Picture of Dan at:

http://www.danzevin.com/

Humorist Dan Zevin Turns Loser Status

Into Literary Career

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

BOSTON – Tonight from 6-8 p.m. at a free event at Boston Public Library’s Rabb Lecture Hall, Boston Globe Book Festival’s Authors' Series will feature Dan Zevin, whose book “The Day I Turned Uncool: Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-up” (Villard) has found its own unique place within the highly competitive aegis of modern literature. Based on his experience observing his own catapult into middle-aged loserdom, it’s a hysterical chronicling of all the embarrassing moments along the way to supposed maturation.

Many of us can relate.

Zevin, “37 going on 17”, grew up in the comfy suburbs of New Jersey. He’s written for major magazines including Rolling Stone and Details, and penned a piece entitled "Men Who Won't Grow Up" for Glamour Magazine. A comic for National Public Radio's WBUR and a columnist for Boston Magazine, he teaches a magazine writing class at Emerson College and has conducted a “Crash Course on Post-College Coping” at schools including Bucknell, M.I.T., Colby College, the University of Portland, Oregon, the University of Miami, Rutgers, Carnegie Mellon, Texas Christian University of South Carolina, Siena College Rochester Institute of Technology, Butler University, Radford University, Tennessee Tech, Ithaca College, Colgate and SUNY Oneonta. Preparing students for the stark realities of post-graduation life, his course description covers topics such as “How to write a cover letter, how to live with Roommates From Hell, and how to have Real World, uh, Relations.”

His roots gave him the necessary base for his art. “It's not like I'm Isaac Beshevis Singer or something,” Zevin said, “but I suppose some people might lump me into that classification known as Neurotic Jewish Comic. Some reviewer described me as the Jewish P.J. O'Rourke, which I thought was hilarious. Maybe I'll change my name to P.J. O'Zevin.”

Currently, he is writing a story about his experience as the only Jewish kid in his grammar school, and having the world's most reformed Bar Mitzvah.

“The Day I Turned Uncool” is the third in a trilogy of both laughable yet sobering adventures of Zevin’s attempt to remain cuturally viable as his hip image slips further into recollection. “Entry-Level Life,” his first, deals with life after college. The subsequent “Nearly-Wed Handbook,” with its subtitle, "How To Survive the Happiest Day of Your Life", covers planning a wedding.

“Uncool” is set entirely in Cambridge and the Boston area. “It's about a formerly young, single guy who lived in a Somerville apartment furnished entirely in milk crates who wakes up one day to discover he's turned into an old married guy with a mortgage, a dog, a lawn he's become obsessed with, and a special shed to store his garbage cans.”

He admitted that this is he, married to Megan Tingley, a children’s book editor. In the book he details the renovation process of their North Cambridge home, which might have at one time seemed mundane, “and its accompanying nervous breakdowns.”

Future plans? “I’m turning The Day I Turned Uncool into a one man show,” he said. “It's called ‘Uncool, Unplugged.’ Sort of like Spaulding Gray.”

"The Day I Turned Uncool" recently hit Number 5 on the Boston Globe bestseller list. It has also received stellar reviews by USA Today and Time magazine; Universal Pictures recently bought the movie rights. “They're talking about someone like John Cusak to play the part of me,” he said, “but I'd rather they found someone who looks more like me. A Brad Pitt type, you know?”