Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather

By Lee Gutkind

Book Overview

Dubbed-some would say drubbed-the "godfather behind creative nonfiction" by Vanity Fair, Lee Gutkind takes the opportunity of these essays, and the rich material of his own life, to define, defend, and further expand the genre he has done so much to shape. The result is an explosive and hilarious memoir of Gutkind's colorful life as a motorcyclist, a medical insider, a sailor, a college professor, an over-aged insecure father, and a literary whipping boy. In Forever Fat Gutkind battles his weight, his ex-wives, his father, his rabbi, his psychiatrist, and his critics in a lifelong cross-country, cross-cultural search for stability and identity. And from Gutkind's battles, the reader emerges a winner, treated to a sometimes poignant, sometimes harrowing, sometimes uproarious, and always engrossing story of the simultaneous awakening of a man and his mission, and of the constant struggle, in literature and in life, to sort out memory and imagination. Here, enacted in technicolor terms, is the universal, symbolic truth that no matter how far you travel, over how many years, you will never completely shed the weighty baggage of adolescence. Yet, as Gutkind proves again and again, he has learned to describe his burden with an ever-lightening brilliance. Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction. The author and editor of a dozen books, including the award-winning Many Sleepless Nights: The World of Organ Transplantation, he is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the director of the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Writers' Conference at Goucher College.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803233582
• ISBN13: 9780803233584
• Release Date: July 2010
• Publisher: Bison
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A brief and memorable collection of personal stories

This is an impressive book everyone should read. Lee Gutkind starts off with a brief essay on being the "Godfather of creative nonfiction." When I read that, I thought "What IS creative nonficiton?"I got my answer by reading the rest of the book. Gutkind writes autobiographical stories. He is comfortable approaching autobiography as an artform, one where you keep the stories interesting using the tools any fiction writer would use: good dialogue, parallel anecdotes, and vivid descriptions followed by heartfelt reflection. He tells you what happened, then he tells you how he feels about it.It's a lot like Bukowski. Gutkind's life is completely different, but he writes for the same purpose, and with the same honesty, as Bukowski. By the end of the book, you feel you know the man. You feel like you read something REAL, not just another book of made-up, escapist fiction.I'd give it five stars if it was just a little less middle class. Let's say it's a four-and-a-half star book.