majored in East Asian Studies and studied dance. Rakoff spent his third year of college at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and graduated in 1986. He worked in Japan as a translator with a fine arts publisher. His work was interrupted after four months when, at age 22, he contracted Hodgkin's disease, a form of lymphatic cancer he referred to as "a touch of cancer". He returned to Toronto for 18 months of treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Rakoff later served on the board of directors of North Carolina's John C. Campbell Folk School.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Rakoff worked for 13 years in the publishing industry, including as a publishing assistant and a publicist. He worked at a literary agency for 3 years and then as an editor and communications manager for 9 years at HarperCollins,. For a period starting when he was 25, Rakoff wrote freelance while working in the publishing industry. Eventually he was able to earn a living from his writing, becoming a full-time writer in 1998. While Rakoff was working in publishing, he wrote Q and A interviews entitled "The Way We Live Now", which appeared in The New York Times Magazine from 1999 to 2002.
Rakoff said that he owed David Sedaris and Sedaris' producer, Ira Glass, his entire career. Rakoff wrote to Sedaris in 1992, after hearing him read on the radio his essay, "Santaland Diaries", about being a Christmas elf, which was to make him famous. That day, Rakoff wrote to Sedaris immediately to ask if he could publish Sedaris' works (which he later confessed he had no intention of doing, since he was desperate to leave publishing). They became friends, with Rakoff doing work in the theatre with Sedaris, first directing a play written by Sedaris and his sister Amy Sedaris, and later acting in their plays. Through Sedaris, Rakoff met Ira Glass, who was then a junior reporter on the NPR radio program Morning Edition. When Glass began This American Life, Rakoff became involved with the new show at its inception. Sedaris encouraged Rakoff to go on public radio, where Sedaris himself had achieved fame: at his urging Rakoff took work to This American Life, starting with "Christmas Freud", an account of Rakoff's job impersonating Sigmund Freud in the window of Barneys department store during the holidays.[citation needed]
Rakoff was a prolific freelance writer and a regular contributor to Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, Outside Magazine and The New York Times Magazine. His writing also appeared in Business 2.0, Details, Harper's Bazaar, Nerve, New York Magazine, Salon, Seed, Slate, Spin, The New York Observer, Vogue, Wired and other publications. He wrote on a wide and eclectic range of topics.
Rakoff published three bestselling collections of essays, which include his own illustrations. Both Fraud (Doubleday 2001) and Don't Get Too Comfortable (Doubleday 2005) were awarded a Lambda literary award (which recognises excellence among LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives), both times in the "Humor" category. Half-Empty (2010) won the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor.
Fraud includes essays that are largely autobiographical and humorous. Rakoff stated, in relation to the theme of the book, "The central drama of my life is about being a fraud, alas." He went on to say "That's a complete lie, really; the central drama of my life is about being lonely, and staying thin, but fraudulence gets a fair amount of play." He has said that he thought of other titles for Fraud, like "Smart mouth" and "The jig is up". Rakoff described the first-person essays that comprise the collection as more inwardly focused than his later work. The work contains material from public radio's This American Life and from Outside and Salon, which was significantly lengthened and re-written, as well as a few new pieces.
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