"Like
Catcher In the Rye on mushrooms. Read this goddamn book. It's a masterpiece. Steven Wright is a genius."
–Bill Burr "Really funny and touching.
Harold is beautifully written. Only Steven Wright could write this, and I love it."
–Conan O'Brien "A strange and wonderful book...There are shades of Vonnegut in Wright, and shades of John Irving's Owen Meany in the precocious Harold."
–Michael Ian Black, The New York Times Book Review "If Kurt Vonnegut and
Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson wrote a literary version of
Harold and the Purple Crayon, they might have concocted an absurdist novel like
Harold. Or maybe,
Harold could only have come from the off-kilter but fertile musings of stand-up legend Steven Wright...His deadpan delivery elevated him to the top of the stand-up world in the 1980s. That same originality and dry humor ricochets throughout his novel."
–Stuart Miller, The Los Angeles Times "
Harold is often funny...as if Donald Barthelme had been assigned to rewrite
The Little Prince. Wright has invented something here: A story about a child that refuses to be childlike, authored by an author who refuses to pretend that there's order to the disorganized mind of a too-smart kid who can't keep on task." –
Mark Athitakis, The Washington Post "Readers enthralled by stand-up comedian Wright's uniquely brainy, topsy-turvy, metaphysical, and epigrammatic humor will revel in Harold's uncanny, sharply funny, and profound ponderings in this sardonic yet tender tale of life's mysteries and the mind's marvels."
–Donna Seaman, Booklist