A lost young man’s sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreakingattempt at navigating adulthood, online culture, and friendship in this coming-of-age story for our times.

Waylon Gans did not mean to start a riot on the university campus. He was only there because he wanted to be in the audience while one of his heroes, Josh Modley, recorded a live podcast.

The problem, as Waylon sees it, is that he is trash: he lives in Walleye, a town everyone wants to leave; his parents are losing their home due to a bad cryptocurrency investment; his job at the used bookstore is a dead-end; Derby, the love of his life, cannot even look at him; and he’s worried he’s falling back under podcaster Josh Modley’s influence and the comfort of blaming everything on the “feminists, globalists, and communists.” Half-heartedly pursuing an associate degree, Waylon is enrolled in Philosophy 118: Introduction to Stoicism. He becomes entranced by these teachings. 

In a voice that is by turns comic and unusually wise, What Gentlemen Do is an unvarnished look at a young man wrestling with the consequences of his actions, the shakiness of his beliefs, and jeopardizing important relationships. Waylon tries to dismantle his own perception of truth and to build something meaningful in the process.