Boyhood Empire
7. Travel to Spain: Jolly Good!
When my father first announced we would be going to live in Spain, he also explained that we would be traveling via London on Qantas. [...]
6. Memories of Truancy: Firebug
If alienating the local fire department and turning my beloved cats against me wasn’t enough—and it wasn’t—I soon set higher and more elaborately mischievous [...]
5. Memories of Truancy: Tom Sawyer
Go ahead. Blame it on Tom Sawyer. Why not? It couldn’t have possibly been my fault. I was, after all, only following in a [...]
4. Memories of Truancy: Tree Lord
At the very front of the small house we owned in Washington, D.C. two score and some years ago, a majestic pine tree grew [...]
3. Memories of Truancy: High-heeled Math
Just around the corner from the pencil marks were a flight of stairs that led to the second floor—in my mind, the floor above [...]
2. Memories of Truancy: Pencils
Every six months, in another epoch, my parents would pin me gently to the scribbled wall and mark how much I’d grown of late. [...]
1. Memories of Truancy: Mr. Major and His Minor
This much I know for sure, no tricks or embroidering: I arrived in Washington, D.C. from France toward the end of 1957. At the [...]
Boyhood Empire: An Introduction
To read memoirs with any pleasure requires a leap of faith facilitated by considerable intellectual mischief. Memoirs cannot be trusted and their “song of [...]