The World's Largest Man: A Memoir

I appreciate the theme but was ultimately distracted by the "hyperbolization" of various aspects essentially to support the humor of the incidents. I appreciated the characters presented but was disappointed in that they were developed more as caricatures than real people .

The book is well written. Although there is much to admire about the author's father, it is clear that he was a bit of a brute. Near the end, as the author writes how he began to appreciate his father's brutishness, and in fact, wished that he was more like his father--well, I couldn't understand why anyone wanted to be a brute.

In "Red Dawn", Patrick Swayze beat back the Communists with his hair. If this has you rolling in the aisle with laughter, you might like this book. If not, stay away as this is the type of humor that permeates the book.

Labor Day weekend gave me just the excuse I needed to ignore all responsibilities and read this enormously entertaining memoir straight through. The book's existence surprised me: I saw the author's name on a presenter's list at a local book festival in Decatur, GA, and I made sure to be present for his talk. Already a huge fan of Key thanks to his brilliant essays in The Oxford American magazine, I was excited to see the man who had provided me with so much laughter for the last several years. I was surprised and delighted to discover that he was promoting a new book, a memoir based on his experiences growing up in the rural American south with a larger-than-life character of a father. Stories of hunting, fishing, football, and family fill the story of a man desperately trying to become all the best things he knew his father to be and trying like hell to avoid all the worst. Some of my favorite stories from the book echo my own southern adolescence in Arkansas and Texas, and I am once again pleasantly surprised to discover that I did not suffer these indignities alone. It's a small thing, but I was even gratified to discover Key's hatred of the bologna that his father ate mirrors perfectly my own tortured experience with the hateful meat, and his description of it caused me to laugh aloud and share the comment with my wife, who just stared at me quietly. "It was a hellish meat, the flesh of Satan's horses, a sausage infused with alien gases and the tears of abandoned children."
I also found a simple passage concerning the different child-rearing philosophies of Key and his long-suffering wife to be especially amusing: "Don't throw the children at the ceiling fan," she said one night, while I was throwing one of our children at the ceiling fan. "But why?" I said. Honestly, all I was doing was throwing our daughter up, higher and higher, and then catching her. We were nowhere near the fan, mostly because I had already accidentally thrown her into it, without telling my wife, and the kid had been fine, mostly. "The fan is scary, which makes it more fun," I said. "She could die," said my wife. I replied, "I've been thrown into many a fan, and look at me."
An unexpected pleasure of reading this memoir is the unusually moving way that the author writes of his love for his parents and his wife and children. Key has an incredible gift for hilarity and compassion in surprising proximity. I can't recommend this volume highly enough.

This author's clumsy efforts to depict humor (a la Confederacy of Dunces) is totally off-putting to me. I spent the first half of the book believing he hated his father, then, surprisingly, spent the last third believing he revered the man. All he did between was grow up--and not gradually the way most young humans do, but precipitously.

How to review this book ? In the beginning , it reminded me a bit of the old TV show, My Name is Earl . I was chuckling, then outright laughing , embarrassed in parts , knowing some of it wasn’t exactly politically correct. But in this story, Earl has a heart of gold, which shines through on every page.
It takes a certain amount of magic for an author to bring out so many emotions, all within the pages of one book. This author has that ability. It was such an honor to have read this book.
The memoir of a boy who tries his entire life to fit the mold of what his father expects him to be. He tries earnestly, with his whole heart, but cannot succeed. They are just too different.
It’s also the story of a boy trying to lasso his feelings towards a father who expects him to be something he’s incapable of being.
I’ve always wondered how adults who have grown up like this feel about their parent, as they become parents themselves.
Thank you for telling me , and for sharing your story with us. Beautiful.

Such a great read. As a Southern 40-something Key's voice is mine. I have been in frigid tree stands and duck blinds for no other reason than because my father thought it was good for me, despite my intense lack of interest in guns, birds, trees or anything not made by Atari. Maybe Key's greatest achievement is the subtle notion that the Southern Man he depicts in the form of his father is a fading breed. As the South changes, so do it's sons. Maybe I'm putting too much on the theme, but that's where my mind floats with Key's stories. They are fun, hilarious and poignant.

Five big stars for me. I've already ordered 5 more copies because not only is it a well-crafted story, it's also important in a lot of ways. I know some people that need to hear this story - one that I thought was isolated in my house. Turns out, happily, that it wasn't

I just finished reading “The World’s Largest Man.” What a wonderful book! Suffice it to say that this book moved me deeply in many ways. If artistic expression is ever good, it's always because it's honest. And that's what I loved most about this brilliant memoir. The honesty drew me in from the beginning and kept me enthralled all the way through. From the humor to the sadness to the scatological details, it was all genuine, honest, and real.

The genius of the author’s writing is evidenced by the fact that as different as my own life is from his, I could still relate to everything he said. He paints his own story with universal strokes that will resonate with every human heart. As cliché as it may sound, the fact is that as I read this book I found myself laughing out loud one minute and welling up with tears the next. No exaggeration.

I have lived in the South my entire life, and I have a great affinity for Southern literature. But since the death of Willie Morris, I have felt that good Southern literature has withered to the brink of death. Contemporary Southern Literature (God forbid that I should coin such a term!) is too often either a gross caricature, a blatant imitation of the previous masters, or a desperate attempt to prove the author’s credentials as a “progressive” who is intellectually above the native Southern culture about which he writes. Harrison Scott Key does not succumb to these errors. Like all the great Southern writers, he is neither proud of the South nor ashamed of it. He strains neither to identify with Southern culture nor to escape it. He is simply a genuine product of the South, and he therefore writes about the South with affection, horror, humor, and love. Like Flannery O’Connor, Willie Morris, and Dennis Covington, in writing about the South he writes about humanity. Like all great writers and artists, he portrays absurdities with creativity and humor rather than ridicule and mockery. One reads a side-splitting anecdote about his Southern country upbringing, and then quickly realizes that one is not laughing at the South but rather at the human nature we all share in common. This is part of the author’s deft ability to describe the details of his own life in ways that are relatable to all people everywhere.

The best compliment I can give any book is that I hate to finish it. Some books are just so good that I have to force myself not to read them in a day or two. This is one of those books. I wanted to savor it, to prolong the enjoyment. It really was that good. And did I mention that it was funny? I mean, seriously funny. In fact, Harrison Scott Key may wind up being responsible for a whole new genre of literature that will be called “seriously funny” writing.

-Lying in bed, next to my sleeping wife, trying unsuccessfully not to wake her.
-On a plane, sitting next to a stranger giving me a look.
-In traffic, sneaking glances while stopped.
-Sitting in my living room alone, late at night.

Places I got misty-eyed reading this book:
(see above)

Genuinely fantastic book. Key has a way of sneaking up on you through his sentences, surprising you with humorous turns, crafting long rumbling thoughts in a quite delightful way. I enjoyed his writing style almost as much as the many wonderful, hilarious stories that often wrapped poignant insights about family relationships and growing up into their webs. I wanted to stand up and clap a few times while reading, but I was too lazy (or interested) so I kept turning pages. Highly recommended.

Great great book, absolutely hilarious. I can't recall the last time I laughed out loud so much, in fact I may have never. Clever writing that is highly entertaining. The first chapter doesn't do the rest of the book justice and it just gets better from there.

Key almost succeeds in welding his two strengths, standup and playwriting, into a blaring Mississippi memoir. His self-portrait is particularly accurate in the rhythms of delta vernacular, all that caustic dialogue, but his own writing rhythm gets too predictable too soon. One chapter about Jimmy Crack Corn is a triumphant composition, but the rest is too uncomfortably cathartic, and I cringe for his family. Anything goes during an improv set, but publication is permanent and I find his extremes too grotesque to be humanizing.

This memoir is full of exaggerated analogies, crass one-liners, and wordy sentences, which make it unbelievable, long and boring. There are some good dialogues, but not worth reading the entire book for. Thankfully, I read a library book.

Big disappointment. Didn't expect page after page of penis and baby crap jokes. Inaccuracies missed by the author as well as his editor, on page 240 for example, caught me by surprise coming from one with such credentials. If this is what passes for intelligent humor among our credentialed educators in our institutions of higher learning our system is indeed broken. The hallmark bitterness of today's self proclaimed progressives comes through.

Harrison Scott Key is funny. I’m reading “The World’s Largest Man,” published in 2015, and I find myself laughing out loud, not once but many times. This memoir of growing up with a larger-than-life father in Mississippi doesn’t only ring true; it rings familiar. My own father didn’t hunt or fish, but in many respects he resembled Key’s father. I suspect this may be true for many of us who grew up in the South from the 1950s to the 1980s.

We know this man. He does funny things, crazy things, sometimes mean things, sometimes shockingly unexpected and kind things. He can drive his wife and out mother crazy. And if we are not like him, we will believe he is forever disappointed in us.

Key tells his story with humor. He didn’t like hunting, and his father (and his stepbrother) loved it, seeing it not only as something to do but something vital and important to do. He often didn’t know what to think of a son who liked to read, studied hard, enjoyed shopping with his mother (shopping?), and didn’t think the epitome of life’s experiences was sitting in a deer blind in freezing temperatures. Conflict was inevitable.

Key also tells his story with a very subtle pain. The humor betrays the pain. It can’t be helped with a larger-than-life father; a son’s pain is inevitable. And the pain is there in this very funny book.

“The World’s Largest Man” is officially a memoir, but it reads like two memoirs, one about Key and his father and one about Key and his marriage. It might have better as two books, but it still works as one.

A contributing editor at Oxford American Magazine, Key has published nonfiction and humor in The New York Times, Outside, The Best American Travel Writing, Southern Living, Salon, Reader’s Digest, and many more. He teaches at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He and his family live in Savannah, Georgia.

“The World’s Largest Man” won the 2016 Thurber Prize for American Humor. And with good reason. It’s funny and often wildly funny. But then it would have to be, to account for a father like that.

I heard about this book from listening to NPR and since I grew up in Arkansas and lived in Mississippi for about 7 years so I thought I might enjoy this book. Maybe I just don't "get" this guy but I didn't find it funny at all. Seemed to mostly self loathing and and bitching and whining. One of the few books that I just gave up and did not finish.