I took a deep dive into Wainwright’s music after seeing him in concert in February 2023. An old folkie, he writes with humor and emotional depth about family, love, and all sorts of human relationships. I decided to read his autobiography, and it did not disappoint.
Like his songs, it is confessional but with a consistently twisted sense of humor, and it exhibits a rare emotional depth for a music autobiography. It also offers occasional peeks into how the music business operates and how someone like Wainwright, who has not had a hit record in 50 years, manages to earn a living in it.
“This book is as candid, moving, and hilarious as Loudon Wainwright’s music.” —Judd Apatow
"Wainwright is an engaging and witty memoirist." —Wall Street Journal
Loudon Wainwright III, the son of esteemed Life magazine columnist Loudon Wainwright, Jr., is the patriarch of one of America’s great musical families. He is the former husband of Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche, and father of Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Lucy Wainwright Roche, and Lexie Kelly Wainwright. With a career spanning more than four decades, Wainwright has established himself as one of the most enduring singer-songwriters who emerged from the late 1960s. Not only does…
After reading a profile of Portis (1933-2020), I decided to pick up one of his novels and kept reading until I had finished three of them. Although he is most famous for True Grit, I found Masters of Atlantisthe most engaging and imaginative.
It tells the story of a small group of dreamers, grifters, and general oddballs who establish a fraternal order similar to the Freemasons in the early twentieth century. Then, it follows their fortunes as they wax and wane over the next several decades.
It reminds me of the short-lived television show Lodge 49 from a few years back, which certainly owed a debt to this novel.
Lamar Jimmersan, an American doughboy in 1917 France, learns that his life's purpose is to administer the brotherhood of the Gnomons, preservers of the wisdom of the lost city of Atlantis, and Gnomonism risesand eventually fades awayin America. Reprint.
Finkel tells the true story of Christopher Knight, who wandered into the Maine woods in 1986 and stayed there, alone, for the next 25 years or so, with no contact with other humans. He lived off of food and supplies he stole from nearby homes and camps, engaging in more than one thousand burglaries.
As one might suspect, not much happened to Knight during his self-imposed exile, but Finkel does a great job of reconstructing how he survived and why he stayed away from other humans for so long. Knight makes Thoreau look like a piker.
Could you leave behind all that you know and live in solitude for three decades? This is the extraordinary story of the last true hermit - Christopher Knight.
'This was a breath-taking book to read and many weeks later I am still thinking about the implications for our society and - by extension - for my own life' Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of The Perfect Storm
'A wry meditation on one man's attempt to escape life's distractions and look inwards, to find meaning not by doing, but by being' Martin Sixsmith, bestselling author of Philomena…
In 1758, Peter Williamson appeared on the streets of Aberdeen, Scotland, dressed as a Native American and telling a remarkable tale. He claimed that as a young boy, he had been kidnapped from the city and sold into slavery in America.
In performances and in a printed narrative he peddled to his audiences, Williamson described his tribulations as an indentured servant, Indian captive, soldier, and prisoner of war.
Aberdeen’s magistrates called him a liar and banished him from the city, but Williamson defended his story.
