Glory Days: Stories

by Simon Rich

From the Thurber Prize–winning author of New Teeth, hailed as “a triumph of sustained humor” (Sarah Lyall, New York Times Book Review), comes a hilarious and powerful collection of short stories chronicling the plight of aging millennials. ​
Super Mario turns forty and is forced to “take-a stock” of his life and how “messed up it’s-a become.”

Goliath struggles to control the media narrative in the lead-up to his death match against David, a small, beloved child.

And a long-discarded participation trophy reminisces about the glorious field day in 1993, when he wound up in the arms of a jubilant, asthmatic Simon Rich. 

High-stakes and heartfelt, Glory Days mourns the death of youthful innocence and hails the beginning of something approximating wisdom.

Genres: Short Stories, Humor, Fiction, Audiobook, Comedy, Essays, Adult

219 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 23, 2024

About the author

Simon Rich (born 1984) is an American humorist whose first book, Ant Farm and Other Desperate Situations, was published by Random House in April 2007.

Rich is an alumnus of The Dalton School and a former president of The Harvard Lampoon, and the son of The New York Times editorialist Frank Rich. He received a two book contract from Random House prior to his graduation from Harvard University in 2007.

His first book, Ant Farm and Other Desperate Situations, has been described as a collection of "giddy what-if scenarios". Excerpts of the book were printed in The New Yorker's "Shouts and Murmurs" column. His second book, Free Range Chickens, was published in 2008. His first novel, Elliot Allagash was released in May of 2010, followed by What in God’s Name and most recently, The Last Girlfriend on Earth, a collection of short stories about love.

He is currently a writer for Saturday Night Live.

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Rich, and there’s some vintage Rich lurking in here. But way too saccharine and predictable for me. Maybe if I had a kid but also maybe not.

[Jason Furman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another hilarious, insightful, and--less commonly for Simon Rich--moving and even sentimental set of short stories. They follow his almost trademarked formula of with many stories from the perspective of super villains, the tooth fairy, God, Goliath and other canonical perspectives but all with a distinctively human set of preoccupations and concerns. The them of this book was millennials who were just starting to cope with children and starting to feel middle aged. Other stories create some other mechanism for distance, like a post apocalyptic family talking about the before times or a purported legal contract between a daughter and her family governing her visit home for Thanksgiving. All of this gives an almost anthropological perspective on humans, seeing their foibles from a distance.

I expect I will be re-reading many of these, just like I have Rich's previous collections, because of their combination of humor, originality, but also because they say something deeper. Plus they're mostly pretty short, as is the entire collection.

[Sydney Kurnit · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of silly, funny short stories that were perfectly narrated by John Mulaney. His cadence and comedic timing is always everything.

[Books Amongst Friends · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall: 4/5
Narration: 5/5 John Mulaney was the perfect choice.

I love short story collections and went into this blind. What an unexpected delight. A humorous and melancholic reconciliation with aging and the loss of our younger, naive selves.

Turning 32 this year is crazy. I know I’m not old, but I’m also not that carefree kid anymore either. And so many of these stories hit that exact feeling. I miss the version of me that lived in the golden days of the 99s and 2000s—the person who saw Step Up in theaters before ever knowing about back pain, taxes, and the absolute disaster that is the cost of living. This book captures that—the reckoning with where we’ve been and where we are now.

I know people are going to laugh at the first two stories. If you grew up playing every Mario game, you have to wonder—did Mario ever actually have a home? And for anyone who’s ever joked about what we’ll tell our future kids about today’s world, Millennial Fable hits in a way that’s both hilarious and kind of sad.

I’ve seen people say the humor is cheap, the jokes don’t always land, or that it’s just dad-joke territory. And honestly? I think that’s the point. The narration by John Mulaney? 10/10. It adds to that feeling of aging—the way our humor shifts, the way we laugh at things we shouldn’t, the way nostalgia sneaks up on us.

Some readers might find this book heavier than intended. Yes, it’s lighthearted and insightful, but there’s definitely a sadness woven in. Some people will resonate with it deeply, others might find it hits too close to home.

Story Ratings:
* History Report: 4.5/5 | Mario: 5/5
* Millennial Fable: 3.5/5 | The City Speaks: 5/5
* Participation Trophy: 4/5 | Time: 3/5
* Time Travel Family Counseling Inc.: 4/5
* Punishment: 3.5/5 | Riding The Rails: 4.5/5
* Tooth Fairy: 3.5/5 | The Mission: 5/5
* The Emperor’s New Clothes: 2/5 | Minutes: 4/5
* Dystopia: 4/5 | Kerosene: 2.5/5
* We’re Not So Different, You And I: 4.5/5
* Goliath: 5/5 | Thanksgiving Rider: 3/5
* Hey Millennials: 2.5/5

Quotes:
- “They needed to find some other place to eat, but neither of them had Internet access, so their only option was to physically search for food, by walking around and looking in random directions —like, truly the same process used by animals”
- “The truth is that sending your parents to the past is unlikely to make them see the errors of their ways”
- “ someday, I’ll-a run out of continues, but in the meantime, I’ve got plenty of lives left.”
- “ I fear old people more: because once they stop trying to be young, that’s when they can really do some damage”
- “ and it occurred to you that maybe all this time, instead of ignoring life, or scavenging it for material, you should have… What’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah. Participated.”

[Allyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

If John Mulaney is narrating an audiobook, I am simply going to listen to it

[Kait McCaffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25. This book was so absurd, I loved it.

[Dan Gutenberg]

History Report, The City Speaks, and Goliath were more or less perfect.

I had already read Millennial Fable, Participation Trophy, and We’re Not So Different, You and I in The New Yorker, but I enjoyed rereading them today in one sitting.

As usual, I found the stories on love and self-deprecation more accessible than the millennial/parenting woes à la McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

[lexiskat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know what I was expecting when I downloaded this book. It was definitely intriguing. I enjoyed the Mario story the best. Overall this book was funny asf!

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

An all-too-relatable series of humorous short stories about being past your prime and, frequently, about the reckoning between the duties of parenthood and personal desires.

Funny stories include:
-A retelling of David and Goliath, where Goliath throws his fight with David (and signed an NDA to never admit it) in order to pay for the private school his daughter wants to attend.
- A funny "hobo" on a train who gives a protagonist terrible advice in order to shirk the management of his rowdy kids.
- A time travel therapy service that lets you take your parents back in time to prove to them that they traumatized you.
- The anthropomorphic soliloquy of a Participation Trophy from the early 90's, which still has a valuable lesson to bestow...
- And many more amusing and creative vignettes.

[Keely · Rating 4 out of 5]

The hilarious short stories in Glory Days might be better described as modern-day fables coming from an explicitly Millennial-generation perspective. Using wildly inventive forms ranging from a futuristic history report, to murderous co-op meeting notes, Rich explores topics of aging, marriage, parenthood, friendship, AI fears, and more. His characters include Super Mario, a super-villain named Death Skull, a peon Tooth Fairy, and God, among others.

This was a book club read for me--not something I would've discovered on my own--but I ended up really enjoying it. So much cleverness, creativity, and humor throughout the collection. It's a quick read, clocking in at just under 200 pages. I read it in print, but a book club friend said it was especially fun on audiobook, read by John Mulaney.

[Grace Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this book six stars, I would tell you it’s seven. I smiled the whole time. If you don’t love Simon Rich, it’s not that we can’t be friends it’s just that I won’t really trust your opinions on anything.

[Madelyn Brunvand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just as I’d hoped, this read like a bunch of SNL sketches (makes sense given his background) and I thoroughly enjoyed it

[Chada Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of seriously funny short stories, made even funnier by John Mulaney's narration.

[Brad Wojak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly fun collection of stories. Couple of really great ones, and a few less fun, but still okay.

[Mark Fajet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a bit disappointed in it. I’ve loved all his other books (except that one young adult novel which was a strange outlier), but I just didn’t laugh as much with this one. I still laughed and enjoyed it, but just not as much. His other books had me giggling at basically every page. This one got a giggle every other story at best. Maybe I would’ve liked it more if I could relate to the stories of being a parent or being older in general, but that’s just not who I am right now. Maybe I should just reread The Last Girlfriend on Earth.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elder Millennials and young Gen Xers, this book is for us. It's a clever, inventive, and darkly funny set of short stories that really captures what it means to be a middle-aged adult born in the late 70s-80s.

[Alex Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clever collection of funny short stories. I actually listened to the audiobook which was read by famous humoredian John Mulaney, so that’s a bonus

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first Simon Rich book and I’m looking forward to reading more of his short stories. I laughed out loud several times while listening to this and the narration by John Mulaney was an added bonus - even his reading of the end legal credits was pretty funny.

[Macy Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, sweet, relatable. Audiobook read by John Mulaney had us laughing out loud all day

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hit and miss, as most short story collections are. But worth checking out the audiobook just to hear John Mulaney do a pretty good Super Mario impression for 20 minutes.

[Greg Nussbaum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure how funny this would've been had it not but for John Mulaney reading it. But with him reading it, the funny parts were pretty funny.

[Paul Spence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humorist Calvin Trillin once defined humour by saying it’s undefinable: “It’s what makes the lady in the second row laugh.” You can’t debate it, he said. You can’t tell her, “This joke worked yesterday; you should be laughing.”

No matter how you describe it, the ability to make that lady laugh is rare. But Simon Rich has it, and his latest, “Glory Days,” is not only extremely and creatively funny but also a testament to what can happen when a writer sets forth without Waze connected to his word processor.

Rich’s stories don’t go straight to the yucks. They take unexpected turns, as though Simon knows the obvious route has been travelled before.

Consider that his take on the battle between David and Goliath takes a twist of — you should pardon the expression — biblical proportions. Turns out we’ve all been fed malarkey. The kid didn’t beat the giant. Goliath threw the match because he needed cash to send his daughter to private school.

Or “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The king wasn’t angry with the boy who revealed his hypocrisy. On the contrary, he found being naked liberating. “My whole life I’ve been ruled by fear... From now on all that ends. Thanks to you, I’m going to have a life of openness and truth.”

I must admit I was the unlaughing lady in the second row for one story, about Super Mario. It probably was funny but, since I stopped playing video games after my son started beating me at Space Invaders, I had no frame of reference.

That exception aside, what struck me is that Rich’s stories are not only funny, but also thoughtful and revelatory. One is narrated by a participation trophy a young Rich won after a relay race — even though he ran the wrong way. He treasured it, until his older brother denigrated the award, saying it was cheap, made in China and everyone got one.

Ironically, that spurred Rich’s success; he pursued real awards to the detriment of all else, including his family. He had no time for his children when they came into his office, quickly escorting them out. Until the day when they stopped coming and he “felt a sharp pang in [his] chest, like someone discovering, in the middle of a relay race, that they’d been running in the wrong direction.”

I marvelled at Rich’s ability to juxtapose a really off-the-wall idea with a tender-hearted ending that made me think of those “Space Invaders” days. I felt it marked a new level of maturity in his writing.

So I went back and re-read one of his earlier books, “Hits and Misses.” I figured I could make some comparisons that would make me seem intelligent and perhaps earn me a Reviewer’s Trophy.

But there were no comparisons to be made. He’s always been this good.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perfect read for millennials who want to laugh and/or cry about getting older. This is definitely my favourite collection of Simon Rich stories to date, and it's only partially because John Mulaney narrates the shit out of this on audio.

Super Mario taking stock of his life at 40 was extremely funny and representative of the larger collection. I love that Rich committed to the Mario accent for the entire story. One passage I particularly enjoyed:

...But I’ve also been starting to think that maybe getting older’s not all bad. Like, for example, this is a little embarrassing to admit, but my whole life I’ve-a struggled with body stuff, like things about my weight and how I look-a naked. It’s-a why I wear the overalls even when it makes no sense for what I’m doing. But now that I’m-a in my forties I don’t really think about my body anymore, and when I do it’s-a to focus on the parts that I’m-a proud of, like my thick mustache and my big strong ass. And, honestly, I can’t tell you how liberating it is just to allow myself to feel-a sexy. Like, why can’t a short fat guy be sexy? I feel-a sexy, and I’m not afraid to say I feel-a sexy. Like, hey, it’s-a me, Mario, and I’ve got a big, strong, super-hairy ass and I’m-a sexy. Deal-a with it.

I imagine this whole collection would hit even harder if I were married with kids, because there are a lot of stories about fatherhood, making peace with your aging parents seemingly incapable of change, and trying to reinvent yourself at midlife. Rich has always been a genius at generating comedic premises, but fatherhood, and a stint at Pixar (he wrote for Inside Out, I believe) has enriched his storytelling and imbued his work with heart. He might have tipped a little too far into sentimentality, but he's still hilarious.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw Simon Rich promoting this book on Late Night with Seth Meyers a couple months ago and it sounded hilarious. The essay they talked about was Mario (“it’s-a me! Mario”) - now 40 - and his aging woes. The synopsis describes it as “Glory Days mourns the death of youthful innocence and hails the beginning of something approximating wisdom.” There are poignant stories as well as absurd and silly, yet all tend to have a wistful theme behind them.

Overall it’s a great concept and I certainly enjoyed some more than others. I really liked “The City Speaks” (spoken from the POV of NYC) and “Participation Trophy”. “Mario” and “Minutes” also gave me a good chuckle. Part humour, part reflective and part melancholic - it reminded me of the vibes of Christopher Moore at times.

[Tiff Leavitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely adore Simon Rich and his short stories. The way he creates full worlds in such a short period of time is absolutely mild boggling to think about. I find myself gobbling up his books with in a few days and Glory Days was no exception. Each story was so tender, heart warming, funny, and relatable. The only reason it wasn’t 5 stars for me was that it wasn’t as laugh out loud funny as his last release, New Teeth which is absolutely some of the funniest writing I have ever read. All in all, super enjoyable, warm hug of a read.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot emphasize enough how highly I recommend the audiobook read by John Mulaney. I’m certain this collection still would have been hilarious had I read it in my own voice, but Mulaney made every moment sing: the tone, the timing, the character voices — it’s like it was written for him to perform.

This was my first foray into Simon Rich, and I’m eager to read more! These stories were not only funny and playful in their form, but also genuinely life-affirming and beautiful. That’s some of my favorite kind of story-telling.

[Mak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elske Rich, og det er noen bangers inni her, men er litt mindre lols og meir følelsar enn før. Som med alle gode ting har eg blitt for godt vant, og forventer noko som kanskje ikkje er mulig å få lengre (fyste gongen eg leste hits n misses). Er kanskje 4/5 for folk med barn, antar mykje her treffer meir då & at det blir meir latter.

Hits: Digga heile del 3, særlig Dystopia og Kerosene knakk meg. Likte også Mario, Riding the rails og The Mission.

[Anna-Giselle · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Teeth is still my favourite collection of Simon Rich's stories, personally nothing will top his story on co-parenting pirates, but it was nice to read his new stuff outside of the New Yorker. "Minutes" was my favourite short story from the new collection, perfect and chaotic format. If you can, I'd recommend listening to the audio book version, where John Mulaney does a Mario impression for 26 minutes straight.

[Marisa Alger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simon Rich is my emotional support author. If I’m ever struggling (as I am now in the first week of November in the year 2024), I can escape to Rich’s signature absurd short stories that are equal parts laugh-out-loud silly, insightful, tender and somehow always hopeful about humanity. I’d already read History Report in The New Yorker, and I’m reminded to forward it to all of my favorite people; it’s an all-time great.

The audio version of this book is apparently just as hilarious, as it’s narrated by John Mulaney. I will definitely listen to it at some point. If you’re an elder millennial, all of Simon Rich’s books are for you, this one especially.

[Sean Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The latest book from my favorite author. I spent most of my birthday reading this in a small town in the Colombia countryside in a hammock. Can't ask for much more than that.