Average customer rating: 
|
A Memoir of No One in Particular: In Which Our Author Indulges in Naïve Indiscretions, a Self-aggrandizing Solipsism, and an Off-putting Infatuation with His Own Bodily Functions
Harris , and Daniel Harris Manufacturer: Basic Books ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback  General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Memoirs
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Gay & Lesbian
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Nonfiction
| Gay & Lesbian
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Gay Men
| Special Groups
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Look Inside Biographies
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
ASIN: 0465028454 |
Book Description
A Memoir of No One in Particular is an autobiography of someone who purports to have no particular genius, experienced no formative tragedy, learned no life-affirming lessons, have no dead parents, no restaurant to run, no loony bin to escape from, no sexual affair with a parent in his past, and no sex with famous people in his future. Instead, Daniel Harris bravely delves into the hitherto unexplored banality of his everyday life. The result is an honest, inventive, unpredictably hilarious confessional.Customer Reviews:
A delight ..........2005-03-20
Sit-down comedy and much, much more.......2002-04-03
In a dozen intensely personal and readable chapters - among them "Writing," "Dressing," "Laughing," "Speaking and Listening," "Cleaning and Decorating," "Lying," "Reading," and others on sex and sexual preferences and practices, Harris generously hosts a tour - of his past, his present, and himself. He doesn't stint on self-criticism, either. In fact, he pathologizes his often quite harmless behaviors sometimes. Does he not know that hardly any men throw out old T-shirts? He has not talked to wives, for he seems to think there's something abnormal about his masculine habit of saving his worn-out clothes, calling it "my irrational tendency to hoard superannuated garments." You will laugh.
Harris grew up in "a liberal, middle class family," his father an accomplished Jewish academic and then a psychotherapist and his mother " a disaffected Southern Baptist, a country girl." He's appalled at some of his family tree - specifically, the Southern Baptist branch that lynched a black man. When he told his dad he was gay, his father thought it might be curable, and offered his son a home version of electro convulsive therapy. Harris smartly refused.
Sometimes it seems that he is his own worst enemy - but he's also his own best friend. He loves to shop, he can't afford expensive stuff, and his reportage is hilarious. He wants to be alone (needs to - in order to read and to write), and also longs for contact and communion. Life can be hard, and he tells you why. His lifelong best friend, a man named Philip, was killed tragically in Lebanon. He is "obsessed with straight men," and envies what he imagines is their easier lives, free of the fetishes and compulsions that Harris assumes are the ken of gay men. He loves conversation, and he's doubtless very good at it - but it distresses and disappoints him, because it is so inferior to his written words. But talk he must, and he deconstructs his conversational style ("I pour on the plain American accent so unconvincingly that at times my voice cracks like a prepubescent boy's, the mellifluousness of the elegant gay man giving way to the abrupt, hard-boiled delivery of a character out of a Raymond Chandler novel.") - along with dozens of other parts of his life. He writes about sex and his own proclivities, and traverses the complicated terrain of his own desires in intensely personal ways.
These are great autobiographical essays that are history, confession, and successful self-examination. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Harris is a brave and trusting man. In this self-deprecatingly titled book he's trusted his readers with his life. It's an act of faith, and of love. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Books: