“Let’s stop finding a new witch of the week and burning them at the stake. We are all horrible and wonderful and figuring it out.” – Harris Wittels
I was known around the admissions office for my refrain that “everything is the worst and nothing is the best.” I said it for the first time at a moment when it felt like the work would never end – probably from underneath Nadine’s desk, or at the very least on the floor of her cubicle. It encapsulated every bleak and desperate and frustrated feeling I had, and defused a little tension and made people laugh. It became a unifier and rallying cry with applications outside of February in an admissions office. I’ve loved it ever since.
Truthfully, I’d have read this book even if the title weren’t so close to my favorite phrase because of the subject matter. Harris Wittels was a comedy writer who worked on Parks and Rec and helped to create Master of None and coined the term “humblebrag” and did probably a thousand other niche comedy-related things that made me laugh. And he died of a heroin overdose in 2015, at the age of 30.
This book will break your heart. His sister, Stephanie, wrote it after his death, and it details not just the aftermath of losing a sibling but also the full life he lived and the incredible things he brought to the world. It’s gorgeous and haunting and devastating and you won’t want to put it down. I was finished with it inside of two days.
I cried the entire time – and not just shed a few tears, more of a “openly sobbed at my public pool until I had to go inside to compose myself and then thought about it an hour later and lost it all over again” kind of crying.
There is so much wisdom here. There is so much pain.
Amy Poehler spoke about her friend Harris on the night of his death, saying “life and death live so close together and we walk that fine line every day.” This parallels a thought Stephanie has in the book:
“I think about the day a person dies, how the morning is just a morning, a meal is just a meal, a song is just a song. It’s not the last morning, or the last meal, or the last song. It’s all very ordinary, and then it’s all very over.
The space between life and death is a moment.”
I think that there’s such a strong connection between these and Harris’s idea that we are all horrible and wonderful (and figuring it out). There is so little space between life and death. There are such fine lines between horrible and wonderful. In an instant we can be on either side of that line and that space: we’re all enjoying our mornings and our meals and our songs and we’re being horrible and being wonderful…and then at some point we won’t be doing any of those things anymore.
Let’s stop hunting the witches.
You will gain perspective and insight and empathy from this book, and you will be better for having read it. You should do so as soon as possible. Bring tissues.
You’ll like this if: you’re looking for an emotional and soul-bearing journey through a challenging subject.
Happy reading!
Other Suggested Content:
– Stephanie Wittels Wachs on Harris Wittels: there are tributes to him on each anniversary of his death, but also overall pieces that are equally powerful. Check out a few – and then read the book.
– Aziz Ansari on Harris Wittels
– Stephanie Wittels Wachs’s podcast Last Day – the first episode is about Harris and features Sarah Silverman and Aziz Ansari.
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