Getting Real Drifting Into Middle Age Peter Weissman 9781457530739 Books
Download As PDF : Getting Real Drifting Into Middle Age Peter Weissman 9781457530739 Books
In 1978, when Peter moves back to Manhattan, it's a different world. The kids zipping around Washington Square Park on rollerblades aren't hippies; they leave him feeling old and irrelevant. But there are others like him, a generation fading into history more quickly than he would have imagined. He reconnects with it and his aging past through an old pal who introduces him to a subculture obsessed with feminism and sexual politics, instead of civil rights and the old antiwar movement. Ten years in the cocoon of a safe and eventually unsatisfying marriage have left him unprepared for the raging battle of the sexes. In bemusement, he stumbles through a noir period of casual liaisons and tenuous friendships, takes odd writing jobs to pay the rent on an overpriced studio apartment, and like a Trollope innocent, finds himself editing a weekly newspaper that fronts for a labor racketeering operation. He then latches onto freelance work for book publishers, which rekindles his own enduring obsession to write a great novel about the sixties. That nostalgia for the best and worst of times, or just youth itself, is the subtext of Getting Real as the intrepid narrator moves sardonically through ill-suited relationships and renovated neighborhoods in discrete, interlocking stories as he encounters life's surprising, unpredictable turning points.
Peter Weissman has been writing about himself for forty years. In I Think, Therefore Who Am I? he's an East Village hippie, and in Digging Deeper a Manhattan office worker enduring an ironic rehabilitation to society following his psychedelic drug year. He meets his first wife, an art student, quits his job, and with youthful exuberance the two of them relocate to Berkeley, an outpost of itinerant poets, writers, and spiritual seekers. But there's not much work, and he ends up at the Oakland post office, casing and delivering mail ten hours day. It's a miserable gig, though in retrospect, writing about it, a good microcosm of politics and racism in the seventies. In Getting Real, back in Manhattan, single and beginning anew again, he's still looking for work that suits him. After several false starts he stumbles into freelance editing, and with the same go-with-the-flow tao that characterizes his younger iterations, answers a personal ad in the Village Voice, meets the woman who will become his second wife, and settles in as a stay-at-home father in Brooklyn-until they uproot to the country. Today, the author and his wife Rita still live in Woodstock, upstate. Against the background of changing seasons, prominent in Getting Real, he edits manuscripts, exercises by bicycling in summer and splitting wood in winter, and throughout the year wrestles with cabin fever, which has become part of his psyche.
Getting Real Drifting Into Middle Age Peter Weissman 9781457530739 Books
In Getting Real, author Peter Weissman recounts various experiences from his life from the late seventies up through the nineties. Each chapter presents a self-contained episode -- sometimes comical, sometimes bittersweet, but always thoughtful -- which ultimately fit together to paint a picture of both the era and the author.Some of my favorite chapters cover Weissman’s time as an editor for a labor oriented weekly. The stories of pulling all-nighters to finish putting a newspaper together before deadline are fascinating to me. I have spent some time myself writing for various media outlets, and while modern technological advances have certainly made things easier for writers today, I can’t help but romanticize the days of physically setting page layouts. I would be plenty happy just reading about that, but the newsroom setting is just the backdrop for an even more intriguing story. Eventually Weissman learns that there are some shady things going on behind the scenes with the paper, and after he upsets the upper management, he decides to goes out in a blaze of glory. One cannot help but cheer for the author throughout.
It was perhaps a given that I would enjoy the anecdotes about newspapers and copyediting, considering my own background as a writer. What was more surprising was how much the other parts of the book resonated with me as well. Peter Weissman comes from a very different world than I do. We grew up in different eras, on different coasts, and come from fairly different backgrounds. Despite that, my mind kept returning to a part early on in the book where, while discussing favorite authors in a Manhattan bar, a friend of Weissman’s remarks: “Life doesn’t change much. The same things we experience now, they experienced then.”
I found this sentiment to be equally true with Getting Real. While the stories contained within are uniquely Weissman’s, and filtered through his own personal lens, the feelings and topics are universal. Things like finding love, starting a family, and making a home. How relationships change as you get older, or how people that were once close friends begin to drift away as you grow apart. And of course, how with time we are reminded more and more of our own mortality, as family members and loved ones pass on, leaving us to consider our own legacy.
The very end of the book tells the story of a family friend's final year, and ultimately his funeral. Weissman notes that the funeral -- largely organized by the deceased before his passing -- covers many of the man's accomplishments but makes no mention of the man as a father or husband. This bothers the author at first, but he ultimately decides that is okay if his friend chose to be remembered in his best possible light.
That this is the book's final thought paints an interesting contrast to the fact that the book chronicles many of Weissman's own struggles as a husband and father. For all of the interesting tales Weissman shares with the reader, not once does he go out of his way to paint himself in a positive light -- you never get the sense that he is twisting stories or changing details to make himself look better. Rather it seems Weissman is only interested in presenting himself on the page simply as he is, for better or for worse.
It is that sincerity that makes Weissman’s writing such a pleasure to read. I highly recommend this book.
Product details
|
Tags : Getting Real: Drifting Into Middle Age [Peter Weissman] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In 1978, when Peter moves back to Manhattan, it's a different world. The kids zipping around Washington Square Park on rollerblades aren't hippies; they leave him feeling old and irrelevant. But there are others like him,Peter Weissman,Getting Real: Drifting Into Middle Age,Dog Ear Publishing, LLC,1457530732,Biography & Autobiography General,Biography Autobiography,Biography: general,General
People also read other books :
- Speedway Auto racing ghost tracks SS Collins Gavin Ireland eBook
- The House Of The Seven Gables JBS Classics 100% Formatted Illustrated edition by Nathaniel Hawthorne Literature Fiction eBooks
- Sinful Desires Vol 4 edition by M S Parker Literature Fiction eBooks
- Plot Line edition by Alton Gansky Religion Spirituality eBooks
- How to Sell Your Home for Maximum Return eBook Dave Sampson
Getting Real Drifting Into Middle Age Peter Weissman 9781457530739 Books Reviews
The series is well worth reading as this memoir series is quite accessible, written in a conversational and straightforward style. Each one (this is the third in the series) gives a memorable depiction of the historical context in which its story is told. For some, it will be history you have lived through and for others it will bring you to a time you might wish you had experienced. You'll want to know how life unfolds for Peter and the people about whom he writes. They will remind you of folks you know (or wish you did) and you will think about them long after you've finished reading. We know that life has its seasons and that we are different in each of them. Peter is a bit of a different person in each season of his life, making each book quite different because HE is so different in each -- and yet you will relate the person he is in each one. Getting Real and the others in the series pull you along into a fascinating journey. Like all good memoirs, you can eavesdrop from a safe distance and enjoy the ride.
Peter Weissman is an amazing author who takes you into a deep, profound awareness of what it means to make decisions that affect a lifetime. He deftly takes the reader on an infinitely thoughtful journey that encompasses youthful idealism, intoxicated lust and the evolution of a mature understanding of what it means to live an enriched and fulfilling life.
Getting Real is Peter revealing so much of the inner workings of his mind and his soul that one feels a sense of rapture in literally stepping into the incarnation of another human being in another place. Peter segues between Manhattan and country life in a manner that makes one sort of long for both in different ways.
I like how Peter takes us into the milieu of the Jewish experience while taking all of it with a healthy grain of salt, or not, depending on your flavor. We experience what it is like to learn to get along with an in-law; learn to deal with sometimes difficult co-workers; and trying to learn how to work with a spouse in a hopefully collaborative and mutually beneficial and respectful manner.
Peter has a masterful writing style and a flair for elegant and detailed expositions of everyday things. As real as an intensely vivid day in your life can be is what Peter delivers in all of his books. You are treated to savory nuances of sentient experience and deeply contemplative gems. Have a glass of wine with each chapter…
Getting Real is about experiencing life when surviving cancer; learning to love and encourage those closest to us; and ultimately about gleaning great, mystical insights that we can treasure and share with others when the time is right…before, during, or after “Middle Age.”
In Getting Real, author Peter Weissman recounts various experiences from his life from the late seventies up through the nineties. Each chapter presents a self-contained episode -- sometimes comical, sometimes bittersweet, but always thoughtful -- which ultimately fit together to paint a picture of both the era and the author.
Some of my favorite chapters cover Weissman’s time as an editor for a labor oriented weekly. The stories of pulling all-nighters to finish putting a newspaper together before deadline are fascinating to me. I have spent some time myself writing for various media outlets, and while modern technological advances have certainly made things easier for writers today, I can’t help but romanticize the days of physically setting page layouts. I would be plenty happy just reading about that, but the newsroom setting is just the backdrop for an even more intriguing story. Eventually Weissman learns that there are some shady things going on behind the scenes with the paper, and after he upsets the upper management, he decides to goes out in a blaze of glory. One cannot help but cheer for the author throughout.
It was perhaps a given that I would enjoy the anecdotes about newspapers and copyediting, considering my own background as a writer. What was more surprising was how much the other parts of the book resonated with me as well. Peter Weissman comes from a very different world than I do. We grew up in different eras, on different coasts, and come from fairly different backgrounds. Despite that, my mind kept returning to a part early on in the book where, while discussing favorite authors in a Manhattan bar, a friend of Weissman’s remarks “Life doesn’t change much. The same things we experience now, they experienced then.”
I found this sentiment to be equally true with Getting Real. While the stories contained within are uniquely Weissman’s, and filtered through his own personal lens, the feelings and topics are universal. Things like finding love, starting a family, and making a home. How relationships change as you get older, or how people that were once close friends begin to drift away as you grow apart. And of course, how with time we are reminded more and more of our own mortality, as family members and loved ones pass on, leaving us to consider our own legacy.
The very end of the book tells the story of a family friend's final year, and ultimately his funeral. Weissman notes that the funeral -- largely organized by the deceased before his passing -- covers many of the man's accomplishments but makes no mention of the man as a father or husband. This bothers the author at first, but he ultimately decides that is okay if his friend chose to be remembered in his best possible light.
That this is the book's final thought paints an interesting contrast to the fact that the book chronicles many of Weissman's own struggles as a husband and father. For all of the interesting tales Weissman shares with the reader, not once does he go out of his way to paint himself in a positive light -- you never get the sense that he is twisting stories or changing details to make himself look better. Rather it seems Weissman is only interested in presenting himself on the page simply as he is, for better or for worse.
It is that sincerity that makes Weissman’s writing such a pleasure to read. I highly recommend this book.
0 Response to "[WRL]≫ PDF Free Getting Real Drifting Into Middle Age Peter Weissman 9781457530739 Books"
Post a Comment