In My Father's Footsteps: A Memoir

Matthews, Sebastian

ISBN 10: 0393057380 / ISBN 13: 9780393057386

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2004

About this Item

SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page, PESONALIZED INSCRIPTION BY AUTHOR on half title page, 1ST PRINTING WITH FULL NUMBER LINE, no other marks noted in text,AND AS ALWAYS SHIPPED IN 24 HOURS; and emailed to you a USPS tracking number on all orders; all books are sanitized and cleaned for your protection before mailing. PLEASE NOTE OVER SEAS BUYERS if the book extra large or heavy there will be additional postage due to the new US Postage rates. Seller Inventory # 140721015C

Bibliographic Details

Title: In My Father's Footsteps: A Memoir

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Publication Date: 2004

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Signed: Signed

About this title

Synopsis:

A brilliant father, a complicated legacy, and a son's hard-won journey of self-discovery.

William Matthews was a much-admired, award-winning poet and teacher who lived hard and died suddenly in 1997 at the age of fifty-five. He was a jazz fan, a wit and raconteur, a connoisseur of fine food and wine, and a thrice-married womanizer.

This clear-eyed, often wryly funny memoir pays homage to a charismatic father as the son struggles to step out from his considerable shadow. In examining his father's death (and life), Sebastian Matthews explores his own chaotic past. A child of divorce, he was shuttled throughout his boyhood between parents and many geographies. In a confusing symbiotic time between Bill's marriages, the teenage son and his father "were roommates and drinking buddies―I took care of him; he parented me." Later came the son's wanderings, the failed commitments.

Finally Sebastian learns to confront Bill's mixed legacy. Striving to emulate the best of that "sad, happy man," he discovers new definitions of home, love, and marriage.

Review:

A son's relationship with his father can have profound bittersweet turns as boy grows into man. As Sebastian Matthews relates in this touching, often achingly personal memoir, that journey can be even more trying when son follows famous father's footsteps in both profession and personal dysfunction. William Matthews was a renowned, financially successful poet and academic, a seasoned lover of wine, women and song. His sudden death at 55 both shatters and focuses his son, and spurs him to a literary reconciliation that is as haunting as it is heart-rending. For beneath the elder Matthews' refined, world-wise tastes and sharp-witted poetry lie tragic compulsions--the very same trappings that seem to bless Sebastian with an uber-cool adolescence prove to have their own dark, destructive lining. Sebastian is not out to desconstruct his father, but rather to refine a deeper understanding and acceptance of him and their relationship--love is almost too tepid a word for it. --Jerry McCulley