Memphis Afternoons: A Memoir - Hardcover

Conaway, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395629454 ISBN 13: 9780395629451

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1993

Synopsis

James Conaway knew there was something wrong with his father before he let himself think about it. The signs were there, in unfocused phone calls and cryptic letters, but for a time they could be ignored. Finally, on a reporting trip to Memphis, his hometown, Conaway visited his parents and faced the facts: his father was sick; he was in the early stages of what proved to be Alzheimer's disease.
The dreaded illness is the inspiration for this beautifully written memoir of family and the South. As memory left his father, the author felt moved to recreate the world they had shared, to shore up as many fragments of the past as possible against oblivion.
As it happens, many of those fragments are outrageously funny. Memphis Afternoons takes us back to a 1950s society when the rules of southern gentlemanliness were still in effect, if only barely. This is a world where propriety had always fought a dubious battle with bourbon, and now was being defeated by the likes of Elvis Presley. With a rueful wit, Conaway artfully renders a youth of hunting and fishing trips, brawls, and debutante parties, of sexual and alcoholic and literary explorations. The story is told against a wistful background of another generation, his father's, told with a belated appreciation for that generation's ideals, hopes, and its diminished postwar reality.
Conaway writes of the idiosyncrasies of his family life with a keen yet tender sense of the absurd, particularly of a sometimes loving, mysterious relationship with his father. Linking the generations is an antiquated but powerful code of conduct, recalled here with extraordinary vividness and humor.

About this title

About the Author

James Conaway, the author of nine previous books, is a contributing editor for Preservation and a regular contributor to Smithsonian, National Geographic Traveler, and Food & Wine magazines, among many others.

From Kirkus Reviews

An affecting memoir that limns the sometimes bumpy journey to acceptance of one's people and the place they called home. On an assignment in his hometown of Memphis during the mid- 80's, Conaway (Napa, 1990, etc.) realized that his father's bizarre behavior was caused by something more profound than mere aging. The diagnosis of Alzheimer's meant that ``the comfortable melancholy'' Conaway had felt when returning home was replaced by an entirely different emotion--a sense of loss and of opportunities missed forever. This memoir is, in part, an attempt to answer all the questions the author had meant to ask his father but never did. Conaway--a member of the ``nowhere generation'' who grew up between the ``old post-World War Two verities'' and ``the opportunities and dangers inherent in the next social order''--records with wry humor his struggles to assert his independence in a family in which his father--who never completed his degree--dreamed of having a son as an engineer, and his mother--a sometime artist and daughter of a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist--longed for acceptance and fame in a city where social standing was all. The Memphis of Conaway's growing-up years was still in the thrall of the Old South and its rigid code of behavior. Segregation was a given--not only between white and black but between respectable whites and ``white trash'' (Elvis was officially recognized only when his fame attracted money to the city)--and the social life of Conaway and his peers was dominated by debutante balls and fraternity pledges. Old Memphis was a ``quirky'' place that didn't begin to change, the author says, until after the murder of Martin Luther King. Like all visits back home, a mix of humor, irritation, and love--as well as a deeply affecting tribute to a father who ``yearned for an immutable place where people and comforts, even foolish ones, endure.'' -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0395629454
• ISBN 13: 9780395629451
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 211