David Ferrell contributed to two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams at the Los Angeles Times. His dark-comedy baseball novel, Screwball, caught the attention of Universal Pictures, which optioned it for film. Book-of-the-Month Club picked it up too. Now the Long Beach writer has turned his attention to the absurdities of modern life. The result, Insults May Vary: Snarky Humor for the Huddled Masses, landed on 17 November 2025.
Moving from serious journalism to dark comic essays is less of a left turn than it might appear. Anyone who spent years covering the world for a major daily newspaper develops a relationship with the ridiculous. Ferrell has simply made that relationship official. Where his LA Times work demanded accuracy and gravity, Insults May Vary demands neither — and clearly revels in the freedom.
The book collects essays on the texture of contemporary life. Ferrell writes with the sarcasm of someone who has seen enough of the world to find most of it faintly absurd. Office culture gets it. Social media gets it worse. Celebrity culture and the small humiliations of everyday existence both take a turn. Ferrell moves across these subjects with the confidence of a journalist who spent a career observing people behave badly. Now he no longer needs to be polite about it.
The tone sits somewhere between dry wit and outright mockery. Yet these are not gentle observations. Ferrell’s background in dark comedy carries through into the essay form. It shows clearly in Screwball, which played the traditions of baseball writing against deadpan humour. In turn, each piece in Insults May Vary arrives with a specific target and a clear intent to land. The title signals the approach plainly: the humour varies, but the snark holds constant.
In that respect, Insults May Vary belongs to a specific tradition of American essay humour. The kind that uses a light touch on the surface and leaves a mark underneath. Ferrell’s journalism background shapes the method. He observes first, builds a case, then detonates it with a punchline rather than a conclusion. Early readers have responded warmly to that rhythm. The blurbs in the press materials come without attribution — something a publisher would do well to address before the next round of promotion.
Beyond his LA Times tenure, Ferrell has written across subjects from extreme sports to everyday domestic life. He consistently finds the angle that makes familiar territory feel strange and worth a second look. That range shows in Insults May Vary, which moves between subjects without settling into a single groove.
The book comes out in paperback, hardcover and eBook. Ferrell lives in Long Beach, California.
