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Shop nowOh the Glory of It All
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Learn more"In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess." With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families.
Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City) is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse, "eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills." His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms, "You should wash your hands first, before you use the urinal. Not after. Your penis isn't dirty. But your hands are."
When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy.
With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)āOh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion.
Sean Wilsey's writing has appeared inĀ The London Review of Books,Ā The Los Angeles Times, andĀ McSweeney's Quarterly, where he is the editor at large. Before going toĀ McSweeney's,Ā he worked as an editorial assistant atĀ The New Yorker, a fact checker atĀ Ladies' Home Journal, a letters correspondent atĀ Newsweek, and an apprentice gondolier in Venice, Italy. He was born in San Francisco in 1970 and now lives with his wife, Daphne Beal, and his son, Owen.
Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. His stage appearances throughout the US includeĀ Cyrano,Ā Hamlet,Ā andĀ MacBeth. In the audio industry, Scott has won over 20 Earphones Awards, as well as the 2003 Audie Award in the Best Science Fiction category forĀ Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. After recording nearly 250 books in five years,Ā AudioFileĀ Magazine named Scott āone of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxyā and proclaimed him one of their Golden Voices. Brickās range is unparalleled as he reads thrillers to narrative nonfiction, from biographies to science fiction with aplomb.
Sean Wilsey's writing has appeared inĀ The London Review of Books,Ā The Los Angeles Times, andĀ McSweeney's Quarterly, where he is the editor at large. Before going toĀ McSweeney's,Ā he worked as an editorial assistant atĀ The New Yorker, a fact checker atĀ Ladies' Home Journal, a letters correspondent atĀ Newsweek, and an apprentice gondolier in Venice, Italy. He was born in San Francisco in 1970 and now lives with his wife, Daphne Beal, and his son, Owen.
Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. His stage appearances throughout the US includeĀ Cyrano,Ā Hamlet,Ā andĀ MacBeth. In the audio industry, Scott has won over 20 Earphones Awards, as well as the 2003 Audie Award in the Best Science Fiction category forĀ Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. After recording nearly 250 books in five years,Ā AudioFileĀ Magazine named Scott āone of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxyā and proclaimed him one of their Golden Voices. Brickās range is unparalleled as he reads thrillers to narrative nonfiction, from biographies to science fiction with aplomb.
Reviews
“The cliché ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ may well have been coined to describe Sean Wilsey’s wild, wise, and whip-smart memoir.” —Elle“[An] irreverent and remarkably candid memoir about growing up in wealthy eighties San Francisco . . . rollicking, ruthless . . . ultimately generous-hearted.” —Vogue
“A vivid mix of brio, self-awareness and sophistication . . . writing well is indeed the best revenge.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Sean Wilsey's magnificent memoir spares no one but forgives almost everything; it's a kindly act of retribution that's sure to ring a bell with any adult survivor of parental narcissism. A bell, hell. Oh the Glory of It All becomes a veritable carillon of remembered pain, never once losing its wise and worldly sense of humor. I couldn't stop reading the damn thing.” —Armistead Maupin
“Exuberant, honest, and unforgettable. Wilsey shows that great privilege doesn't guarantee bliss, but also doesn't preclude it. I'm glad he survived this odd/epic youth and emerged from it such a sane, generous, and funny narrator. My only regret is that he's not older than he is, since there would be more to read.” —George Saunders
“[A] startlingly honest tale. . . . The writing is vivid, detailed, deep, and filled with fresh metaphors.” —Publishers Weekly
“Honest to a fault, richly veined with indelible images: a monumental piece of work.” —Kirkus Reviews Expand reviews