This Boy’s Life

"This is, in the first place, a fine memoir on its own. But then the other thing that really interested me about it is that Tobias Wolff and Geoffrey Wolff, his older brother, both wrote memoirs. They are both fiction writers, Tobias Wolff is, I think, particularly known for his short stories. Geoffrey’s memoir was more about their father, and was called The Duke of Deception . That was also a superb book. The father was sort of a con man, and the parents got divorced. Geoffrey grew up mainly with the father, and Tobias with the mother. So I really think it’s almost a package, those two books, together they make a fascinating read. It’s fascinating to see the difference in the lives of two brothers, who I think barely knew each other during their childhood. They weren’t half brothers, they were brothers, but they grew up in completely different situations. Both somewhat harrowing. Geoffrey was supposedly much better off, he was at boarding school and that sort of thing, but it was still a very tenuous situation, since his father was always right on the edge of being either broke or in jail. Most memoirs in America seem to be about childhoods that are unpleasant at least, and maybe more than that. There’s been an unfortunate atrocity arms race in memoirs in the United States. You’re meant to reveal some hideous secret in your memoir if you expect it to go anywhere. Probably at least incest or bestiality or something like that. Which I think is unfortunate. And I think that was the problem with that book, A Million Little Pieces. There he was, a middle class druggie. I can go outside and throw a rock and hit a middle class druggie. He doesn’t stand out. So there’s a kind of pressure to make things worse than they were. But maybe it goes back to the Tolstoy thing about happy families and unhappy families . I always thought when I started writing memoir that I was at a hideous disadvantage because I, well I wouldn’t want to admit this in New York, or in more sophisticated circles, but I actually had a happy childhood. It’s somewhat embarrassing. My parents never argued, they were very interested in my welfare. My sister took more than her half of the backseat sometimes, but that’s a small complaint. So happy childhood memoirs are, I think, unusual. Well, in a way, I did. Not that everyone fell into line, but I wrote a memoir about my father, which was fairly cheerful. He was an interesting guy. I mean I guess he was an interesting guy. He was a grocer in Kansas City, but I found him interesting. He was not a glue-sniffer or a childbeater or anything like that. So it’s relatively happy I guess. I think it’s a commercial disadvantage. But I don’t have enough experience of dysfunctional families to make up stories."