New Today: Care to Make Love in that Gross Little Space Between Cars? Amy Sedaris, Judd Apatow, et al

Three months into the year and I’m already fairly certain that Care to Make Love in that Gross Little Space Between Cars? (Vintage) will be among my picks for best of the year. And why? Because it’s aberrant. Off-the-wall. Well-drawn. And very, very funny.

Since 2005, Amy Sedaris has had a column in The Believer magazine called “Sedaratives.” It’s silly -- though sometimes thoughtful -- stuff, as an advice column penned by Amy Sedaris (and guest hosts) must be.

Care to Make Love in that Gross Little Space Between Cars? follows up 2010’s You’re A Horrible Person But I Like You, another compendium with the same pedigree. Though I didn’t get to taste that one, Details called it “An apt hipster bathroom book,” which is a close enough description to the new book that you get the idea they’re closely related, especially after you read Judd Apatow’s introduction:

Dear Judd Apatow:
We’re thinking about publishing a sequel to You’re A Horrible Person But I Like You. It’d be more or less the same thing, except with mostly different people, and different questions. Are we being redundant?

And Apatow responds:

Dear The Believer:
I really don’t know how to answer that question. There is a larger issue, which is: Why am I writing the intro to this book at all?

There’s more, but Apatow’s opening sets the tone, and the contributors? They seal the deal. Kristen Schall, Louis C.K., Zach Galifanaki, Dave Eggers, Amy Sedaris, Cintra Wilson, Sam Lipsyte and on and on and on. It’s the sort of super hip cast of celebrities that should make your eyes roll but instead make you laugh out loud. It’s a terrific -- though mostly pointless -- book. I couldn’t get enough. ◊