Duke of Deception

by Geoffrey Wolff

Book Overview

Duke Wolff was a flawless specimen of the American clubman -- a product of Yale and the OSS, a one-time fighter pilot turned aviation engineer. Duke Wolff was a failure who flunked out of a series of undistinguished schools, was passed up for military service, and supported himself with desperately improvised scams, exploiting employers, wives, and, finally, his own son. In The Duke of Deception, Geoffrey Wolff unravels the enigma of this Gatsbyesque...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140096086
• ISBN13: 9780140096088
• Release Date: December 1986
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 275 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 1.0" x 1.0"

Customer Reviews

The Duke is a pleasure.

Excellent book. Fascinating story about how a son dealt with flawed parents. His father's escapades are great fun, and he got away with things that you could probably not get away with today. However, it did all catch up with him. Not your usual memoir.

Forgive, But Don't Forget

For those who have read Tobias Wolff's memoir This Boy's Life, Geoffrey Wolff's The Duke of Deception fills in many gaps. Where This Boy's Life focuses on a rather short period of a couple years in Tobias Wolff's life, The Duke of Deception covers the life of their father, Arthur. The writing style is much more formal than Toby's book. When he describes his often rocky relationship with his mother, it sounds almost like a psychologist's file than a son talking about his mother. "My mother is not cold, and she is not stiff. She has been infailingly warm and loving with my boys, and with my wife. She laughs a lot, teases, likes to be teased. But neither of us, I think, trusted the other's love" (48). The formality adds greatly to the older and wiser narrator, creating a sense of distance. It takes some getting used to, but as the book progresses, it became clearer that this formality is a way of distancing Geoffrey from some of the more painful memories. The further you get into the book, the further you want to read on. As Geoffrey gets older and older, he begins to understand his father's cons and note them more carefully. The reader is entrapped, anxious to see when Arthur will finally exploit everyone who cares about him, and even more anxious to see how Geoffrey could possibly forgive his father. Even as Geoffrey despises his father's cons, he finds himself falling into Arthur's ways. "As I liked him less and less I became more and more like him. I felt trapped" (197). The story's a little slow at first, filled with family history, "My father Arthur was delivered by his father Arthur at home on Spring Street in Hartford, November 22, 1907" (13). This history becomes important as Geoffrey begins to untangle his father's life. Wolff keeps the reader's attention by injecting vivid scenes from his childhood into the narration of dry facts. Overall, this book was a fantastic story of a son coming to terms with his father's crimes and then having the ability to forgive him for it.

A man of his time and place

I've read this book two or three times, and enjoy it more and more. I know why it appeals to me: Duke Wolff was like a lot of old men I've known, mostly the fathers and uncles of friends, who grew up in the 20s and 30s. A type of his place and time--a snob who bragged about old school ties when those things meant a lot, a glad-handing hustler and outrageous self-promoter during a time when self-delusive salesmanship and resume-padding were widely accepted as a virtuous means of self-advancement. As the years go by I reflect less on the character of Duke and more on that of the author. What a sniffy, snobbish, spoiled young man he was duirng his Choate and Princeton years, and how much of that is still clinging to him in his forties as he struggles to come to terms with the fact that his father was a lifelong liar, thief, psychopath and at last a jailbird. His brother Tobias's memories of Duke (in the memoir, In Pharoah's Army) give a much better picture of their father in his last years, because they describe just a few dinners and conversations, and hence aren't weighted down by the overwhelming sadness and shame that Geoffrey feels. Superficially, Toby may be said to be the better writer-as-craftsman. Geoffrey is far and away the better thinker.

There Must Be a Gene for Literary Talent

How else can we explain the phenomenon of Tobias and Geoffrey Wolff, two of our most accomplished writers, brothers raised apart in separate and uniquely bizarre circumstances? Devotees of THIS BOY'S LIFE should also enjoy THE DUKE OF DECEPTION, though the latter has a retrospective, adult tone absent in the former. The opening passage, where the author, now an adult with sons of his own, learns of the death of his dissolute but charming father, is a masterpiece. If I taught writing, I would tell my students, "If you can acheive what Geoffrey Wolff does in that small scene, you have done it all."

A tormented, painfully honest coming-to-terms memoir.

Geoffrey Wolff's reaction to the news of his father's death? "Thank God." As the friend who bore the bad news pulled away in revulsion, Wolff realized how deep his feelings ran. The statement was a response to learning that it was his father, not one of his young sons who had died, but a full explantion was required. Wolff, in a series of honest personal revelations, turns an expert biographers' eye to his own family. Duke Wolff wanted to be many things, in fact succeeded in working as an executive in the aerospace industry without having any knowledge of engineering. Duke's self-designed coat-of-arms was supposed to read, "No Apologies," but in the garbled Latin actually tranlated as "Leave No Trace." That was Duke's goal, acknowledged or not, to re-make himself and his family in his own optimistic, dangerous con-man image, a life where improvidence was met with more improvidence, a life where it seemed as though tomorrow would never come. Geoffrey Wolff's *Duke of Deception* is a companion read to *This Boy's Life,* written by Tobias Wolff, his brother. Here is unique opportunity to view the divergent raods taken within the same family. Geoffrey Wolff spares himself nothing, not allowing the full catalog of blame to rest with his father, understanding all to clearly the consequences of refusing to acknowledge and accept yourself