The Aqua Mustang Detours into My Past Fred Poole 9780996412209 Books
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The Aqua Mustang describes the tumultuous transition in mid-life of a world traveler seasoned by war zones and worse, a formerly hard drinker, a professional writer, a man seemingly without a childhood. Here, he sets out on his most perilous exploration, a journey back, via art and road trips, sex, anger and romance, into the most hidden, forbidden parts of his story.
The Aqua Mustang Detours into My Past Fred Poole 9780996412209 Books
Fred Poole documents his somewhat unexpected journey-- first, back into a childhood he begins to perceive and understand and feel very differently about than the 'family story' had it, and second, forward into an exciting, creative, felt new life as a man and artist. This is a vividly rendered account of a man's 'coming of age' anew in mid-life, of a virulently dysfunctional family 'hiding in plain sight' as self-important WASP gentry, and of the process of self-discovery and recovery--first in a self-help fellowship full of other imperfect, dysfunctional, struggling and loving people, and then beyond, into changed relationships with other people, with art and creativity, with a higher power, with himself.. This is no ordinary 'recovery' memoir, though; it's also an atmospheric evocation of New York in the 70s and 80s and of the small towns of the White Mountains in New Hampshire; of people the author has known and loved, or hated, cared for, or failed. And it seems written not to air grievances, but for the benefit of the reader: infused with mordant wit and biting social satire, it's full of love for what is beautiful in people and nature and the world, even as the narrator comes to terms with a legacy of violence and cruelty he had long hidden from himself.Product details
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Tags : The Aqua Mustang: Detours into My Past [Fred Poole] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Aqua Mustang describes the tumultuous transition in mid-life of a world traveler seasoned by war zones and worse,Fred Poole,The Aqua Mustang: Detours into My Past,Tinker Street Press,0996412204,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs
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The Aqua Mustang Detours into My Past Fred Poole 9780996412209 Books Reviews
This is a fascinating meditation on one man's courageous year-long return, in the middle of his life, to a very difficult, dark WASPy childhood in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It speaks to the healing potential of honest, unleadered support groups, and of the power that inheres in the diversity of New York City. I found it a compelling read, and would recommend it to all who are interested in taking such a personal journey themselves.
Fred Poole is a masterful writer of memoir. (Maybe it's in his genes - his grandfather was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Literature.) His sharp memories and insightful, biting critique of what it was like growing up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire -- in a cradle of American Wasp culture -- is raw, compelling reading. His gifts are apparent in whatever he writes about, be it twelve-step programs, the seductive danger of living in a war zone, or the glories inherent in the visual arts.
There is a myth that by middle age, one is fully formed; growth should be finished, the mountain scaled, the work done. Fred Poole’s memoir, The Aqua Mustang Detours Into My Past, puts the lie to that idea. He looks back thirty years to when he was fifty, a time of powerful change rather than of resting on laurels, of conscious forward movement rather than a tired surrender to stasis.
In an introspective narrative voice that reminded me of strongly subjective first-person novels like Knut Hamsun’s Hunger or Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, Poole weaves a story that travels from dim childhood memories in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, to exotic international dangers, to New York City’s streets, art museums, and ACOA rooms, and back again to rural New England. But the journey is not about geography. It is a journey of self-awareness.
It takes courage to hunt down and confront the phantoms in one’s own psyche, to dive like Beowulf to battle the monsters at the bottom of the lake -- to kill Grendel and his mother and lift the longtime curse from the kingdom of the self. That’s what Fred Poole is doing on his bike around the streets of Manhattan, and in his aqua Mustang on the shadowy country roads of his family history. His story is his own, but it’s also classic. As John Yorke says in The Atlantic (Jan 1, 2016) “In stories throughout the ages there is one motif that continually recurs—the journey into the woods to find the dark but life-giving secret within.”
[...]
Fred Poole documents his somewhat unexpected journey-- first, back into a childhood he begins to perceive and understand and feel very differently about than the 'family story' had it, and second, forward into an exciting, creative, felt new life as a man and artist. This is a vividly rendered account of a man's 'coming of age' anew in mid-life, of a virulently dysfunctional family 'hiding in plain sight' as self-important WASP gentry, and of the process of self-discovery and recovery--first in a self-help fellowship full of other imperfect, dysfunctional, struggling and loving people, and then beyond, into changed relationships with other people, with art and creativity, with a higher power, with himself.. This is no ordinary 'recovery' memoir, though; it's also an atmospheric evocation of New York in the 70s and 80s and of the small towns of the White Mountains in New Hampshire; of people the author has known and loved, or hated, cared for, or failed. And it seems written not to air grievances, but for the benefit of the reader infused with mordant wit and biting social satire, it's full of love for what is beautiful in people and nature and the world, even as the narrator comes to terms with a legacy of violence and cruelty he had long hidden from himself.
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