I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son
A Memoir in Essays
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From one of the most ferociously brilliant and distinctive young voices in literary nonfiction: a debut shot through with violence, comedy, and feverish intensity that takes us on an odyssey into an American netherworld, exposing a raw personal journey along the way.
Locked in battle with both his adult appetites and his most private childhood demons, Kent Russell hungers for immersive experience and revelation, and his essays take us to society’s ragged edges, the junctures between savagery and civilization. He pitches a tent at an annual four-day music festival in Illinois, among the misunderstood, thick-as-thieves fans who self-identify as Juggalos. He treks to the end of the continent to visit a legendary hockey enforcer, the granddaddy of all tough guys, to see how he’s preparing for his last foe: obsolescence. He spends a long weekend getting drunk with a self-immunizer who is willing to prove he has conditioned his body to withstand the bites of the most venomous snakes. He insinuates himself with a modern-day Robinson Crusoe on a tiny atoll off the coast of Australia. He explores the Amish obsession with baseball, and his own obsession with horror, blood, and guts. And in the piercing interstitial meditations between these essays, Russell introduces us to his own raging and inimitable forebears.
I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son, blistering and deeply personal, records Russell’s quest to understand, through his journalistic subjects, his own appetites and urges, his persistent alienation, and, above all, his knotty, volatile, vital relationship with his father. In a narrative that can be read as both a magnificent act of literary mythmaking and a howl of filial despair, Russell gives us a haunting and unforgettable portrait of an America—and a paradigm of American malehood—we have never before seen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Russell, who has written for the New Republic, n+1, and other outlets, provides an intriguing but uneven collection of previously published essays. At their most provocative, the pieces examine the pleasure and excitement that violence can stir in people. Russell devotes an essay to a childhood friend, Ryan, who joins the army seeking the adrenaline rush of gunplay. A profile of a hockey player explains how, after being caught up in fighting during games unwillingly, he found himself in the new position of hockey goon, and thereby a key team member. These selections and others, including one about a man who self-immunizes by getting bitten by venomous snakes and an account of a gathering of "juggalos" (fans of the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse), showcase Russell's clean, clear style. He shrewdly shifts gears for two final, less dark selections about Amish baseball and a man who moves to an island off northeastern Australia, to "take out of the world." Russell is less compelling in the sections about his own life, such as when he justifies his interest in getting a lesson from horror-makeup guru Tom Savini. His justification is unnecessary; getting to know these fascinating people on the page is reward enough.
