Fascinating stuff. Aren’t 90% of punk rockers from emotionally dysfunctional upper middle class families, though? I met these kids in high school...my sister-in-law was such a punker.
This resonated with me. When I started my stack I devoted a few chapters to writing about writing. Like you, I came from a literary family and did the same thing with the books that were way out of my range for my age. Somehow I plowed through Nabokov--specifically Lolita--so I could find out who she was and why my demented family called me Lolita. Gross. Next up, Jerzy Kosinski and R Crumb ---waaaaay to young, but there ya have it. It always felt to me that I had to compete with books to get anyone’s attention in my family and that that making them put the book down was a huge imposition, so I reasoned that if I couldn’t beat them I would join them. I had a field day with my one surviving diary, trying to discern WTF happened. I was rarely in my body so I remember very little. I had a soul crushing run-in with a brood of mean girls over something I wrote on my personal blog in my 40s and because I couldn’t be sincere after that until I got some therapy, I resorted to humor which was very effective at keeping my problems at bay. Not to make this about me, but I’d be honored if you had a look at Dear Diary and Dame Pixel and the Mean Girls on treetops.substack.com
Love your writing. Restacked a graph from Tree Tops. Good stuff. Wild travel life. Love it. Lolita: Wow. Brilliant book but...yeah. Sorry you went through that. Thank you for reading and commenting!
Wow! Wow that you wrote like that when you were so young and you still have the work and can draw from it now.
A little off topic but I found it fascinating to read about your life through the lens of writing and reading. How you described your home, the décor, the living room, the bookshelf, and the books made me yearn for a childhood like that. I always felt like a fish out of water because I wanted a house like the one you grew up in and parents that read like that. But we know we get the parents and lessons we are supposed to get.
Couldn’t relate more. Firstly, my own Substack, entitled Tumultuous True Stories, consists largely of my writings from my youth. Like you, I’ve left grammar, syntax, inaccuracies, AND problematics (in my own case) intact. Remember when TWO SPACES followed a period?? I am also your age--well, one year older, but who’s counting. Finally, I have a 13-year-old son, and to read your boyhood writings from this era in your life just melts my heart. Thank you for sharing. We need more real glimpses into actual humans in this postmodern hellscape of 15-second blips of “trending content.” Much love.
Brilliantly said! I checked out your page and I love it. Subscribed. And I restacked from one of your pieces. Good shit. Keep it going. Maybe we could do a mutual guest-post thing or something? Thanks for reading and commenting. Yes. Wild times back then. Punk rock insanity. Drugs, booze, women.
Screen shot your last 3 paragraphs. Best explanation I can give my daughter to help her understand why her mom is so deep, heavy and talks everything to death. Thank you.
Interesting to read the perspective of one from a writer's family. It doesn't happen as often as in other professions; in Martin Amis' Art of Fiction interview the most memorable part was him talking about the family dynamic with his writer dad, Kingsley Amis, and the kind of unspoken understanding they had of their shared profession. Some, like Huxley, had literary relatives or friends or close influences. And in Russia the Tolstoys form an on-and-off dynasty, represented most recently by the writings of Tatyana Tolstaya. But otherwise it's not that common. We writers really are flukes.
Very true about the human comedy as well. The human comedy has always interested me and I don't think I can ever shut off that interest. Writing is kind of a necessity in that case because otherwise we'd go crazy. And the part about writers seeking truth can't be stressed enough! I would only add that American writers should read more from other countries to better pursue that goal. There's a reason why Hemingway would put Turgenev on the recommended reading list he gave to a fan one time in Key West.
Rousseau was indeed a brainiac, though I'm generally more familiar with Diderot and Voltaire who I think understood the human comedy side of humanity more than Rousseau, though that's not to say Rousseau didn't understand it. He was the more serious of the three, however; it makes sense given his rough life experience. I certainly found The Social Contract to be insightful reading, and since our social contract is currently broken I'd like to reread it sometime soon. Rousseau's role is certainly titanic, in many respects he was the first intellectual in the modern understanding of that word. Although even if his fiction isn't at the Cervantes level, Diderot is the better role model for writers I think. Writers' minds should be less theoretically intellectual and more encyclopedic. I think you'd really enjoy the book Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely by Andrew Curran, if you haven't read it already.
I need to check that Amis interview out, for sure. Thanks for the tip on that. Rousseau was close with Diderot and then had a bad falling out. Complex friendship. Yes: Right now the social contract has most certainly been torn badly. We need to repair that. Perhaps a contemporary Rousseau or Diderot?
We certainly need thinkers of that caliber more than ever. Thinkers who aren't just theoretical, don't just have a single expertise, and who can step outside the narratives of their society without being detached from people's needs. Traits that defined the Enlightenment greats, and without which Diderot couldn't finish the encyclopedia and Rousseau couldn't write about society with such totality. (I wouldn't include Voltaire here, as he fell for a narrative of the time that believed Poland's partition by autocratic monarchs was a benevolent form of progress.)
I don't know if the social contract can be repaired: we just don't have the same conditions as 1776, and too many people believe America is irredeemably evil. Doesn't mean the effort wouldn't be worthwhile. If these thinkers exist, and they can escape postmodern deconstructive thinking, who knows where that line of thought will go.
You were born for this. Thank God you found sobriety and your way back to it. 🙏
Fascinating stuff. Aren’t 90% of punk rockers from emotionally dysfunctional upper middle class families, though? I met these kids in high school...my sister-in-law was such a punker.
I'm dying to know what criticism your mom brought, if any, after your gift of collected writings was presented on that historic Mother's Day.
This resonated with me. When I started my stack I devoted a few chapters to writing about writing. Like you, I came from a literary family and did the same thing with the books that were way out of my range for my age. Somehow I plowed through Nabokov--specifically Lolita--so I could find out who she was and why my demented family called me Lolita. Gross. Next up, Jerzy Kosinski and R Crumb ---waaaaay to young, but there ya have it. It always felt to me that I had to compete with books to get anyone’s attention in my family and that that making them put the book down was a huge imposition, so I reasoned that if I couldn’t beat them I would join them. I had a field day with my one surviving diary, trying to discern WTF happened. I was rarely in my body so I remember very little. I had a soul crushing run-in with a brood of mean girls over something I wrote on my personal blog in my 40s and because I couldn’t be sincere after that until I got some therapy, I resorted to humor which was very effective at keeping my problems at bay. Not to make this about me, but I’d be honored if you had a look at Dear Diary and Dame Pixel and the Mean Girls on treetops.substack.com
Love your writing. Restacked a graph from Tree Tops. Good stuff. Wild travel life. Love it. Lolita: Wow. Brilliant book but...yeah. Sorry you went through that. Thank you for reading and commenting!
Thank you! I really have no idea if my project sucks or is brilliant so having someone like you whose writing I admire offer encouragement….wow!
Wow! Wow that you wrote like that when you were so young and you still have the work and can draw from it now.
A little off topic but I found it fascinating to read about your life through the lens of writing and reading. How you described your home, the décor, the living room, the bookshelf, and the books made me yearn for a childhood like that. I always felt like a fish out of water because I wanted a house like the one you grew up in and parents that read like that. But we know we get the parents and lessons we are supposed to get.
Welll...it was a little more complicated than that :) But yes: I totally know what you mean.
What a poignant post, sharing your journey of self-discovery. You summed it up well.
Couldn’t relate more. Firstly, my own Substack, entitled Tumultuous True Stories, consists largely of my writings from my youth. Like you, I’ve left grammar, syntax, inaccuracies, AND problematics (in my own case) intact. Remember when TWO SPACES followed a period?? I am also your age--well, one year older, but who’s counting. Finally, I have a 13-year-old son, and to read your boyhood writings from this era in your life just melts my heart. Thank you for sharing. We need more real glimpses into actual humans in this postmodern hellscape of 15-second blips of “trending content.” Much love.
Lindsay
https://lindsaybyron.substack.com
Brilliantly said! I checked out your page and I love it. Subscribed. And I restacked from one of your pieces. Good shit. Keep it going. Maybe we could do a mutual guest-post thing or something? Thanks for reading and commenting. Yes. Wild times back then. Punk rock insanity. Drugs, booze, women.
Would love to do a guest post collab! I’m a fan.
Awesome! Why don't you email me and we can discuss some ideas: michw.mohr@gmail.com
Screen shot your last 3 paragraphs. Best explanation I can give my daughter to help her understand why her mom is so deep, heavy and talks everything to death. Thank you.
Love it!! Thanks for sharing and reading.
Interesting to read the perspective of one from a writer's family. It doesn't happen as often as in other professions; in Martin Amis' Art of Fiction interview the most memorable part was him talking about the family dynamic with his writer dad, Kingsley Amis, and the kind of unspoken understanding they had of their shared profession. Some, like Huxley, had literary relatives or friends or close influences. And in Russia the Tolstoys form an on-and-off dynasty, represented most recently by the writings of Tatyana Tolstaya. But otherwise it's not that common. We writers really are flukes.
Very true about the human comedy as well. The human comedy has always interested me and I don't think I can ever shut off that interest. Writing is kind of a necessity in that case because otherwise we'd go crazy. And the part about writers seeking truth can't be stressed enough! I would only add that American writers should read more from other countries to better pursue that goal. There's a reason why Hemingway would put Turgenev on the recommended reading list he gave to a fan one time in Key West.
Rousseau was indeed a brainiac, though I'm generally more familiar with Diderot and Voltaire who I think understood the human comedy side of humanity more than Rousseau, though that's not to say Rousseau didn't understand it. He was the more serious of the three, however; it makes sense given his rough life experience. I certainly found The Social Contract to be insightful reading, and since our social contract is currently broken I'd like to reread it sometime soon. Rousseau's role is certainly titanic, in many respects he was the first intellectual in the modern understanding of that word. Although even if his fiction isn't at the Cervantes level, Diderot is the better role model for writers I think. Writers' minds should be less theoretically intellectual and more encyclopedic. I think you'd really enjoy the book Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely by Andrew Curran, if you haven't read it already.
I need to check that Amis interview out, for sure. Thanks for the tip on that. Rousseau was close with Diderot and then had a bad falling out. Complex friendship. Yes: Right now the social contract has most certainly been torn badly. We need to repair that. Perhaps a contemporary Rousseau or Diderot?
We certainly need thinkers of that caliber more than ever. Thinkers who aren't just theoretical, don't just have a single expertise, and who can step outside the narratives of their society without being detached from people's needs. Traits that defined the Enlightenment greats, and without which Diderot couldn't finish the encyclopedia and Rousseau couldn't write about society with such totality. (I wouldn't include Voltaire here, as he fell for a narrative of the time that believed Poland's partition by autocratic monarchs was a benevolent form of progress.)
I don't know if the social contract can be repaired: we just don't have the same conditions as 1776, and too many people believe America is irredeemably evil. Doesn't mean the effort wouldn't be worthwhile. If these thinkers exist, and they can escape postmodern deconstructive thinking, who knows where that line of thought will go.
What a beautiful gift.
Thanks, Ben!
Haha!! Glad I made you laugh. Spider Man to the rescue!