From standup to television to his popular podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, Maron is a disarmingly honest and intensely smart comic who finds wisdom in the strangest places.

Attempting Normal is Maron’s journey through the wilderness of his own mind, a collection of painfully funny stories about hope and hopelessness, failing, flailing, and finding a way.

Parent-scarred and angst-filled, Maron dreamed of a simple life: a wife, a home, a sitcom to call his own. But instead he woke up one day to find himself fired from his radio job, surrounded by feral cats, and emotionally and financially annihilated by a divorce. He tried to heal his broken heart through minor-league hoarding, shoplifting from Whole Foods, and flying airplanes with his mind, but nothing seemed to work.

Attempting Normal is his story of the winding road from madness and failure to something like normal, the journey of a sympathetic screw-up who’s trying hard to do better without making a bigger mess.