The Bassoon King

Rainn Wilson’s memoir about growing up geeky and finally finding his place in comedy, faith, and life. For nine seasons Rainn Wilson played Dwight Schrute, everyone's favorite work nemesis and beet farmer. Viewers of The Office fell in love with the character and grew to love the actor who played him even more. Rainn founded a website and media company, SoulPancake, that eventually became a bestselling book of the same name. He also started a hilarious Twitter feed (sample tweet: “I'm not on Facebook” is the new “I don't even own a TV”) that now has more than four million followers. Now, he's ready to tell his own story and explain how he came up with his incredibly unique sense of humor and perspective on life. He explains how he grew up “bone-numbingly nerdy before there was even a modicum of cool attached to the word.” The Bassoon King chronicles his journey from nerd to drama geek (“the highest rung on the vast, pimply ladder of high school losers”), his years of mild debauchery and struggles as a young actor in New York, his many adventures and insights about The Office, and finally, Wilson's achievement of success and satisfaction, both in his career and spiritually, reconnecting with the artistic and creative values of the Bahá’í faith he grew up in.

For nine seasons Rainn Wilson played Dwight Schrute in the The Office (U.S.). Viewers fell in love with the character and grew to love the actor who played him even more. In The Bassoon King, he tells his own story and explains how he came up with his incredibly unique sense of humor and perspective on life. The book chronicles his journey from super-nerddom to drama, his years of mild debauchery and struggles as a young actor in New York, his many adventures, and insights about The Office which fans of both Wilson and the show will love.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I had the biggest head of any baby that was ever born. My name is Rainn, and my parents were odd. They changed their names to Shay in 1965. My mom was raised on a farm in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, and spent a year living with chickens. #2 My father, Robert George Wilson, had a miserable childhood. His father, Chester Wilson, was an alcoholic who stole his lightning rod company, Wilcor Grounding Systems, from his brother and made millions off of it while his brother moved back to Minnesota and had to run Wilson Brothers Auto Parts in Thief River Falls. #3 My father wanted to call me Rainer, but there was a mountain that hovered over the skyline of Seattle called Mount Rainier. I imagine weird chicken-coop Mommy and slot-machine Daddy having a conversation about my name on the deck of their rainy houseboat on Lake Union in Seattle. #4 The city of Seattle was a mossy, shambly town in the 1970s, famous only for the film It Happened at the World’s Fair with Elvis Presley as a crop-dusting pilot dancing under the Space Needle with a little Chinese girl.

The early chapters deal with the origins and historical development of the bassoon, with a wealth of detail, illustrations, and fingering charts. The work of Almenräder, the Heckels, Adler, Jancourt, and Triebert is emphasised for their part in the progress made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with improvements in keywork and design. Full account is taken, too, of how the bassoon has been employed by various composers from 1600 until the present day. The sections on acoustics, materials, and reeds will enable the student to grasp the peculiar tone-quality and characteristics of the instrument; while the final chapters discuss technique and capabilities, with notes on celebrated players. --Jacket.