Sean Wilsey

A hilarious exploration of the relativism of identity from Italian novelist and playwright Luigi Pirandello, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature. When Vitangelo Moscarda's wife tells him his nose leans slightly to the right, his entire world swings off kilter. Loafing about, suddenly estranged from himself, he accosts friends, strangers, and passersby to look closely and confirm: Am I not the self I thought I was? Wandering from mirror to mirror, Moscarda embarks on a dizzying pursuit to see himself as others see him, to root out the stranger within. Searching endlessly for his true self, Moscarda ricochets through insecurity, reclusiveness, self-detachment, and doubt -- resolving, with icy recognition, that "people roll through their lives like stones, complacent, insensate, and closed," locked in an unknown face. Things quickly escalate from pensive reflection to dramatic confrontations as the protagonist disintegrates. With sharp dialogue and comic brilliance, Pirandello dissolves the fixity of perception, challenging us to question the solidity of our own identities and to consider the ways we are each held captive by the gazes of others.

A New York Times bestseller A candid, compulsively readable, hilarious, and heartbreaking memoir of resilience and redemption by comedic genius Molly ShannonAt age four, Molly Shannon's world was shattered when she lost her mother, baby sister, and cousin in a car accident with her father at the wheel. Held together by her tender and complicated relationship with her grieving father, Molly was raised in a permissive household where her gift for improvising and role-playing blossomed alongside the fearlessness that would lead her to become a celebrated actress. From there, Molly ventured into the wider world of New York and Los Angeles show business, where she created her own opportunities and developed her daring and empathetic comedy. Filled with behind-the-scenes stories involving everyone from Whitney Houston to Adam Sandler to Monica Lewinsky, many told for the first time here, Hello, Molly spans Molly's time on Saturday Night Live--where she starred alongside Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Cheri Oteri, Tracy Morgan, and Jimmy Fallon, among many others. At the same time, it explores with humor and candor her struggle to come to terms with the legacy of her father, a man who both fostered her gifts and drive and was left with the impossible task of raising his kids alone after the loss of her mother. Witty, winning, and told with tremendous energy and heart, Hello, Molly , written with Sean Wilsey, sheds new and revelatory light on the life and work of one of our most talented and free-spirited performers.

A New York Times bestseller A candid, compulsively readable, hilarious, and heartbreaking memoir of resilience and redemption by comedic genius Molly ShannonAt age four, Molly Shannon's world was shattered when she lost her mother, baby sister, and cousin in a car accident with her father at the wheel. Held together by her tender and complicated relationship with her grieving father, Molly was raised in a permissive household where her gift for improvising and role-playing blossomed alongside the fearlessness that would lead her to become a celebrated actress. From there, Molly ventured into the wider world of New York and Los Angeles show business, where she created her own opportunities and developed her daring and empathetic comedy. Filled with behind-the-scenes stories involving everyone from Whitney Houston to Adam Sandler to Monica Lewinsky, many told for the first time here, Hello, Molly spans Molly's time on Saturday Night Live--where she starred alongside Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Cheri Oteri, Tracy Morgan, and Jimmy Fallon, among many others. At the same time, it explores with humor and candor her struggle to come to terms with the legacy of her father, a man who both fostered her gifts and drive and was left with the impossible task of raising his kids alone after the loss of her mother. Witty, winning, and told with tremendous energy and heart, Hello, Molly , written with Sean Wilsey, sheds new and revelatory light on the life and work of one of our most talented and free-spirited performers.

In More Curious, Sean Wilsey travels across the U. S., from the launchpad at Cape Canaveral, to the isolated artists' enclave of Marfa, Texas, to the boardrooms and ballrooms of post?9/11 New York City. Wherever he is, Wilsey captures his surroundings with the precision of a photographer and the raw grace of a skateboarder (he's an amateur practitioner of both arts). And his eye always finds an unrivaled intensity of detail: here, and only here, will a reader be privy to the Dostoyevskian whiff of Marfa's fugitive underbelly, the unsung delights of a skater rag's cooking column, the exact amount of time elapsed since the soundwaves of a long-lost, legendary World Cup broadcast passed out of our solar system. These essays?originally published in Vanity Fair, GQ, McSweeney's, and elsewhere?comprise nearly fifteen years of Wilsey's most vital work on the glory and the misery, the beauty and absurdity of contemporary America.

Editors Sean Wilsey and Matt Weiland have turned to 50 of the finest, funniest, and foremost writers in America to create a state by state celebration of their country: Jonathan Franzen on New York, Louise Erdrich on North Dakota, Dave Eggers on Illinois, Ann Patchett on Tennessee, Jhumpa Lahiri on Rhode Island - the list goes on. At turns poignant and hysterical, and uniformly insightful, these fifty writers capture the beauty, the kitsch, the unexpected and the quintessential things that make America. There is something and someone in State by State for everyone. With a roster of bestsellers and award winners, from Ann Patchett to Rick Moody to Myla Goldberg, Wilsey and Weiland have culled the best of the best from the literary creme de la creme to write on something all Americans are interested in: our country.

A literary companion to the 2006 World Cup of soccer provides a colorful look at the countries, teams, and players at the latest competition, in a collection that includes essays by Roddy Doyle, Zadie Smith, Caryl Phillips, James Surowiecki, Robert Coover, Aleksandar Hemon, John Lanchester, Tom Vanderbilt, and William Finnegan, among others. Original. 50,000 first printing.

A founding editor of McSweeney's documents his experiences of growing up in an eccentric society family, which was marked by his father's infidelity with his mother's best friend, his mother's post-depression international travels, their encounters with numerous political figures, and more. Reprint 150,000 first printing.