How Are You Feeling?

A shocking, ethically dubious, disastrously funny, illustrated self-help book about why human beings behave in such peculiar, delightful, and unpleasant ways.

The human brain can be a bizarre and disturbing instrument. Thankfully, David Shrigley is prepared to help you with the most vexing aspects of your psyche: alcoholism (“it is terrific fun, of course, but there are problems with it”); mental illness (“unlike a hairdryer, when a brain goes wrong ‘you cannot just throw it in the river and get another one’ ”); and neurology (“We all have internal wiring. Sometimes this wiring comes loose. . . . Check for loose wires and re-fasten them with glue.”).

How Are You Feeling? takes readers on a journey between the ears, explaining how the brain decides what is right and wrong and why some people are very charming and others behave like monkeys. Dave Eggers has called Shrigley “probably the funniest gallery-type artist who ever lived.” His side-splitting illustrated handbook questions the stability of self, the meaning of help, and whether that self was ever worth helping.