Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

I AM SORRY TO THINK I HAVE RAISED A TIMID SON

Kent Russell

From one of the most ferociously brilliant young voices in literary non fiction: a debut of extraordinary force that interrogates a particular paradigm of American masculinity, capturing with discomforting intimacy and precision the landscape of the misfit.

Kent Russell's essays take us to society's ragged edges, the junctures between savagery and civilization, where solitary, philosophical, troubled men yearn for a more heightened form of existence. We meet a self-immunizer in small-town Wisconsin who has conditioned his body to withstand the bites of the most venomous snakes; NHL enforcers who build their careers on violence and intimidation; a former mogul who has retreated to a crocodile-infested island off the Australian coast; the fans at a three-day music festival ominously called the Gathering; Amish baseball players who push the limits of their cultural restraints; and, perhaps most memorably, Russell's own oddball, inimitable forebears. I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son, at once blistering and deeply personal, records Russell's quest to understand, through his journalistic subjects, his own appetites and urges, his childhood demons and persistent alienation, and, above all, his knotty, volatile, vital relationship with his father.

Combining the fierce intellect and humane wit of John Jeremiah Sullivan and David Foster Wallace with a dark, unfettered sensibility all his own, Russell gives us a haunting and unforgettable portrait of America.

Kent Russell is a regular contributor to n+1, and has written for GQ, the New Republic, Grantland, and Believer Magazine.

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Book Published 2015-03-01 by Knopf

Comments

Believer and n+1 essayist Russell is a type of millennial George Plimpton: the nerd conquering his fears by plunging into the unknown. /.../ Russell is an observant, skillful and funny writer who draws out the essence of each person he meets.

Wisdom, humor and generosity run through Russell's book. As much a memoir as an essay collection, Timid Son is a surprising, beautiful book, at once tough and tender, hilarious and dark, and above all, deeply original. One of the book's most striking essays finds Russell attending the Gathering of the Juggalos, a four day music festival dedicated to the 'horrorcore' band Insane Clown Posse and like-minded musicians and performers. / / In a book filled with fascinating essays, it's the story of [Kent and his father's] relationship, suffused with both dread and hope, that makes Russell's debut one of the most notable of the year so far. (Michael Schaub)

For those of us who've been missing Hunter Thompson lately, good news: I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son is as close as we're going to get to his second coming when it comes to full-on gonzo passionate observation and self-loathing transmuted into social criticism. Its larger subject is perhaps the most toxic and entertaining of all of the can-do malevolences abroad in our landAmerican masculinitybut its more intimate and wrenching subject is that of one father and son, similarly self-sabotaging, masters of hurtful apathy, talkers who reject the talking cure, each shipwrecked with their shame. If you're looking for what's funny and smart and fierce and devoted to the shrinking hope that we can all even still perhaps cultivate virtue, stop right here. - Jim Shepard

Halfway through his engrossing book of essays and reportage, I realized Kent Russell was the kid brother of Swamplandia! author Karen Russell, and then it all made sense: the hilariously dysfunctional Florida family. The language you can chew on. Russell's characters shoal along walls or 'move about like a violent decision.' His own small hands are 'furtive-looking' and his feet are 'a hindrance, dryland flippers.' When he's not psychoanalyzing friends and relations, he's off communing with various lunatics./.../ All you need do is grip your armrests and live vicariously.

Kent Russell is one of the most excitingly gifted young non-fiction writers to have appeared in recent memory. - John Jeremiah Sullivan

With droll humor and sincere compassion, Russell stalwartly exposes himself, and his readers, to his past and to people longing for significance.

Kent Russell debuts with a ludicrously smart, tragicomic man-on-the-edge memoir in essays...

Kent Russell is the kind of writer whose sharp vision and lively prose have the power to seduce readers into paying attention to subjects they might never imagine were engaging.