The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt

By: Jon-Jon Goulian

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

The vibrant, funny, and heartwarming story of an outcast who becomes an odd man.

If you have ever felt like a misfit in school or been paralyzed by your family’s imposing expectations, if you have ever obsessed about your appearance or panicked about choosing a career path, if you have ever wondered if every single thing to which your body is exposed, from egg yolks to X-rays, might harm you, then you may be surprised to find a kindred spirit in The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt.

Growing up in sunny La Jolla, California, Jon-Jon Goulian was a hyperneurotic kid who felt out of place wherever he turned, and who, in his own words, was forever on the verge of “caving in beneath the pressures of modern life.” From his fear of competition to his fear of pimples, from his fear of sex to his fear of saturated fat, the range and depth of Jon-Jon’s phobias were seemingly boundless. With his two older brothers providing a sterling example he believed he could never live up to, and his stern grandfather, the political philosopher Sidney Hook, continually calling him to account for his intellectual failure, Jon-Jon, feeling pressed against the wall, wracked with despair, and dizzy with insecurity, instinctively resorted, for reasons that became clear to him only many years later, to a most ingenious scheme for keeping conventional expectations at bay: women’s clothing! Ingenious, perhaps, but woefully ineffective, as Jon-Jon discovers, again and again, that behind his skirt, leggings, halter top, and high heels, he’s still as wildly neurotic, and as wracked with anxiety, as he’s always been.

In this hilarious and heartfelt memoir, Jon-Jon Goulian’s witty and exuberant voice shines through, as he comes to terms with what it means to truly be yourself.

©2011 Jon-Jon Goulian (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

"For anyone who’s ever felt like no one in a world that demands we all be someone, here it is: the psychedelically neurotic account, painfully brave and punishingly funny, of one human being’s long struggle to make his outsides match his unclassifiable insides.” (Walter Kirn, author of Lost in the Meritocracy)

“Never have I read a fish-out-of-water story that had me so instantly and irrevocably enamored with the fish.” (Sloane Crosley, author of How Did You Get This Number)

“Some people have to dare to be original, but Jon-Jon Goulian would have to try hard to be normal. As the lawyer he is might say: he is sui generis. Read this book, and live a little.” (Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac)

He should pay me for the therapy

Yeah, he's a story teller, but I finished the book with the same feeling that I have after lunch with an excessively disclosing, dysfunctional co-worker. I couldn't wait to get away and wanted to shake my head like an etch a sketch to clear out the visuals. I am disappointed and insulted by audible bringing this to suggested reading. Probably my worst audible experience to date. Run AWAY!!