The Jerusalem syndrome - Marc Maron

By the author of Attempting Normal and host of the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, The Jerusalem Syndrome is The Gospel according to Maron: a spiritual memoir of your average hyperintelligent, ultraneurotic, superhip Jewish standup comedian and seeker.


The Jerusalem Syndrome
is a genuine psychological phenomenon that often strikes visitors to the Holy Land_the
delusion that they are suddenly direct vessels for the voice of God.
Marc Maron
seems to have a distinctly American version of the Jerusalem Syndrome, which has
led him on a lifelong quest for religious significance and revelation in the most
unlikely of places.


Maron riffs on Beat phenomena with its sacred texts, established
rituals, and prescribed pilgrimages. He spends some time exploring the dark side
of things, as his obsessions with cocaine (known to Maron as "magic powder"), conspiracy
theories, and famous self-destructive comedians convince him that the gates of hell
open beneath Los Angeles.
As his quest matures, he reveals the religious aspects
of Corporate America, pontificating on the timeless beauty of the Coca-Cola logo
and even taking a trip to the Philip Morris cigarette factory, where the workers
puff their own products with a zealot-like fervor.
The culmination of Maron's Jerusalem
Syndrome comes during his own tour of the Holy Land, where, with Sony camcorder glued
to his eye socket, he comes face-to-face with his own ambiguous relationship to Judaism
and reaches the brink of spiritual revelation_or is it nervous breakdown?

Marc
Maron has considerably adapted and expanded his praised one-man show to craft a genuine
literary memoir.
Whether he's a genuine prophet or a neurotic mess, he'll make you
laugh as you question the meaning of life.

"Marc Maron is blazingly smart, rapid-fire,
and very funny . . . A brilliant and relentless screed." -David Rakoff, author of
Fraud

"Marc Maron is the first crazy person I've ever envied.
In his brainiac-memoir-meets-hilarious-travelogue,
he demonstrates the ability to tell a story with an extraordinary provocative intelligence
that is regrettably shared by few." _ Janeane Garofolo, comedian