A book he ‘couldn’t not write’

There’s a moment in John Hodgman’s new book, “Vacationland,” when we find the author and comedian at his cabin in the great disappearing emptiness that is the woods of Maine, impaled on a hook on a barn door.

For anyone who’s ever sustained a serious injury — when you realize that you’re going to need immediate medical attention — there’s one thing you understand about such an instance: It’s dead serious.

And yet, in the hands of our charming narrator, you can’t help but smile and shake your head when the trip to the nearest emergency room — a halfhour ride through dark, snowy roads — is just a stop on a supermarket run to pick up gin and milk. Priorities, right? Such are the pleasures of reading “Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches,” a book which, as the title suggests, is a collection of true stories that Hodgman calls “whiteprivilege mortality comedy.” Fans might prefer to call it a peek under the robes of the man we know best as Judge John Hodgman, from both his podcast and his column in The New York Times Magazine.

Hodgman’s latest book is notable not just because it’s a memoir centered around the angst of a middle-aged white man confronting his own eventual death. It’s also in contrast to his three books of fake facts — the endlessly delightful “The Areas of My Expertise,” which features 700 made-up hobo names, “More Information Than You Require” and “That Is All” — because this one is funny and completely true.

What “Vacationland” shares with Hodgman’s first three books is that, just as he wrote those for a potentially tiny audience of geeky people who just really enjoy gags about hooks for hands and hobo culture (guilty as charged), Hodgman told me this memoir was “a book that I couldn’t not write.”

Readers get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — and are better for it.

You think it’d be cool to own a vacation home? Well, there’s no garbage collection in rural western Massachusetts, and going to the nearest dump is, shall we say, fraught on a variety of physical, psychic and emotional levels.

The joys of frolicking in the waters of the local swimming hole are tinged with menace, as is the act of attempting to use a bathroom in a Maine candy store (believe me, after reading this book you will never want to visit the state of Maine, which is just as well, since Hodgman is pretty explicit about not wanting to see you there).

But for all the crabby-oldman vibe Hodgman tries to project, “Vacationland” is sweet, introspective, and a little sad in the way that any book about the loss of youth and the march toward certain death inevitably is.

Mostly, however, it’s hilarious. Without a doubt, it’s a remarkable read in print but a not-to-be-missed listen as an audiobook, which is read by the author in his inimitable selfdeprecating yet superior voice (that’s an only child for you — take it from someone who knows).

“’Vacationland’ makes a wonderful gift for your weird, middle-aged dad,” Hodgman told me. But I can assure you weird middle-aged moms will love it, too.