The Boy He Left Behind: A Man's Search for His Lost Father.The Boy He Left Behind: A Man's Search for His Lost Father * By Mark Matousek * Riverhead riv·er·head n. The source of a river. Books * $23.95 Without the talent of its accomplished writer, this memoir memoir History or record composed from personal observation and experience. Closely related to autobiography, a memoir differs chiefly in the degree of emphasis on external events. might suggest a graduate-level thesis in sociology. But Mark Matousek's expressive style and turn of phrase make this a fine example of autobiographical prose, Written in the wake of his 1996 Sex Death Enlightenment Enlightenment, term applied to the mainstream of thought of 18th-century Europe and America. Background and Basic Tenets The scientific and intellectual developments of the 17th cent. , this latest memoir is about coming to grips with the absence of his father, the emotional bankruptcy of his mother, and the banal, pathological 1. pathological - [scientific computation] Used of a data set that is grossly atypical of normal expected input, especially one that exposes a weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. lives of his sisters. As Matousek approaches his 40th birthday, a friend dares him to hire a private detective to track down his dad, a handsome drifter who drifted away when Matousek was 4 years old. During the search that follows, Matousek makes profound discoveries about his family and--no surprise to the reader--about himself. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion