Word: duked
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Judging by its subtitle, "Memoirs of My Father," and its ominous preface, "Opening the Door"--in which the author "thanks God" for his father's death--Geoffrey Wolff's Duke of Deception seems to belong to this nightmares-in-the-nursery trend. But the initial likenesses are misleading; unlike his fellow excavators of the past, Wolff's maturity enables him to emerge--after a respectable period of thrashing--from the muck. He unflinchingly lays out the shoddiest episodes of a shameful upbringing, yet from this scrutiny he extracts a peace with that segment of his life over which...
...Duke Wolff, a confidence man, conducted all his affairs close to the edge, masquerading as a WASP, a Yale graduate, an aeronautical engineer with the proper degrees from--of all places--the Sorbonne. He unscrupulously altered his give-away Jewish name the same way he adjusted his resume--as it suited his needs. When his creditors threatened to blow his cover, he skipped town, cruising indifferently from Manhattan extravagance--lunching at Club 21 and collecting forged membership cards from places like the New York Racquet Club--to boarding house sleaziness in Atlanta, and at last to a dishonorable...
After his father's death, Wolff said he felt compelled to write Duke of Deception, because it "was the only way I know how to deal with being left behind by my father." Duke left behind his son both literally--deserting the family in the mobile home mecca of Sarasota, Florida, for a financially-draining fling on Vancouver Island--and emotionally--substituting "glittering things" for fatherly affection. Continuing the precedent set by Geoffrey's grandfather, Duke discovered "love's shortcut through stuff," lavishing filched motorboats and sportscars on his child...
...stakes were too high. As a child he based his own legitimacy on his father's identity; if his father did not exist, neither did he. So, he blindly trotted off to Harvard-Yale games with father, who rooted passionately, "as though he had a stake in its outcome." Duke even went so far as to buy English bulldogs to suggest his connection with Old Eli. Despite gaping holes in the Ivy League story--a friend once hailed Duke as a classmate from Penn in Geoffrey's earshot--Geoffrey "preferred this fabulous notion to the transparent reality." Children year...
...understandable that Geoffrey would shy away from the awful truths about his father, but it's peculiar that at no time did a suspicious employer challenge Duke Wolff with a copy of the Yale Alumni Directory. No one bothered to question his patently phony credentials, because Wolff's devil-may-care lifestyle harmonized with American post-war values, which rated bravado far above competency. Both the child, Geoffrey Wolff, and the nation idolized men who--like Duke--"despised prudence, savings accounts, looks before leaps...