Word: wolff
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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...
...Wolff is not absorbed in finding fault, in excusing his own character defects by attributing them to the appalling mockery his father made of parenting. Unlike other recent memoirs' writers, he actually comes to terms with his father's suffocating presence in his life. His exploration avoids morbidly picking at childhood scars; he aims to heal, not dredge up more torment. (His retrospective is infused with realism, tenderness untainted by excessive romaticism, and sadness devoid of self-pity.) Wolff knew when to close the door he pried open so forcefully in his preface...
...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...
NONFICTION: African Calliope, Edward Hoagland -Onward and Upward in the Garden, Katharine S. White - The Duke of Deception, Geoffrey Wolff -The Intricate Music, Thomas Kiernan - The Medusa and the Snail, Lewis Thomas -The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe -The White Album, Joan Didion
...Geoffrey Wolff • The Intricate Music...