Everything Is Horrible and Wonderfulrecounts the grieving process with unbearable frankness.
His experiences with addiction had deeply hurt the family long before he passed.
Read on below, and in case you missed it, preview an excerpthere.
Credit: Courtesy of Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Everything Is Horrible and Wonderfulis now availablefor purchase.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You dig deep in this book, and its very personal.
At the time, I just truly needed to get all of that stuff out.
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The only way I could move forward was to write about it.
Particularly, you really explore the effects of addiction on a family.
What was it like to unpeel that?That was really tied into it at the time for me.
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I talk in the book about the manic investigative phase.
Theres this detective thing that took over.
I needed to give a shot to make sense of this senseless tragedy.
The addiction rollercoaster that we were on was so tied into it.
That was its own emotional grieving process.
Its a different kind of a feeling, but it lives in the same place.
How would you describe Harris comic legacy?Oh, hes the genius.
I think it was Sarah Silverman who said he was the funniest boy in the world.
He was the comedian that all of the comedians that everyone loved went to for punch-ups.
He just was revered and respected by so many people for his talent.
When you go back and read through even his Twitter, no other brain worked like his brain.
He saw the world in this completely unique way and was able to spin anything into a joke.
Even when you see the emails he sent me from rehab, theyre all funny.
He never stopped being funny.
He was an asshole at times, but he never stopped being funny.
She got right on it.
Shes booking an entire show; theyre doing a big comedy show at UCB for him next week.
Thats the kind of pull that he had.
Justifiably so I think hes the funniest guy that ever lived.
Im on that train.
It wasnt like, Oh my God, this is so crazy!
It was like, these are his people.
The 48 hours after we found out that Harris died, it was horrific.
It was this moment of relief where we could just stop crying for 10 minutes.
Its comforting to read about how special he was to these people.
My moms talked about this a lot.
She does a lot of outreach now about addiction.
Its great that hes still in their minds and in their thoughts.
He hasnt been forgotten.
My birthday coincides with Harris death day: He died yesterday three years ago.
on my Facebook timeline, because thats what youre supposed to do.
The dissonance of that was sickening to me.
Everyone on in the internet was in it with me; we were all grieving Harris.
And then they moved on, because thats what happens with social media.
And they moved on pretty quickly, because thats what also happens with social media.
That was like a second bomb dropped on me.
Like, Not only is he dead now, but now none of you care anymore?
Im still totally crippled over here.
[Laughs] Everybody moved on!
Then there are the hashtags of Harris Wittels the trending topic part of it.
Its not trending for the people who are experiencing it; its just where we are forever.
Never going to be a trending topic.
This is how we live now, like we have an arm cut off.
So yeah, it was a really difficult layer for me to navigate and deal with.
So that was a really positive experience.
And frankly, my agent found me through an essay on Medium.
I didnt even look for it, I didnt even try.
Now that youve written the book, youre almost reliving it again by promoting it and discussing it.
I was really, really angry and sad.
I was purely guided by emotion.
I have changed completely.
My life has changed completely since Harris passed away; Im a completely different human being in every way.
This is my recipe for changing your life.
I was really scared to take action before Harris passed away, like everybody is.
Im just going to write this book.
I dont care what happens.
Its a freeing positive existentialism.
Processing all of that freed me to move forward.
Im a pessimist at heart.
This resilience of the human spirit is true.
People do live through terrible things and then come out stronger on the other side.
