Word: geoffrey
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...Geoffrey's younger brother described Duke's condition a few months before his death in the San Diego jail cell...
...resolution is not one everybody can accept, given the wildly unstable, violent and often callous treatment Geoffrey received from his father. His humane acceptance is commendable, perhaps, but maddening for many who will find his father's despicable behavior undeserving of such kindness...
Wolff insists that despite its vile moments, "it had been fun to be my father's son." The joy is not apparent in his depictions of Duke's sick maneuvers. Case in point: an adolescent Geoffrey dubs a well-endowed schoolgirl "pear-shaped." When Duke finds out, he locks his son alone with him in the bedroom, strips him and beats him senseless with his razor strop (a prized possession incidentally, one of Duke's "glittering things"). When the punishment is sufficiently administered, his father Duke picks up his lifeless son, hugs him and whispers, "Be good. Try at least...
...abandonment, of sheer abhorrence he felt after his father's death. But eventually--or so he claims--he realizes, "I had forgotten I loved him, mostly, and mostly now I missed him." Though it seems more likely that he did not forget his love, that this love never existed, Geoffrey's claim must be respected. Wolff writes to a Mr. Joseph, his Choate headmaster, that his father was "a bad man and a good father," and Joseph corrects him, "Don't ever again say your father was a bad man. There are no bad men." Certainly Wolff's description...
...Perhaps Geoffrey's brother at last exposed the real Duke, a fumbling, impotent, useless human being, unworthy of eulogy, much less a 270-page memorial. But this stinking jailbird did not bring up Geoffrey. The book is not about the real Duke, but the Duke of Deception, the father who raised a son "to be happier than he had been, to do better." Evidently he accomplished that goal and for that Geoffrey Wolff offers his compassion and his gratitude.Geoffrey Wolff and his children...