Overqualified [Paperback]

Joey Comeau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2009

Cover letters are all the same. They're useless. You write the same lies over and over again, listing the store-bought parts of yourself that you respect the least. God knows how they tell anyone apart, but this is how it's done.

And then one day a car comes out of nowhere, and suddenly everything changes and you don't know if he'll ever wake up. You get out of bed in the morning, and when you sit down to write another paint-by-numbers cover letter, something entirely different comes out.

You start threatening instead of begging. You tell impolite jokes. You talk about your childhood and your sexual fantasies. You sign your real name and you put yourself honestly into letter after letter and there is no way you are ever going to get this job. Not with a letter like this.

And you send it anyway.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There have been spoof letter-writing books in the past, like The Lazlo Letters by Don Novello (a.k.a. Father Guido Sarducci) and several that followed. While [this] protagonist in is just as unhinged as his predecessors, he's significantly less giddy. A real story unfolds in these pages, about a departed brother and the sibling left behind. It's sad and fragmented and, in places, funny. This slender epistolary novel is charming."  —Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy online

"Unlike anything you've ever read. Each of Joey Comeau’s letters comments, sometimes subtley, sometimes not, on the emptiness of the system . . . while it simultaneously reveals the humor, beauty, and pain that is all else in life."  —About.com

"A sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-crushingly sad romp through a man’s swelling nihilism and disenchantment.  —MonstersAndCritics.com

"A collection of wry, clever and demoniacal job-application letters, teeming with knife-edged malice and stomach-tearing hilarity . . . Successfully deludes the fear of the faceless corporate entity by empowering the faceless applicant."   —Globe and Mail

"Joey Comeau's collection of real cover letters, Overqualified, is pretty much sui generis. Not to mention sweetly written, bitter and bitterly funny . . . One of the season's most remarkable books."  —Macleans.ca

"Overqualified's cover letters are like a slap in the face, but the slap is hilarious, and you can't stop laughing, and as soon as it's over you want to tell all your friends about the slap. You know the kind?"  —Ryan North, Dinosaur Comics

"Joey Comeau's Overqualified is Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret as chewed up and spit out by J. G. Ballard. . . . A book whose melancholy is leavened by a surprising hilarity."  —Paul Di Filippo, author, The Steampunk Triology and Cosmocopia

"Joey Comeau has made the unreadable not just readable, but beguiling in its digressions and personal revelations."  —Eye Magazine

About the Author

Joey Comeau is the author of Lockpick Pornography and Too Late to Say I'm Sorry, as well as the popular web comic A Softer World. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: ECW Press; 1st edition (April 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1550228587
• ISBN-13: 978-1550228588
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joey Comeau (born September 26, 1980) is a Canadian writer. He is best known for writing the text of the webcomic A Softer World.

Comeau currently resides in Toronto, Ontario. He has a degree in linguistics.

- from Wikipedia.

(photo by Bryanna Reilly)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Right before I purchased this book Joey Comeau stared at me intensely for 10 seconds., March 25, 2009

By 

JFoz - See all my reviews

This review is from: Overqualified (Paperback)

It was unrelated to the purchase, somebody was taking a picture of him, and he did not want to look at the camera I think. I stared back, not wanting to be the one to break eye contact. Like Joey had thrown out some unspoken dare and I didn't want to disappoint him. Halfway through he gave me a little wave, as if to say it would be all right, that it was almost over.

Overqualified is a lot like that. Each letter is funny and amazingly written, but it shows you a glimpse of something darker. It chokes you up a bit. It makes you want to call up your brother and see how he's doing. Makes you want to put the book down, but it also makes you want to keep reading, so as not to disappoint Joey.

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful., March 23, 2009

By 

Arienette (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Overqualified (Paperback)

And by beautiful, I mean Joey Comeau. Overqualified is such a wonderful, insightful, heartbreaking, hilarious, and familiar book that with every page I read, even everytime I wander past it while it sits gloriously on my nightstand, I have an incredible urge to just take my pants off. Sometimes I can't resist. When I say sometimes, I mean everytime. Right now, I know you may be thinking I'm a crazy person and that this book is only for crazy people or for people whose aspirations are to someday be crazy, but my friend, you are so very wrong. Once you read Overqualified, you will know. You will be pantsless and you will also know what I mean. Buy it. Don't ask, just do it.

39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book to your boyfriend and he will never leave you., March 24, 2009

By 

Rachel Popham "liberating the piano" (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Overqualified (Paperback)

A dear friend of mine once told me that there are only four possible endings to a fight that indicate a successful argument:

1. The feeling that you won't need to have the same fight again in the near future
2. Makeouts or their equivalent had
3. Objects thrown and shattered, preferably against other shattering objects
4. Sudden absurd laughter

Joey Comeau's book has only questionable success at best with regard to #1, but blows the other three away so thoroughly that I have to admit Overqualified is the most successful fight I've ever read.