Dave Hill Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

By Dave Hill

Memoir/Essays/Humor

Blue Rider Press (Penguin)

ISBN-13: 9780399166754

288 Pages

$27.00

When — not if — you read Dave Hill’s new collection of essays, Dave Hill Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, be ready to get into your own head as well as Dave’s.

I hope that doesn’t sound ominous.  The book is loaded with wild humor that allegedly prompted Dick Cavett’s neighbors to tell him to stop laughing so loudly.

I interpreted Dick Cavett’s author blurb as a cautionary tale, and limited my reading to hours when the neighbors were awake.  Still, the man next door turned up the volume on his music to try to balance things out.  Thank God I wasn’t reading at 2 a.m.

Dave Hill Doesn’t Live Here Anymore will be understood differently by each reader.  It can be read on practically every level, and most people should agree it’s difficult to put down.

Dave Hill’s humor leans toward existential absurdism, and he uses humor to share insight into things which aren’t really funny on their own.  That’s a gift, and he can make us laugh when we don’t want to get caught laughing.

Maybe I learned a little bit about Dave, his family, New York City and Northeastern Ohio by reading this book, and maybe I didn’t.  They’re fascinating stories, though, and I suspect most of us will be able to relate one way or another.  Maybe the book’s most universal angle is we all have to move forward eventually.  That, and the fact that we all get soaked in someone else’s urine sooner or later.

If you’re unfamiliar with Dave’s writing, here’s a sample.  He wrote the script for this video, posted on his official YouTube account (strong language, but we can handle it, can’t we?):