The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See

by Naomi Wolf and Leonard Wolf

Book Overview

Leonard Wolf, a retired professor now in his early eighties, is the kind of person who likes to use a medieval astrolabe, dress in Basque shepherd's clothing, and convince otherwise sensible people to quit their jobs and follow their passions. Leonard believes that inside everyone is an artist, and that happiness in life depends on valuing and acting upon one's creative impulse. In The Treehouse, her most personal book yet, Naomi Wolf...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 074324978X
• ISBN13: 9780743249782
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A window on a favorite author of mine....

Have always appreciated Naomi Wolf's works and this book gives the reader a peek inside the home that helped make her the woman that she is. The only issue I have with her writing style in this books is how she goes back and forth from calling her Dad by his first name and then simply referring to him a Dad. Loved reading about the different periods on both coasts that she have live in, which gives the reader a glimpse into the life of a well traveled woman, who also lived a unique life that was very much life the places she happened to be living in. Loved reading about her 'nearly derelict house in the midst of a desolate meadow that was dense with thorns' in New York State. And the tid bits about the state of the house as they set about to make it livable, the daffodils poking out in the midst of nowhere. The various lessons she writes about are: Be Still and Listen, Use Your Imagination, Destroy the Box, Speak in Your Own Voice, Identify Your Hearts Desire, Do Nothing Without Passion, Be Disciplined With Your Gift, Pay Attention to the Details, Your Only Wage Will Be Joy, Mistakes Are Part of the Draft, Frame Your Work, Sign It and Let It Go.

This book is a keeper!

This book came highly recommended by my dad ~~ he was recommended to read it by one of his photographer friends. This book is definitely a keeper in my library! It is intense, thoroughly thoughtful, honest and engaging. While the lessons may be geared to writers, it really is geared to everyone. There is a creative bent in each of us and our life is just as important as some of the well-known writers/artists. We have to strive to find the peace deep within us and Wolf's father was just simply pointing it out to the reader. In today's world, life is hectic and stressful enough that sometimes, we wake up one day and realize this is not where we want to be. It doesn't matter who you are ~~ you matter. It's that simple. Leonard, Naomi's father, was just mentioning that life is too short for regrets. Now he's not advocating drugs or wild sex or anything like that. He's advocating that each of us find deep within ourselves how to be a much better person because each of us has so much to offer to the world. Obviously, we all can't be Monets, but we can strive for that. The basic lesson is to find our creative vein and discover just what it is that makes individuals happy and unique in their lives. In this book, this author's family and herself have found a wild corner in Boston's Corners where they had to basically rebuild the house from bottom up and clear the land. Her daughter wanted a treehouse built and Naomi decided to help her build one. Through their building sessions or anything, Naomi and her father would talk. Sometimes friends would join them and other times, it was just them. This book is like a treehouse ~~ starts off slowly and uncertainly then by the end, it's radiant and beautiful with the joy flowing from the author's pen. Despite the heaviness of the topics sometimes, I never found this book to be a drag. Instead, I find this book to be joyous and uplifting and encouraging. It was an intimate book between author and reader. We're in this together, me reading her thoughts which flowed very eloquently, by the way, and her sharing her insights of what she has learned from her father and life experiences. It is encouraging in the sense that you feel your spirit awakening and you're reaching for a highlighter to mark certain passages just because it speaks to the heart. It is uplifting to know that it's never to late to find your dream again and strive to make it come true. I will rate this one as one of my top ten reads of 2005. I have never read any of Naomi Wolf's books before though I have heard of her. This book is just inspirational in itself and it is definitely one that I would recommend to every serious reader. It is joyful and wonderful that it's just a perfect addition to your library! 12-20-05

A Book to change your life

I heard Naomi Wolf being interviewed on NPR about this book. The interview and a short passage she read prompted me to buy the book. I am so glad I did... It's filled with lessons I have learned from many diverse sources over the years. It's so nice to have these lessons now contained in one entertaining and heartfelt volume. The love she has for her father and the passion and wisdom he imparts to her (which she is finally starting to appreciate) is joyously and entertainingly shared within these pages. I am going to reread The Tree House often and share it with family and friends. This is one of those books that can change your life. I only wish Naomi's father Leonard was still teaching. It would have been grand to be his student.

Summer School: The Art of Living

This is a beautiful book, a tribute not only to a father, but also to an extraordinary teacher with a passion for living. Naomi Wolf shares her father's poetic wisdom, lesson by lesson, by recounting a summer spent building a tree house with her children, her friends, and of course, her father, Leonard. As she looks to him for advice on how to build this metaphorical house, she opens herself to his wisdom in helping her to become a better teacher. She, in turn, teaches us. The Treehouse is a book that should be read by every aspiring writer. Each lesson begins with a description of what Leonard is wearing, from a yellow rain slicker like Paddington Bear, to an "intellectual-in-the-1970s outfit," to a red flannel Basque shepherd's shirt and Argentine gaucho hat, and also tells what strange (or conventional) brew he is drinking. In addition to his outfits, Wolf's descriptive writing allows us to see his thick white eyebrows dance with expression and hear his voice as he lyrically speaks in quotes from Thoreau, Emerson, Chaucer, Dickenson, etc. Throughout the lessons, Wolf lapses into memoir, recounting her San Francisco childhood, and a small bit about her rise to fame after the publication of "The Beauty Myth," but only because it helps to explain the person she had become in spite of (or perhaps, because of) her father. Even more interesting is the biographic account of her father's bohemian life. In the final lesson, as Leonard teaches the need to own your creative work, to "sign it and let it go," to me, the words that spoke the loudest were: "Once the work is out in the world, it is none of your business what your readers make of it." Again, wonderful advice for writers. As for reviewers . . . I felt the need to review this book and give it my highest recommendation. Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.

A Treasurable Tribute

This daughter's tribute to her father is a very compelling and, at times, disturbing read. I say disturbing because Leonard Wolf is both a towering, magnetic intellect and passionately even dogmatically convicted, "all or nothing" personality. As T. S. Eliot said of Samuel Johnson, "he is a dangerous man to disagree with." In the section titled, Do Nothing Without Passion, I did feel much empathy for a poor soul named, Malcolm, against whom I felt, as he was an absent and shunned husband, Naomi and Leonard united. At a climactic moment when Leonard, Naomi, and Malcolm's wife are discussing the wife's marriage, Leonard invokes a passage from Chaucer's, Troilus and Criseyde, to proclaim, "Chaucer is saying that after a while, Criseyde felt no pain at the absence of Troilus. If a string with knots was pulled through a heart, it would hurt! No knots, no pain. You marry someone if you literally cannot live without them; if they have made knots in your heart that cannot ever be released, by time, by distance. About marriage, it means, in plain words: if there is no passion, forget it" Aside from Leonard probably being right, painful as that is to process, I would have to ask both Leonard and Naomi, how would you feel if your wife or husband were the beneficiary of such an exhortation by the well-intentioned in your absence? As a father of two independent daughters I was yet extremely moved by Naomi Wolf's tribute to her father; thrilled also by the generosity with which she shared so much and so intimately from his views and his life. Leonard Wolf is, I emphasize, a man of intense vibrancy and depth that goes far beyond his horror fiction scholarship. Estimable as his criticism is, I have long known and sought his other many sides as poet, dramatist, and novelist (perhaps this book will spark a Leonard Wolf revival so we can finally enjoy his science fiction poetry and his dramatization of The Rape of Lock among other works that have never been widely available). I also must confess that I came to the book very eagerly and very eagerly biased as I was very blessed to have been a part of his Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, seminar in back in 1971 when I experienced the man first hand. His teaching went way beyond the seminar subject, and it has had a huge impact on my life. "No one, absolutely no one, is exonerated from the love experience," I can still his deep, soft voice intoning. He took that observation to an explanation of how Emily Dickinson had so much more to say about love than Walt Whitman did (I sure as hell agree with him on that). At first glance many of the title headings, such as Use Your Imagination and Identify Your Hearts Desire might appear to be from a book that is just another spin from the vast amount of banality flooding out of the human potential movement. As one reads the accounts in the book, however, one can see how Leonard Wolf lives his values in such a convincing way that one must confront him directly, eithe