A writer tells--through memoirs that take the reader from Greenwich Village to the Matterhorn--how he learned the lessons of order, serenity, and family courage, especially after battling a near-fatal heart attack. 15,000 first printing.
With these interwoven autobiographical essays, Geoffrey Wolff, author of the acclaimed The Duke of Deception, recounts the moral (and immoral) education of a writer, friend, husband, and father, as he offers his spirited, elegant, and deeply felt observations on an extraordinary life: from wildly dysfunctional childhood Christmases to a concupiscent career teaching literature in Istanbul; from a victory over the chaos of drink to a life-affirming surrender to the majesty of the Matterhorn; and from a foundering friendship to the transcending love of family. He shares with us, then, the wisdom of an alert man learning through the unsettling collisions of time, place, and local custom, and through the force of hardship and hazard, to bring his many disparate selves together -- with astonishing high-stakes candor and dazzling literary agility.
In this essay collection, now with a new introduction by Ann Patchett, Geoffrey Wolff recounts the moral (and sometimes immoral) education of a writer, friend, husband, and father. He shows us his wildly dysfunctional childhood Christmasespresided over by his con-man fatherthen shifts to his brash, short-lived teaching career in Istanbul. With dazzling literary agility, Wolff guides us through the surprising, invaluable turns that shaped his path: his victory over the chaos of drink, his open-heart surgery, his life-affirming surrender to the slopes of the Matterhorn, and his transcendent love of family. Long considered a classic, now expanded and back in print after two decades, A Day at the Beach shares Wolff's spirited, elegant, and deeply felt observations on an extraordinary life.
