David Rakoff

David Rakoff, essayist, journalist and actor, considered himself a New York writer who also happened to be Canadian. Born in Montreal, Rakoff wrote in part about the excesses of life in America, from his own humorous perspective as a neurotic writer with ‘first-world problems’.

Rakoff had a long career as a journalist, regularly contributing to such publications as GQ Magazine, The New York Times magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Salon, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Wired. He was known for his comical autobiographical essays, which are published in three collections: Fraud, Don’t Get Too Comfortable and Half Empty, the latter of which he described as a “defense of pessimism, melancholy, sadness”, and which won him the Thurber Award for American prose humour. He was also a regular contributor to the radio program This American Life.

The return of a cancer that had appeared when he was 22,  and the possibility that his arm and shoulder would have to be amputated, were the subjects of the concluding essay in Mr. Rakoff’s most recent collection, “Half Empty” (2010), a darkly comic paean to negativity. He wrote up until his death at the age of 47.