Stunned, knocked out cold, carried away–so mesmerizing is this book that when reading it, I was rendered speechless for the whole time. Tobias Wolff and John Updike have shed light onto the lonely path of writing so I’d finally relearned, after this long, what makes a virtuoso. This was something I did not learn from Faulkner and McCarthy, or Fitzgerald and Hawthorne.
But most of all, it’s the story itself that carried a pathos resonating in me. What if I were to write the same memoir? Wouldn’t I fill it up with lines of solemnity and these kitschy confessions I’d make all the time? Wolff’s narration asked for no redemption. It was this boy’s life.
This Boy’s Life
(P188) “I wrote her long, grandiloquent letters which I then destroyed. I thought of the different ways that fate might put her in my power, so I could show her who I really was and make her love me. Most of these possibilities involved death or severe maiming for Lloyd Sly.
And then as sometimes happened, a girl my own age showed some interest in me, I treated her swinishly. I walked her home from a dance or a game, made out with her on her front steps, then cut her dead the next day. I only ever wanted what I couldn’t have.”
(p254)
“I encouraged him, but in my heart I was glad he was in trouble, and not just because it would take the heat off me. I was still hurt that he had deserted me in my own trouble. It did not displease me to see Chuck on the griddle now, and to have the chance to show him that I was a better friend than he had bee. I would stand up for him.”
(p255-56)
“Sure, he liked to fool around, but way down deep he was saving himself for his wife. He had a clear picture of her, and when he finally met her he was going to marry her and stay married forever…Their life together would be a heartwarming series with lots of affectionate banter…The husband Chuck was saving for his wife was a man just dying to see the error of his ways, and to mend them. To put liquor, gambling, and fornication behind him forever, along with the bad compnions of his reckless youth. Once married, children, and plenty of them. Sobriety. Fidelity. Grace at dinner and full of pew on Sundays…
Chuck held on to his dreams as if it were already actual. He was even prepared to go to prison for it. Tina Flood and the baby she carried were not real to him. They were just another entry in the ledger of past mistakes which would give drama to his future change of heart, and which the virtue of his married life would atone for…
When he started crying in his bed at night, I lost my secret pleasure in his situation…But that wasn’t possible between us, and anyway I could tell he was trying to not to be heard.”
(p286)
“WHEN WE ARE GREEN, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever.
(p288-The End)
“We sang them with respect and we sang them hard, swaying from side to side and dipping our shoulders in counterpoint. Between hymns we drank from the bottle. Our voices were strong. It was a good night to sing and we sang for all were were worth, as if we’d been saved.
