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It's amazing how the
voice in a lot of these modern memoirs sounds the same. It's kind
of a weird, snarky approach that is somehow both detached and deeply
whiny. And just when you catch the author in a whoa-is-me moment,
he springs into the self-aware deprecation. This one in particular
is somehow a cross between Running
With Scissors and A Million
Little Pieces. You have the comedic, wacky family of the former,
and the rebellious self-destruction of the latter. I'm going to assume
this one is a little more truthful than Pieces, as a good
deal of Wilsey's life was played out in the San Francisco papers and
the national tabloids. He even backs up some of his stories and claims
about his evil stepmother and playboy dad with myriad quotes from
articles. Despite the documentation, it's still hard to believe that
everything Wilsey says is 100% accurate and truthful. I suppose that
dialogue is allowed to be bent and twisted and rethought and the gaps
filled in. After all, none of us walks around with a tape recorder
tucked in our belt or has a photographic memory (well, most of us).
Wilsey seems to have an amazing recall for not only his actions and
words, but his emotions as well. I, for one, can't remember what order
things came in just my senior year of college, let alone all my years
on this Earth. Granted, I didn't have a beautiful socialite mother
who was San Francisco's number one party hostess (and, in fact, had
her own column and series of books on the subject), who was eventually
thrown over by her rich husband for a famous romance novelist and
then her for best friend. The same mother who eventually decided to
not commit suicide for the moment to travel the world meeting
national heads of state to "save the children." Or an incredibly rich
dad with his own helicopter and a taste for the ladies. And an evil
stepmother who was once like a benevolent older sibling, but then
ruled the mansion with an iron claw. It's not to say that Wilsey uses
his bizarre family life as an excuse, but... Actually he does. It's
a book filled with what some could see as a rich kid whining "daddy
didn't love me" every other chapter. Some of his on-again off-again
dealings with his father seem a little trite at times, as he announces
that the two of them are finished, but then thirty pages later announces
the same thing with an even more perfect scene of the stand-offish
father showing his love in his own special way. From chapter to chapter,
the story is a compelling one much in the same way a Brtiney/Kevin
string in a series of US Magazines might be, but ultimately
it's the narrative of one guy's life that is most interesting to him
and a small pack of insiders. Perhaps that is the downfall of all
memoirs, really. Of course if I had been aware of this story when
it was happening back in the 80s, and could now read the inside dope
behind the tabloid pages, it would most likely be a real eye-opener.
Yes, people, money cannot buy happiness.
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