Whew

[Anonymous]

#671

I did finish the book, but sorry to be negative, I have to say that the writer made his most pertinent points relatively early on. I get it that he had his epiphany at death’s door and that reading was a valuable path to his education, the only door in fact. And of course it has been for many. A lot of the remaining 2/3rds of the book felt like he was rehashing the same few things that bothered him so much all the way back in the early chapters. As I said, the view he provides of the inner workings of Staten Island society was telling and valuable—-and he was well advised to get as far away from there as possible, as quickly as possible. But it took him long enough, mostly because his family was a detriment. Yes, he did something very stupid as a kid (a lot of us do—well, maybe not quite so dramatically) and yes, he made it so that experience changed his life and that is where he deserves commendation. But the book could have taken some significant editing to be made more effective. I came away wondering, unless he really needed that 100 bucks a month rent, why did he ever tell his parents anything about his plans, certainly not after the first dozen times that they shot him down—let alone listening to a word out of his mother’s mouth? She obviously didn’t have a clue about what she was talking about, nor, it seems, did she ever have his best interests at heart, once she had pegged him as a criminal, a blot on her family honor. But he knew that!
I am also not buying the whole glorification of “working class” that emerges in the second half of the book. The supposed “classless system” of the USA is a myth. Class prejudices are a very real negative aspect of life here and everywhere on this planet. Buying into them makes one part of the problem. Communicating them to students isn’t helping. There is no intrinsic honor in ignorance or poverty. These miseries are pressed on people by the forces whose interests are supported by perpetuating class distinctions. What did the writer’s “working class” fellows do for him but behave like racist, sexist creeps, try to get him killed, ridicule his aspirations, try to talk him out of getting an education, etc? I suppose a few of his friends were supportive when they found he was a professor; they were the exceptions. But it is a fact that it takes work to get an education, degrees aren’t just handed to you.
In the time since I returned to school in around 2005, a select group of people have questioned or ridiculed that decision. It made it clear to me that those people were either not my friends, or that they were anti-education idiots.
And while I am at it, I fail to see why the writer didn’t accept one of the many scholarships he was offered, never mind why he thinks it is any mark of shame— “scholarship boys”? I greatly appreciated what scholarships I have gotten and I sure do wish I had one now—my loans are not very low interest and they are going to hound me to my grave! Scholarships are supposed to be there to reward hard work and dedication.
Okay, well, if it wasn’t so many times that his dreams were shot down by his mother, or that he was offered scholarships that he didn’t take, then the repetitive way he wrote his narrative made it seem so and it proves my point about the editing.

[Sondra Perl]

#682

Dear James, Thanks for the honesty. I think that, even if we liked the book, a lot of us may have had similar critiques, but decided to write about something else. I know that I did.

For me, your post makes me really wonder about memoir as a genre, both writing it and reading it. How do we write something that, as we’ve been discussing in class, we are compelled to write and, at the same time, be as merciless with the manuscript as we would be with an academic or a fiction piece? And what, on the other end, is the attraction of reading memoir as opposed to other genres? Is there something about the urgency that is compelling, even when the writing is repetitive?

[Author]

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