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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
My one sentence review: Some readers will enjoy this coming of age memoir, but it missed the mark for me - I found the pacing a bit odd (I know Wolff mentions the passing of time in his writing but it felt like it mostly took place during the course of 1 year, or maybe 10 years... something about it seemed off to me) and I couldn't understand Wolff's motivations for a lot of things he did as a kid (i.e. Why does he lie to his mother on the regular? Why doesn't he apologize to the neighbors for stealing gasoline?), so it mostly left me thinking....why did I read this? why did he write this? what was the point?
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
fast-paced
I saw the film based on this book first and expected to like the book even more. I just finished reading the book and thought the film was better. I think the animosity, richness, youthful guile of the character in the film never really shows up the same way in the book. Yes, there is a character to behold in the book, the author's life is not a show but in the film it is made into an advent, a show and I liked that form more.
The book is written well, thats why I took all of 7 hours to finish it. It is not terribly long or boring that Is why I got through it. I couldn't help but feel extremely sorry for the central character and all the stuff his mother went through with him. The book is very aptly titled.
I do recommend reading but I wouldn't knight this as one of the best memoirs ever. It had its moments but alas, it is too lonely and insignificant in itself. I found it a touch too sad.
The book is written well, thats why I took all of 7 hours to finish it. It is not terribly long or boring that Is why I got through it. I couldn't help but feel extremely sorry for the central character and all the stuff his mother went through with him. The book is very aptly titled.
I do recommend reading but I wouldn't knight this as one of the best memoirs ever. It had its moments but alas, it is too lonely and insignificant in itself. I found it a touch too sad.
I had been meaning to read this memoir for a long time; finally I got my butt in gear and did so. I was not disappointed.
Wolff's story of growing up focuses on the seemingly disparate aspects of his personality: a boy who strives to be an Eagle Scout, but steals money from his newspaper route customers. As he writes, the human heart is a dark forest.
He tells his story plainly. He is like an astute and empathetic observer of his own life. He doesn't make excuses for his behaviors, he doesn't ask for pity or head-shaking at what he survives. He doesn't judge the people in his life. He just tells the story, and there is a lot to be said for that.
Wolff's story of growing up focuses on the seemingly disparate aspects of his personality: a boy who strives to be an Eagle Scout, but steals money from his newspaper route customers. As he writes, the human heart is a dark forest.
He tells his story plainly. He is like an astute and empathetic observer of his own life. He doesn't make excuses for his behaviors, he doesn't ask for pity or head-shaking at what he survives. He doesn't judge the people in his life. He just tells the story, and there is a lot to be said for that.
3.5/5 stars
This book is my summer reading book for one of my English classes. I will say I fully picked this book because it was the shortest. Now that I'm finished, I can say that it was overall, a pretty good book. It discusses the struggles of adolescence and how his live was growing up.
The writing of this book was easy to read and how he shaped the plot made the memoir turn more into a enrobing story for readers. It conveys how the setting in which he grew up shaped his perspective as a child and displays the unwitting stories of his life. While he was never a great child from the perspective of people in his life, he fully admits to this, while explaining why he acted as such. I will say that there were many points in the memoir that I felt stuck and didn't see any direction. I understand it is a memoir of his life but parts of it just felt over done almost (I don't know how to exactly put it into words). Again, it was a pretty good book of growing up but I don't know if it offered much besides this for me.
This book is my summer reading book for one of my English classes. I will say I fully picked this book because it was the shortest. Now that I'm finished, I can say that it was overall, a pretty good book. It discusses the struggles of adolescence and how his live was growing up.
The writing of this book was easy to read and how he shaped the plot made the memoir turn more into a enrobing story for readers. It conveys how the setting in which he grew up shaped his perspective as a child and displays the unwitting stories of his life. While he was never a great child from the perspective of people in his life, he fully admits to this, while explaining why he acted as such. I will say that there were many points in the memoir that I felt stuck and didn't see any direction. I understand it is a memoir of his life but parts of it just felt over done almost (I don't know how to exactly put it into words). Again, it was a pretty good book of growing up but I don't know if it offered much besides this for me.
Much less funny than I'd expected, having only read Old School, but this is an honest, visceral look at adolescence told by a master storyteller. The subtle (and not-so-subtle) evils that Dwight inflicts on young Toby make this a difficult read at times. It's a testament to the voice and the writing that I was able to forgive the narrator some of his lying and machinations in an attempt to free himself from his plight. This memoir is a great example of how a flawed and damaged character can still be compelling for reasons other than being flawed and damaged. In short, I see what all the hype was about.
I absolutely adore this book. Anyone who loves memoir—especially those trying to write it—should read it. What a fascinating childhood and a penetrating perspective that shines through, effortlessly.
Tobias was not given the best chance early on for success, and he struggled, as we all do in some ways. This book has heart and grace and staying power.
I would recommend it to anybody.
Tobias was not given the best chance early on for success, and he struggled, as we all do in some ways. This book has heart and grace and staying power.
I would recommend it to anybody.
Some beautiful passages. Overall it seemed to lack structure and be more a collection of vignettes lacking direction.
How Do Any of Us Survive?
This is the fourth memoir of a less than ideal childhood I’ve read in as many weeks. I have to say it’s getting a bit old, all this overcoming adversity stuff. But I think it’s safe to say that Tolstoy had it wrong: Unhappy families are just as unvarying and just as routine as happy ones. But at least occasionally the unhappy ones are interesting, sometimes even revelatory.
Wolfe’s memoir is interesting to me because he understands how his childhood shaped his culture - not just his specific fears and aspirations (mostly about violence) but also his responses to the world in general. His childhood, as that of all of us, created the character we attribute to the universe as well as our own. To ‘get’ that and consider both aspects of character may be about as close to maturity as we can get.
So, for example, Wolff is able to articulate a basic relation which the child has intuited: “Power can be enjoyed only when it is recognized and feared. Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.” The implication of course is a sort of Don Quixote self-image which incites and justifies all sorts of boyish bad behavior. But it is also worth noting that he is talking about a relationship here, and therefore a dynamic explanation, a theory of the world and how it works. This is what’s called a zero-sum relation: if you win, I lose. Therefore, if I can’t win, I make sure you can’t either. Pretty sophisticated stuff. But then children are always more sophisticated than adults remember.
To appreciate that one’s life has been shaped by a rather clever inference about the world is clearly a sort of breakthrough. The fact that others (like me) might have adopted similar theories of living is probably sufficient justification for publication. The theory allowed him to negotiate life as a boy and as a young man; it helped Wolff to survive. In short, Wolff’s puerile logic worked - power could be withstood, and even occasionally overcome. Not bad for a boy from a broken family, growing up poor and with no obvious prospects.
But of course the very success of this strategy for contending with power masks a deeper issue which is also very practical but by its nature must be raised in philosophical language: Is one’s life best spent contending with power? Success in beating power at its own game may be considered successful merely because of the deprivations one has experienced. Couldn’t it be that it is just this criterion of success which has to be overcome, that perhaps the world isn’t primarily an arena of power exercised and power subverted or deflected?
This is not an easy thing to even allow into consciousness much less address. The last thing any of us wants to do is question what we have implicitly lived our lives for. It takes a particular sort of lonely courage to permit it to percolate up through layers of experience acquired and confirmed over decades. What we value is its own measure of success after all. If power is what we have valued, giving it up as unimportant feels like giving up one’s life.
Because the memoir ends in late adolescence, there is only a hint that Wolff’s worldview of power and its control is starting to crack. He has a horrifying thought at one point, for example, that his behavior just might be a “solemn choreography of earnest useless acts.” And that perhaps the spectrum of power-relationships he has inferred doesn’t exhaust the range of human life. “It takes a childish or corrupt imagination to make symbols of other people,” he says. He knows he must somehow redeem himself, but that in order to have a “hope of [another’s idea of] redemption I would have to give up my own.”
A bird in the hand means one can’t do anything else with that hand. So it’s likely that most of us go through life self-handicapped by our successes.
This is the fourth memoir of a less than ideal childhood I’ve read in as many weeks. I have to say it’s getting a bit old, all this overcoming adversity stuff. But I think it’s safe to say that Tolstoy had it wrong: Unhappy families are just as unvarying and just as routine as happy ones. But at least occasionally the unhappy ones are interesting, sometimes even revelatory.
Wolfe’s memoir is interesting to me because he understands how his childhood shaped his culture - not just his specific fears and aspirations (mostly about violence) but also his responses to the world in general. His childhood, as that of all of us, created the character we attribute to the universe as well as our own. To ‘get’ that and consider both aspects of character may be about as close to maturity as we can get.
So, for example, Wolff is able to articulate a basic relation which the child has intuited: “Power can be enjoyed only when it is recognized and feared. Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.” The implication of course is a sort of Don Quixote self-image which incites and justifies all sorts of boyish bad behavior. But it is also worth noting that he is talking about a relationship here, and therefore a dynamic explanation, a theory of the world and how it works. This is what’s called a zero-sum relation: if you win, I lose. Therefore, if I can’t win, I make sure you can’t either. Pretty sophisticated stuff. But then children are always more sophisticated than adults remember.
To appreciate that one’s life has been shaped by a rather clever inference about the world is clearly a sort of breakthrough. The fact that others (like me) might have adopted similar theories of living is probably sufficient justification for publication. The theory allowed him to negotiate life as a boy and as a young man; it helped Wolff to survive. In short, Wolff’s puerile logic worked - power could be withstood, and even occasionally overcome. Not bad for a boy from a broken family, growing up poor and with no obvious prospects.
But of course the very success of this strategy for contending with power masks a deeper issue which is also very practical but by its nature must be raised in philosophical language: Is one’s life best spent contending with power? Success in beating power at its own game may be considered successful merely because of the deprivations one has experienced. Couldn’t it be that it is just this criterion of success which has to be overcome, that perhaps the world isn’t primarily an arena of power exercised and power subverted or deflected?
This is not an easy thing to even allow into consciousness much less address. The last thing any of us wants to do is question what we have implicitly lived our lives for. It takes a particular sort of lonely courage to permit it to percolate up through layers of experience acquired and confirmed over decades. What we value is its own measure of success after all. If power is what we have valued, giving it up as unimportant feels like giving up one’s life.
Because the memoir ends in late adolescence, there is only a hint that Wolff’s worldview of power and its control is starting to crack. He has a horrifying thought at one point, for example, that his behavior just might be a “solemn choreography of earnest useless acts.” And that perhaps the spectrum of power-relationships he has inferred doesn’t exhaust the range of human life. “It takes a childish or corrupt imagination to make symbols of other people,” he says. He knows he must somehow redeem himself, but that in order to have a “hope of [another’s idea of] redemption I would have to give up my own.”
A bird in the hand means one can’t do anything else with that hand. So it’s likely that most of us go through life self-handicapped by our successes.