Jonathan Goldstein - I’ll Seize the Day Tomorrow

Praise forIll Seize the Day Tomorrowand Jonathan Goldstein

Jonathan Goldstein is one of todays most original and intelligent comic voices. He has done for radio what Larry David has done for television. And in his new book he proves, once again, that his wry, self-deprecating observations work just as well on the page.

David Bezmozgis, author of Natasha and Other Stories and The Free World

Jonathan Goldstein has created something uniquely funny, smart, and touching. I love this book.

Neil Pasricha, author of the New York Times bestseller The Book of Awesome

Surrounded by [Goldsteins] cast of family and friends, this chronicle of his 39th year is a portrait of a life that is striving towards hope and beautyeven wisdomagainst the relentless pull of the gravity that is ones own character, and the entropy that is age ... I smiled or laughed at every page.

Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?

One of the funniest books Ive read in a long time. Jonathan is like a mix of Louis C.K., Jean-Paul Sartre, and Sholem Aleichem. I guess what Im trying to say is that hes hilarious, philosophical, and Jewish. I want to be Jonathan Goldstein when I turn 40. (Note: Im 44, but you know what I mean).

A.J. Jacobs, author of the New York Times bestseller The Year of Living Biblically

Jonathan Goldsteins existential misery makes for good reading. As long as he keeps writing such funny and original pieces about it, I hope he continues to suffer.

Shalom Auslander, author of Foreskins Lament

Ill Seize the Day Tomorrow is packed with Goldsteins trademark combo of sharp-edged wit and tender wisdom. Its his funniest book yet!

Miriam Toews, author of A Complicated Kindness

With his brilliant deadpan and his all-seeing eye, the hilarious Jonathan Goldstein traffics in what he calls moderate hopefulness. It fills me with wild optimism.

Henry Alford, author of Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That?

Jonathan Goldstein is one of the funniest and most original writers I can think of. Anything by him is better than anything by just about anyone else.

David Sedaris, author of the New York Times bestsellers Me Talk Pretty One Day and When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Jonathan Goldstein is like no one else. Hes constantly surprising, simultaneously poetic and hilarious; an honestto-goodness artist.

David Rakoff, bestselling author of Dont Get Too Comfortable

PENGUIN

ILL SEIZE THE DAY TOMORROW

JONATHAN GOLDSTEINs writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and Nerve. He is a columnist for the National Post and a frequent contributor to PRIs This American Life. Hes the author of the short story collection Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! and the novel Lenny Bruce Is Dead. His CBC Radio show, WireTap, is now in its ninth season.

ALSO BY JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN

Lenny Bruce Is Dead

Ladies and Gentlemen,The Bible!

PENGUIN

an imprint of Penguin Canada

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published 2012

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright Jonathan Goldstein, 2012

Unfolding by Carl Dennis first published in The New Yorker. Used with permission.

Portions of this work were previously broadcast or published in slightly different form on or in the following sources: CBC Radios WireTap, This American Life, National Post,

En Route magazine, and The New York Times Magazine.

All rights reserved.Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Goldstein, Jonathan, 1969 Ill seize the day tomorrow / Jonathan Goldstein.

ISBN 978-0-14-317388-5

1. Goldstein, Jonathan, 1969 Humor. I. Title.

PS8563.O82846I55 2012 C817.6 C2012-905314-7

Visit the Penguin Canada website at www.penguin.ca

Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 2477.

For my family and friends, past and present.

And what the heck, Im feeling good:

for those, too, who may not even like me,

because they might some day.

Who knows. Life is weird.

Contents

Foreword

by Gregor Ehrlich, agent to the star

One wintry morning many years ago, my butler opened the door of my maison de campagne and discovered a basket of reeds with a baby inside. There was a note pinned to the swaddling cloth explaining that the babys name was Jonathan Goldstein, who, due to an unspecified condition, had been born well on the other side of his prime. Here was a middle-aged-man baby. And one who had not lived well at that. He was doughy, rotund, and baldand not baby bald, but Ed Asner bald. In fact, the only thing baby-like about this creature were his genitals. Which were small.

I gave him the finest education money could buy. Elocution. Archery. Japanese stick fighting. And finally the day came to send young Goldstein out into the worlda heros quest for my little hero! He was to fetch my dry cleaning. Id lost the slip, but hoped he could get my pants anyway.

Unable to explain the situation to the proprietor, he threw a veritable conniption, carrying on in the shop about everything and nothing. But as Lady Luck would have it, a talent scout for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation happened to be in that very dry cleaning establishment and heard in Goldsteins high-pitched hysterical mewling something universal. Here was a voicea cross between Joe Franklin trying to sing through his nose and the panicky shrieks of Larry King awakening during a hernia operationthat would one day touch the lives of hundreds.

And so his radio show, WireTap, was born. Although Ive not heard it, Im told Goldstein uses his governmentally funded half-hour to perform monologues about everything from his corns to his cankles, occasionally mixing it up with a modern-day fable obtuse enough to put knots in a rabbinical scholars beard.

For the next eight years I would try unsuccessfully to pry Goldstein off that stupid show. But cling he does, like a barnacle on the underbelly of a ship, a ship he calls Show Businessa glorious place where Ed McMahon spits bingo numbers and Frank Sinatra slaps his valet across the nose for rumpling his cabana wear.