Good memoirs can become a kind of history, describing a period of time through the eyes of an individual. Excellent memoirs can come to define such a period, or they can counteract dominant narratives of the time, adding dimension to history lessons. Tobias Wolff’s two memoirs, This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War, create this kind of voiced chronicle. This Boy’s Life, which is the October California Book Club selection, portrays Wolff’s childhood and coming-of-age in the 1950s, as he followed his mother across the country to the West and found his place. In Pharaoh’s Army relates Wolff’s service in the Vietnam War, beginning in 1967. In each book, American history comes into focus through the bold and transparent depiction of close relationships and singular moments. “The memoirist enjoys no such elevation from this human mess,” Wolff wrote in the introduction to the 30th-anniversary edition of This Boy’s Life. “No concealment from its scrutiny, no immunity from its judgments.”
Films, television shows, documentaries, and other memoirs have illuminated and rewritten time in this same way. The following works look at the same time periods about which Wolff thoughtfully wrote, adding more layers to his story.
Much of Wolff’s focus in This Boy’s Life is on his mother, a tenacious single woman in the era of domestic containment who lived under difficult circumstances. With limited opportunities and independence, she was in a situation that reflected the broader culture of the time, when women struggled to extend beyond or exit the sphere of domesticity. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, by Elaine Tyler May, creates a chorus of voices from this era, zeroing in on gender roles and the eventual collapse of this culture. Wolff experiences much of his mother’s suffering through the eyes of a male teenager; May’s book brings those times into sociohistorical focus. The PBS documentary Tupperware! takes a look at a subculture of living-room Tupperware parties that rose out of this domesticity—and the women across the country who were able to leverage them for their financial gain.
Wolff and Anne Moody were born five years apart, in the same country, both to poor parents. Both went on to write memoirs of their early life that reveal American culture of the 1950s, illuminating its unique failings. Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South traces her childhood in Mississippi in the early days of the civil rights movement, when the racism that was rampant in the South threatened her on a daily basis. Like Wolff, Moody seeks independence growing out of poverty and later embraces a cause larger than herself, finding her place in one of the movements that would later define the century.
When it comes to writing about wartime, memoirs by those on the front lines are often the most vivid. Taking place two years before Wolff began his service, We Were Soldiers Once…and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam is told by a U.S. army lieutenant general and a war reporter embedded with the army. It looks at the young men, including North Vietnamese commanders, who fought in the Vietnam War, experiencing atrocities and tragedies. The book was adapted into a film in 2002 titled We Were Soldiers, starring Mel Gibson.
For a more overarching look at the Vietnam War—the politics, the acts of brutality, the strategies—Ken Burns’s 10-part, 18-hour-long documentary series The Vietnam War recounts this history on a more epic scale. And like Wolff, Burns is attentive to voice. Those who lived through the war are at the center of this series, forming a collage of 80 voices. The result is both expansive and personal, with each new voice adding more depth to the past.
The United States dropped over seven million tons of bombs on Vietnam and neighboring Laos during the war, many of which failed to explode and lodged themselves in the ground. Civilians still uncover tens of thousands of explosives each year, sometimes with fatal consequences. The documentary Eternal Harvest features the civilians who have taken on the responsibility of clearing these bombs from Laos, including a handful of Americans.
Even decades after Wolff’s army service, history holds us in its grip—those who know it must decide where to go next.•
Join us on October 17 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Wolff will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and special guest Carol Edgarian to discuss This Boy’s Life. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
LONGING FOR CONVENTION
Clinical professor of law G.S. Hans writes eloquently about the deceptive nature of dreams in This Boy’s Life. —Alta
MACARTHUR PARK
Erik Himmelsbach-Weinstein reviews Jesse Katz’s The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA, a recounting of a 2007 SoCal murder that Himmelsbach-Weinstein calls “epic and essential.” —Alta
LITERARY RECOGNITION
Prior CBC author Percival Everett (James) and special guests Kaveh Akbar (Martyr!) and Miranda July (All Fours) are National Book Award finalists in fiction. Be sure to read their novels! —New York Times
PRE-BAN ABSINTHE FRAUD
On Saturday, October 12, at 4 p.m., expat journalist Evan Rail, originally from California, will be in conversation with Camper English at San Francisco’s Ferry Building to discuss Rail’s riveting true-crime book The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit. —Book Passage
BEYOND PALM TREES AND HOLLYWOOD
Ahead of the 2028 Olympics, 11 public intellectuals, including prior CBC authors Héctor Tobar, Venita Blackburn, D. J. Waldie, and Luis J. Rodriguez, were asked to reach beyond popular images to comment on the real Los Angeles of today. —Los Angeles Times
BAY AREA LITERARY SCENE
San Francisco’s Litquake is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Check the schedule for the festival’s exciting lineup of book events starting October 10, including a California Book Club party at the Verdi Club on October 18. —Litquake
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