About the Book
From cult comedy icon and beloved radio host Tom Scharpling, an inspiring, funny, and thoughtful memoir
It Never Ends is Tom Scharpling's harrowing memoir of his coming of age, a story he has never told before. It's the heartbreaking account of his attempt at suicide, two stays in a mental hospital, and the memory-wiping electroshock therapy that saved his life. After his rehabilitation, Scharpling committed himself to reinvention through the world of comedy. In this book he will lift the curtain on the turmoil that still follows him, despite all of his accolades and achievements. In the vein of candid memoirs from comedians like Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me and Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story, It Never Ends is a revealing book by a beloved comedy icon.
About the Author :
Tom Scharpling is a comedian, television writer, producer, music video director, and radio host. For 18 years, he has hosted the weekly radio call-in comedy program The Best Show with Tom Scharpling. He is also known as the voice of Greg Universe on the hit Cartoon Network animated series Steven Universe. Previously he was a writer/executive producer for the Emmy Award–winning show Monk.
Review :
“This book is unflinchingly honest, deeply affecting and just relentlessly funny. If you read it and don’t like it, it’s 100% your fault.”
I have always been in awe of Tom’s comedy, which is somehow simultaneously aggressive and kind, defeated and resilient, farcical and totally sincere. With this book, I finally understand how Tom can, and must, be all of these things at once. It Never Ends is moving, hilarious, honest, and inspiring!
“It Never Ends, unfortunately, does. But BEFORE it does, it’s a funny, angry, sensitive saga about an outsider who rose above it all without ever losing his touch for the everyday, the poetic, and the misfit music of reality. This is a VERY specific story that will appeal to everyone.”
Tom Scharpling and I are friends. I thought I knew him pretty well. Then I read this book. Turns out, I didn't know him at all, really. He's deeper, darker, smarter, wiser, and much funnier than I knew. It Never Ends is hilarious and harrowing. I laughed a lot. I cried a bit. I even laughed/cried a few times.
“It’ll break your heart in the best way.”
“Comedian and television writer Scharpling careens with reckless abandon around the curves life has thrown him in his sidesplitting debut…Readers will laugh, cry, and laugh some more as they cheer on this story of persistence and triumph.”
“The book’s darkness and jokes work hand in hand…When Scharpling writes about his resilience and work ethic, it’s legitimately inspiring.”
“Hilarious, touching, and serpentine…”
“In Scharpling’s excellent new memoir, It Never Ends, the comedian opens up like never before. Scharpling… spins tales both bitingly perceptive and full of heart.”
“The memoir of Tom Scharpling, the choleric but tenderhearted radio host of WFMU’s cult comedy The Best Show, is as funny as you would expect…”
“In his brilliant memoir It Never Ends, Tom places his story of breaking into comedy — hilarious as you’d expect — within a larger story of growing up in serious emotional turmoil.”
“On the page, Scharpling’s stories are hilarious, heartbreaking, embarrassing, and, above all, honest—everything that makes memoirs as difficult to write as they are worth reading.”
“Scharpling is a natural storyteller, with an eye for absurd minutiae, and he brings those talents to bear in the written word just as easily as he does on the radio.”
“The kind of book that makes it known just why Scharpling has so many diehard fans, and why he deserves more of them…”
“[Scharpling] proves himself an able storyteller with his debut memoir, a collection of stories that include a summer spent in a Jersey Shore arcade and a bizarre Papa Roach promotional basketball game…A radio deejay should be loud and opinionated, and Scharpling doesn’t disappoint.”
“It Never Ends is, to put it as frankly as possible, as good as memoir gets. It is open, honest, and thoughtful, tempering the bleakness of a battle with foundational depression and suicidality with genuinely funny anecdotes and observations that feel just as insightful.”
