Order ALL THE WILD CHILDREN here
(also reviewed)
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I drink when I'm writing, it shuts out all the voices in my head that tell me I'm crap.
I don't usually read memoirs of people who aren't famous. No disrespect to your life, but if I don't want to know about something you've experienced right off the bat, your book will make you sound like the proverbial whiny friend, spilling his guts over a drink at the bar. I didn't know if the life of Josh Stallings would have interest to me, because I don't know him all that well. I just know he writes killer hardboiled novels and that his publisher Snubnose Press wouldn't let somehing half-cooked out of their oven. Turns out ALL THE WILD CHILDREN is a bit confusing in the form, but it has undeniable power.
The Stallings kids used to say they've been raised by wolves. It's a statement that both has to be taken literally and metaphorically. Josh Stallings, his brother Larkin and his two sisters were raised by two wild, savage and vibrant beings, who always had difficulty to reconcile their responsibilities with their ideals. So Josh was left to learn how to live on his own, like many young men of his time, via the ever so painful trial-and-error method. Drugs have been taken, states have been altered, hearts have been broken, glass has been shattered and lives have been lost over this wild apprenticeship that lead Josh to create his own family and be confronted to the same dilemmas his parents faced.
It's very awkward for me to discuss somebody else's life in terms of literary quality. I mean, what the fuck do I know that would allow me to judge Josh Stallings' life? He has seen things I wouldn't see in three lifetimes. I like how he portrayed his mother Jane. A smart, fierce overachiever. A career-driven pionner who's been the first ever female dean at Texas A & M university. She has lead quite the life herself, yet she could never fit her children in her busy schedule. Stallings doesn't talk about her that often. He draws around her, like she's an sacred object you can't touch, but her influence is felt all over the memoir. She is a powerful, fascinating woman, broken in her own way, who despite everything, transmitted her incredible strength to her children.
I hate Peter. I hate his hope and possibility. I hate his university plans. I hate his mother for being home every night. I hate his normalcy. And as we drive away, loot in tow, I hate myself.
ALL THE WILD CHILDREN has a very bold form, for a memoir. It's non-linear. Josh Stallings narrates his memories. Short and intense bursts form the past.. There is both good and bad to this approach. On one hand, it gives ALL THE WILD CHILDREN the necessary humility to be enthralling. Makes the reader feel like Stallings is sharing, not whining or trying to mount his life into some sort of epic tale. The non-linearity is also quite confusing at times. ALL THE WILD CHILDREN is a long book and jumping through time for three hundred pages is demanding. I loved that Stallings clearly separated his life as a child fromn his life as a parent though. Gave the memoir texture and perspective, a filter that allows the reader to better appreciate and understand the wild youth of its author.
There's a lot more than noir to ALL THE WILD CHILDREN. Josh Stallings is a child of counterculture, a son of ideas, who grew up in the concrete jungle of California. I have been moved, more often than not, by the passion and the anger that moved Josh Stallings to write this memoir. I didn't share much with young Josh except that all-consuming anger that seems to have dictated his every move. ALL THE WILD CHILDREN is a memoir, but it could aslo be a learning novel, a coming-of-age or the tale of an ever-changing American landscape. There are several ways to read it and to let it cast its light on your life. I have been moved indeed, so despite my reserves about judging somebody else's life on its literary quality, I suppose ALL THE WILD CHILDREN did was it was supposed to.