Moshe Kasher

Today, Moshe Kasher and Random House are proud to announce the forthcoming release of Kasher’s new memoir, Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes, out January 30th, 2024.

After bottoming out, being institutionalized, and getting sober all by the tender age of fifteen, Moshe Kasher found himself asking: “What’s next?” Over the ensuing decades, he discovered the answer: a lot.

There was his time as a boy-king of Alcoholics Anonymous, a kind of pubescent proselytizer for other teens getting and staying sober. He was a rave promoter turned DJ turned sober ecstasy dealer in San Francisco’s techno warehouse party scene of the 1990s. For fifteen years he worked as a psychedelic security guard at Burning Man, fishing hippies out of hidden chambers they’d constructed to try to sneak into the event. As a child of deaf parents, Kasher became deeply immersed in deaf culture and sign language interpretation, translating everything from end-of-life care to horny deaf clients’ attempts to hire sex workers. He reconnects and tries to make peace with his ultra-Hasidic Jewish upbringing after the death of his father before finally settling into the comedy scene where he now makes his living.

Each of these scenes gets a gonzo historiographical rundown before Kasher enters the narrative and tells the story of the lives he has spent careening from one to the next. A razor-sharp, gut-wrenchingly funny, and surprisingly moving tour of some of the most wildly distinct subcultures a person can experience, Subculture Vulture deftly weaves together memoir and propulsive cultural history. It’s a story of finding your people, over and over again, in different settings, and of knowing without a doubt that wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be.

In related news, Kasher’s first memoir, which takes us on his tumultuous journey from birth to age 15, Kasher in the Rye, has – through the power of social media – entered the Amazon/Audible Bestseller list for the first time 11 years after its publication, thanks to fan and Jeopardy host Mayim Bialik’s support via TikTok, where she called it “the best memoir I have ever read.” This led to the sale of over 8k audiobooks in one week alone, and saw his publisher racing to get a paperback reprint out to meet demand. How better to bone up for Kasher’s continued life story than to read about how it all got started. Purchase Kasher in the Rye here.

PRAISE FOR SUBCULTURE VULTURE 

“Moshe’s travels through recovery are laid out beautifully, honestly and effortlessly. I don’t know that I’ve read a more succinct description of the entire experience from soup-to-nuts. With equal parts authority and humility, Subculture Vulture is an elegant and hilarious reminder that none of us really know anything for certain. He is owed a kiss from all who read it.”—Dax Shepard

“Subculture Vulture is an electrifying, hilarious, and surprisingly emotional trip through the worlds that Moshe Kasher has inhabited, including the one we share: the world of electronic dance music. He takes us on a trip through the rave scene of the ’90s and you won’t feel like you ‘had to be there,’ because you’ll feel like you are.”—The Chainsmokers