Good to the Last Drop
Garry Cooper
ISBN 978-1-963908-48-0 378 pages $25.00
Good to the Last Drop is a vivid, unflinchingly honest story of one man’s struggle to stay awake in his life, and how missteps and losses helped him get closer to figuring out why—and how—he wanted to be in the world. By turns gritty, lyrical and quietly hilarious, Cooper’s memoir has inspired me to take stock of how I spend my own precious, fleeting days, and consider how to make my time on earth more meaningful.
Marian Sandmaier,
author of Original Kin:
The Search for Connection Among Adult Sisters and Brothers
It is rare to find essays that are wise, deep, and entertaining. Garry Cooper delivers these attributes and more in his meditations and narratives on the nature of love, loss, self-repair, mortality, and what we owe to one another. His essays are relatable but not simple. Unusually, he is also able to bring to life his delight in cities as well as in the indifferent silence of nature. By the end of the book, you will feel that you know him well, and know yourself better.
S.L. Wisenberg
author of The Adventures of Cancer Bitch
Most memoirs are simply that: an individual’s recollection of portions of their lives that they hope are interesting enough to share with others. But when an experienced psychotherapist, backpacker, and hitchhiker writes his memoir, he offers more than his own experiences and dramas. From the opening scene of a harrowing lost-in-the-wilderness-and-making-stupid-mistakes tale to a cancer diagnosis to simply facing the knowledge that you have fewer years ahead of you than behind, themes of mortality echo throughout Good to the Last Drop. Recognizing that “We have a unique challenge: figuring out how to live through our final days,” Cooper spins his tales and reflections with humor and insights gained over decades of fatherhood, therapy and, yes, his fair share of mistakes, seeking experiences in nature, hitchhiking, and sensory deprivation tanks. He shows some of the techniques he’s used to recover (often slowly) from break-ups and grief (“Aches and pains reminded me in a good way that I was alive—signs of repair going on, not the harbingers of worse things to come. I remembered when optimism was a gateway to the future, not a survival strategy for getting through the present.”) He asks, If you die tomorrow more than once. As we’re all facing death through climate change, aging, and accidents he counsels, “Ultimately the most important thing is how we will go through our end times.” Highly recommended for anyone seeking to approach their own times with grace, good humor, and deliberation.
Anara Guard,
author of Like a Complete Unknown and Kansas, Reimagined
Garry Cooper, a writer and psychotherapist in Chicago and Oak Park, IL and a Professor at Prescott College, teaches Masters candidates in Counseling how to do effective therapy by connecting with the people who come into therapy rather than by over-focusing on the problems that brought them in. Over the years he has discovered that the secret to living a fuller life is to keep discovering ourselves and others and to figure what living well really means. To journey and avoid tourist traps, to consider when to leave the Interstate and wander byroads. Unplanned turns, sometimes chosen purposely and sometimes unconsciously, are usually the important parts of the journey. Otherwise, the map becomes a trap.
The same’s true for writing. As both a reader and a writer, Cooper finds that if he knows where he wants a piece of writing to go when starting out, he ends up doing a paint-by-numbers template and then trying to gussy it up with fancy matting and a frame. Even Good to the Last Drop, his ex post facto life map, is a more malleable than a fixed truth. Whether we look backward or forward, sometimes we impose meaning at the cost of continuing exploration and growth. Just like our knowledge of our own mortality, in these times of climate change, we’re struggling to accept that our Anthropogenic road is likely to end. The most important journey we have left lies in figuring out how, and why, to live in the meantime.
