Revere Beach Elegy - Hardcover

Merullo, Roland

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807072443 ISBN 13: 9780807072448

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 2002

Synopsis

The author recalls his childhood growing up in Revere, Massachusettes, which greatly influenced his life.

About this title

About the Author

Roland Merullo is the author of Revere Beach Boulevard, A Russian Requiem, and Leaving Losapas. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

Through a series of loosely connected essays, Merullo (Revere Beach Boulevard) leads readers from his boyhood to the present day in a memoir of the spirit. It is also a memoir of discovery: on scholarship at the elite Exeter Academy, Merullo encounters the class structures that exist beyond his beloved Revere Beach (a working-class suburb of Boston) and realizes his affinity for the Russian language. In the Russia of the late 1970s, he begins his search to find "truth... in the deep murky reaches of the interior world rather than in titles, philosophies and categories." This pursuit leads him to the practice and ideals of Buddhism (though he acknowledges his deep Italian-Catholic roots). Turning his back on the bourgeois life his father so valued, Merullo trades comfort and security for adventure: in the Peace Corps, in an unheated house in Vermont, during some months as a cab driver. So maybe these aren't particularly adventurous adventures, but Merullo still writes about them and about the people and places of his life with careful reflection and painstaking kindness. It is difficult to be good, Merullo implies, so why not settle for blanket optimism? What Merullo appears to be looking for, after his years in Russia and Micronesia and living hand to mouth, is some kind of empathy within himself for the less fortunate. Before his journeys, Merullo admits, the "lights would always be green for me," it's now time, he says, to scrape "one layer of comfort from my life."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

This is a collection of personal essays about one boomer's upbringing and eventual rejection of parental expectations. The essays are grounded in Merullo's finely honed sense of place--Novosibirsk, Truk Atoll, Rome, and Boston are all stages for Merullo's reflections on his purpose in life. The opening essay, while plumbing his father's sorrows and ingrained "fake-gruff" attitudes, deftly develops the community conventions of Merullo's Italian immigrant hometown of Revere, Massachusetts. Showered with a first-class education at Phillips Exeter Academy and Boston University, he squandered it (according to his parents) with feckless pursuits such as driving a cab in Boston while writing on the side. Another outlet for his idealism was the Peace Corps, where he was given the job of codifying in writing the customs of a South Pacific clan, and his failure at this task is described in richly sardonic, self-deprecating prose. The great sensitivity with which Merullo expresses his journey of self-exploration is what fans of the form will be unable to resist. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

As Merullo (Revere Beach Boulevard) reminisces about his childhood in Revere, MA, the picture emerges of a close Italian American family headed by a father who, despite tragedy in his early life, managed to be an enduring presence and role model for his son. Earning a law degree at 54 while juggling a family and full-time work, Merullo's father left a legacy Roland would not easily forget. Yet Roland makes his own way, slowly at first, winning a scholarship to Exeter Academy and then moving on to Boston University, Brown, and the Peace Corps before finding his niche as a writer. One of the most engaging episodes of the book concerns his traveling to Italy with his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law. They find themselves in the small village of Parolise, his grandmother's birthplace, with nowhere to spend the night. When he asks some women on the street for lodging suggestions, one woman offers her own house, insisting that it's no trouble to move her children next door for the night. Revealing a deep sense of spirituality, Merullo writes with warmth and a refreshing openness that will endear him to readers. Recommended for large public libraries. Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Pr
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807072443
• ISBN 13: 9780807072448
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 214