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Bezig met laden... The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons (Excelsior Editions)door Geoff Gehman
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Recalls a childhood on Long Island as the counterculture sixties were sliding into the seventies and the Hamptons were still a middle-class sanctuary.The Kingdom of the Kid is a memorable portrait of an indelible childhood on Long Island's South Fork from 1967 to 1972, when the Hamptons were still a middle-class paradise. In six short years, journalist Geoff Gehman was changed forever by a host of remarkable characters, including Carl Yastrzemski, his first baseball hero; Truman Capote, his first literary role model; race car champion Mark Donohue, who conquered a wicked track nicknamed "The Bridge"; Henry Austin "Austie" Clark Jr., fabled proprietor of a candy store of vintage vehicles; and Norman Jaffe, the notorious architect who designed a house seemingly built by masons from outer space. Gehman's childhood kingdom was ruled by his father, a boozing, schmoozing social bulldozer, who taught his son how to pitch, how to sing barbershop harmony, and how to mix with potato farmers and power brokers. Then, burdened by manic depression and bad investments, he abruptly ended his son's reign on the East End by selling the family house in Wainscott without his wife's permission. The Kingdom of the Kid is not just another baby-boomer coming-of-age memoir about baseball, beaches, drive-in movies, rock 'n' roll, fast cars, faster women, alcoholism, mental illness, divorce, suicide, and redemption. It's a pilgrimage to a special place at a special time that taught a kid how to be special. It's for anyone who has lived in the Hamptons or has wondered about living in the Hamptons, anyone who remembers the thrill of riding shotgun on the tailgate of a Ford LTD station wagon, anyone hungry for a juicy slice of Don McLean's "American Pie."Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Down But Not Quite Out in Hollow-weird: A Documentary in Letters of Eric Knight. He lives in Pennsylvania's Northampton County and thinks about the long-lost Hamptons every day. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)974.7History and Geography North America Northeastern U.S. New YorkLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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If you have a particular point of view about memoirs, either for or against, try to forget it and pick up The Kingdom of the Kid, and just settle in for the ride.
This is more than a prosaic romp through childhood memories, it is a paean celebrating a child's-eye-view of life.
Gehman is a writer who likes to "linger over words," that's my kind of writer. His prose, his stories, his memories…sassy, salty and singular.
Gehman is a poet, too. Repeatedly, he offers lush insight into his industrious youth, his friendships with the young and the old, his affinity for the place, the "long-lost Hamptons" where Geoff and his pals spent the good old days.
He describes the scene as he observed mourners in the Wainscott Cemetery: "…I sat on my bike in the school parking lot, shaded by grand sycamores, and watched visitors treat the cemetery with reverence. They placed flowers by graves, prayed on their knees, cried on their backs. They stared at the sky, held séances in broad daylight, eavesdropped on eternity.
"Those pilgrims taught me the morality of mortality. Without asking anyone I learned to walk around the stones, to respect the dead as if they were alive."
In every chapter he offers another little piece of his heart.
Good reading. Real good.
Buy it here: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5733-the-kingdom-of-the-kid.aspx
Read more on my blog: http://barleyliterate.blogspot.com/2013/08/book-review-kingdom-of-kid.html ( )