Category: Pop

Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury, 242 pages)

When people outside of New England think about Massachusetts, they think about Boston — the history, the sports, the Brahmins.

Isaac Fitzgerald, however, hails from the seamier side of the Commonwealth. His childhood memories include a stint at a homeless shelter in Boston and a generally miserable encampment in a Worcester County town called Athol, which is sometimes irreverently referred to as an expletive that stands in for a body part.

You can’t use that in a book title, however, so Fitzgerald’s memoir is called Dirtbag, Massachusetts.

Subtitled “a confessional,” the book is exactly that, and it’s not just Fitzgerald’s sins that are confessed here, but those of his parents and friends.

“My parents were married when they had me, just to different people,” Fitzgerald begins. It’s a catchy line though somewhat diminished by Fitzgerald’s admission that he’s been saying this to people for much of his adult life; it was a set-up in search of a book-length punchline.

Fitzgerald, who once was the books editor for Buzzfeed and wrote a children’s book called How to Be a Pirate, has the kind of life trajectory that is defiant of its origins. His parents, who were divinity school students when they met and had an affair, were the sort of people who looked good on paper but were a Dumpster fire in reality. And Fitzgerald has no qualms about airing the family’s dirty laundry. While married to other people, for example, his parents would say they were off on “spiritual retreats” while in fact they were meeting for joyous trysts in the White Mountains. (He was conceived on Mount Carrigain.) His mother later told him that she considered getting an abortion and mused, “Maybe it would have been for the best.”

“Telling a child at a very young age, whom you’re raising in the Catholic Church, that he was a miracle conception is a choice,” he writes. “Messy parenting, maybe, but it makes for another good story.”

Dirtbag, Massachusetts is full of good stories, most of which skirt ethical lines, such as Fitzgerald’s father taking him to Red Sox games and usually getting seats “so close you could smell the grass” by telling ushers that it was his son’s first game. (“I must have had a hundred first games.”) There is a roguish charm to the family’s story, not only in the illicit conception, the “happy accident,” but in how hard it seems that Fitzgerald’s parents were trying.

As a young child, the father, who struggled with alcoholism, read him The Hobbit and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The father would let his son accompany him on a bike while he ran along the Charles River. For a time, it was a vibrant little family, one that was intellectually alive. But there was also an ever-present grubby poverty and worsening relationship problems that caused his mother to cry herself to sleep at night and to overshare with her young son. Fitzgerald writes that his parents’ problems — “her sadness, his anger”— became his as well.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald himself was growing up rough around the edges. When he went to confession at age 12, “I told the priest about breaking into houses to raid liquor cabinets, lifting bottles from package stores and cigarettes from grocery stores, trading bottles and cigarettes for weed and mushrooms.” The priest himself could not cast the first stone; the story turns dark when young Isaac confesses a sexual encounter and the priest shows an unusual lurid interest in the details. That segues into a discussion of the sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston — for a while, Fitzgerald’s mom worked at the cathedral while Bernard Law (archbishop of Boston from 1984 to 2002) was in charge and she would take him to work. As such, he has stories to tell, one truly concerning, although when his mother much later got around to asking him if he had ever been molested, he could say “no” honestly. But he likely came close.

Fitzgerald is no longer a practicing Catholic; he doesn’t even believe in God but says “I still pray anytime I’m in trouble, or feeling lost, or alone, which is to say I still do it almost daily.” He also has an attachment to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and has a tattoo with an image of the saint, among others. It’s a great metaphor for how any religious upbringing sinks into our pores and stays there, whether we want it there or not.

From there, Fitzgerald takes his substantial comic gifts to describe his stint as a fat kid (although the length of time that he was overweight appears greatly overstated), the joy he found in a high-school “fight club” inspired by the Edward Norton-Brad Pitt movie, and his experience at boarding school, after getting himself admitted on a full scholarship because he was so desperate to leave his dilapidated mill town. When he arrived, he didn’t even have sheets for his bed, or a jacket and tie to wear to the school’s first-night formal dinner. In a poignant moment that seems to sum up the deprivations of his childhood, Fitzgerald explains that he borrowed an overlarge jacket and tie from his Cape Cod roommate and stood there awkwardly, unsure of how to knot the tie. The roommate, who wasn’t a stereotypical prep-school jerk, took notice, and smoothly offered to help. It’s the kind of moment that sticks with you, and one that shows that Fitzgerald has humanity — and appreciates it in others.

There are chapters in the book that don’t work as well. If you’ve never heard of, and don’t care for, the band “The Hold Steady,” you are unlikely to care about them after reading Fitzgerald’s fanboy tribute. (That said, if you love the band, run and get a copy and jump immediately to page 78.) Fitzgerald’s love letter to his favorite bar is best if you, too, have a bar that works double duty as a home. And he abandons all pretenses of chronology after adulthood; jumping back, for example, to an incident at prep school (that I frankly wish were not now in my brain) after relating some stories of international travel.

But none of that prepares us for the discussion of Fitzgerald’s six months of “modeling” for a porn website, which is information I really didn’t want or need. (The book jacket only mentions bartending in San Francisco and smuggling medical supplies into Burma.) TMI. Truly.

After that, however, he slips into sentimental mode for a musing on family that gives hope that even the most messed up families on the planet — or least in Dirtbag, Massachusetts — can end on a sweet note. It’s not the book we want or expect, but maybe it’s a book some of us need. B

Book Notes

When the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer draw near to a close, it’s usually time for a new, highly anticipated, deeply reported book on the New England Patriots to appear, one that will finally be the “definitive story” of the NFL dynasty. Even in the absence of Tom Brady, we had one last year: It’s Better to Be Fearedby Seth Wickersham (Liveright, 528 pages).

This year: crickets. Other than a few self-published guides to fantasy football, there’s not a lot out there. Aside from an upcoming biography of Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson (Swagger, due out in November), the only marquee title welcoming the return of the football season is Rise of the Black Quarterback, What it Means for America by ESPN writer Jason Reid (Andscape, 288 pages). The book begins with the story of the first African American to become an NFL head coach, Fritz Pollard, and works its way up to legends-in-progress like Patrick Mahomes, Colin Kaepernick, Lamar Jackson and Kyler Murray.

There’s also a new book on Jim Thorpe, the multisport athlete who was the first Native American to win a gold medal for Team USA in the Olympics. Path Lit By Lightning (Simon & Schuster, 672 pages) is not for anyone with only a casual history in Thorpe and his achievements, but resides in that “definitive history” genre.

It’s by Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss, who chronicles Thorpe’s excellence in football, baseball, basketball and the decathlon while also examining the more sobering realities of his life, such as his struggles with alcoholism. Thorpe is still considered by many to be the world’s greatest athlete, and there’s even a town in Pennsylvania named after him. Publisher’s Weekly calls this an essential work that “restores a legendary figure to his rightful place in history.”

Next, it’s part sports, part business and probably part self-help, but college football fanatics will want to check out The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban (Matt Holt, 256 pages) by John Talty. The book promises an inside look at how Saban, longtime coach of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, became “the greatest ever.” (Lou Holtz might like a word.) Presumably this builds upon Saban’s own inspirational book, How Good Do You Want to Be?, published in 2007, the year he took over at Alabama.

Finally, for those who insist NASCAR is a sport, Kyle Petty is out with Swerve or Die: Life at My Speed in the First Family of NASCAR Racing (St. Martin’s Press, 288 pages). Now retired and a commentator for NBC Sports, Petty is the son of the late NASCAR legend Richard Petty. It’s a gutsy title, given that his driver son, Adam, was killed in a practice run at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon 22 years ago.

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Book Events

Author events

• TOM MOORE Andy’s Summer Playhouse (582 Isaac Frye Highway in Wilton; 654-2613, andyssummerplayhouse.org) and Toadstool Bookshop will present an event with Tom Moore, one of the authors of the bookGrease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More: Stories from the Broadway Phenomenon That Started It All on Friday, Aug. 19, at 5 p.m. at Andy’s Summer Playhouse. See andyssummerplayhouse.org/grease to RSVP to the event.

• CAROL BUSBY presents Sailing Against the Tide at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600) on Saturday, Aug. 20, at 2 p.m. Free event; register at www.bookerymht.com/our-events.

• SPENCER QUINN presents Bark to the Future: A Chet & Bernie Mysteryat Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Aug. 18, at 6:30 p.m. and on Sunday, Aug. 28, at noon at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600). The Bookery event is BYOD: bring your own dog.

• PHIL PRIMACK presents Put It Down On Paper: The Words and Life of Mary Folsom Blair in a Literary Lunchtime event at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Sept. 8, at noon.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email [email protected].

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

The Summer Friend, by Charles McGrath (Knopf, 227 pages)

For people of a certain socioeconomic class, “summer” has long been more of a verb than a noun. To summer at the Cape or in Newport, or even spend a month at some Dirty Dancing type resort, was a privilege far removed from going somewhere with the kids for a week or two.

In his memoir The Summer Friend, Charles McGrath acknowledges the class divide in our experience of summer, writing, “In this country, the idea of vacations … didn’t come along until the nineteenth century, and it was initially embraced by people who didn’t work all that hard to begin with. … Working people didn’t get time off, and farmers, in particular, were busiest during the hot summer months.”

So thank the rich if you enjoy summer because the season as we know it began with the wealthy embarking for their “camps” in the Adirondacks and “cottages” in Newport to escape the heat of the South and cities. Of course, summer activities were quite different then, because in the 1800s swimming and sunning weren’t popular activities: “What people mostly did was stroll around and wait for the next meal, sort of like people in rest homes,” McGrath drolly observes.

Not so McGrath, a former editor for The New Yorker and The New York Times, whose remembrance of summer is much more action-packed and includes a friend, also named Chip, who hailed from New Hampshire.

That friendship, cut short by metastasized prostate cancer, is ostensibly the subject of this slim, often elegant memoir. However, the seasonal friendship, though it spanned decades, didn’t provide enough material to fill a book, and a more accurate title would have been “My Summer House,” filled as the book is with McGrath’s reflections on his own summers, both as a child and as a parent. (He’s the father of New Yorker writer Ben McGrath, who also published a memoir about a doomed friendship this year; it’s called Riverman.)

McGrath’s summer friend was Chip Gillespie, a New Hampshire native whose father taught (and was briefly the headmaster) at Phillips Exeter Academy. The men met — at a square dance — because McGrath and his wife had decided they wanted to spend their summers as they did in childhood, decamping to a primitive cottage for an extended period of time instead of flying the family to a Disney resort or some exotic locale.

As it turned out, both the McGraths and the Gillespies had young children of the same gender and age, and as so often happens, the need for children’s playmates helped to facilitate the parents’ friendship, as did the natural gregagriousness of Chip and his wife, Gay. (McGrath would say at Gillespie’s funeral that, “of his many abilities, Chip’s greatest talent was for friendship.”)

The Gillespies had the McGraths over for dinner the following night, and there was soon after a playdate for their daughters from which Chip Gillespie arrived on the water in a sailboat to pick his daughter up by towing her across the channel to their house. “Who knew you could do that with a sailboat, and how could you not want to be friends with the guy who thought of it?” McGrath writes.

It’s not that McGrath wasn’t accomplished in his own right, but Gillespie, an architect five years older, seemed to have the more interesting life, and McGrath came to be something of a fanboy. Gillespie was the instigator behind the pair’s more daring adventures, such as jumping off bridges at night and skinny-dipping with their wives, and it was Gillespie who taught his city friend how to trap lobsters, and to illegally obtain fireworks from Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook.

Unlike the McGraths, the Gillespies lived in the unidentified beach town in Massachusetts, year-round; they “made summering into something like an occupation,” McGrath writes. There was a built-in imbalance to their friendship since McGrath was there on vacation while Gillespie was still working; the Gillespie family vacationed in Canada.

But the two took to hanging out together when Gillespie wasn’t working, and while it appears they didn’t talk much, they participated in the storied rites of affluent male-bonding: playing golf, sailing, checking scores on ESPN, and performing random chores like sanding their boats and hauling trash to the dump. There was an easy camaraderie between the men, and they picked up the friendship easily when the McGraths came to town. Then Gillespie got sick.

Diagnosed with prostate cancer, he fought it off for a few years, but the cancer spread catastrophically, to the point of destroying his hip and eventually claiming his life. It appears that Gillespie worked to hide the extent of his illness from his friend, or maybe they just weren’t that close after all. For a significant friendship, the men seemed to not talk much, at least not about significant stuff, and this is passed off as being common among men. “Call it cowardice if you want, but my sense was that he didn’t want to talk about death or friendship either. I thought it was enough that we were just there in the same room,” McGrath wrote.

At the end, though, McGrath expresses his profound regret at what was not said; when he finally gets around to expressing how he feels about Gillespie and their friendship, it’s in a letter delivered in the final months of Gillespie’s life, and McGrath admits that it was too little, too late. “This book is what I should have given him,” he confesses.

Few people lose friends or family without pangs of guilt and regret, so in this, The Summer Friend is a cautionary tale. It is also a fine summer musing, though mostly for people of a certain age and class. Your cousin from Boston may not care much for it, but your grandfather from Newport definitely will. B

Book Notes

People in the U.K. forgave Americans for stealing the sitcom The Office, the actor Benedict Cumberbatch and even the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But they still haven’t gotten over how we took over the Man Booker Prize.

The most prestigious literary award in the U.K., the Booker Prize honors the best fiction written or translated into English and it was only opened to American authors in 2014. It didn’t take long for Americans to win: Paul Beatty won in 2016 for The Sellout and George Saunders in 2017 for Lincoln in the Bardo, leading critics to grouse that Americans had “colonized” the award and should be excluded again. That hasn’t happened, and this year’s longlist will likely renew the complaining: six of the 13 novels on the list are from the U.S.

And one, Nightcrawling (Knopf, 271 pages), has the distinction of the youngest author ever to be nominated for the prize. Leila Mottley is now 20 and started writing the novel when she was 16. (Last month, we gave it an “A.”)

If you’re playing at home (highly advised), here are the other American books to read, or at least skim, before the 2022 winner is announced on Oct. 17:

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, 256 pages) is about “a grief-stricken woman who helps her ex-husband investigate his family past,” according to NPR.

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler is a fictionalized story about the family of the man who killed Abraham Lincoln (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 480 pages).

Trust (Riverhead, 416 pages) by Hernan Diaz is about New York tycoons during the 1920s and ’30s. A New York Times review called it “ intricate, cunning and constantly surprising.

After Sappho (Liveright, 288 pages) by Selby Wynn Schwartz is a publisher’s dream, an award nominee before it’s even been released. Scheduled for January, it’s been described as “speculative biography” tying together the lives of diverse artists such as Virginia Woolf and Romaine Brooks and imagining them as queer trailblazers.

The Trees by Percival Everett (Graywolf, 288 pages) is a thriller/mystery about racism and lynching set in rural Mississippi. Given the subject matter, it’s a nod to the author’s skill that some of the reviews mention that it’s often witty.

Finally, shoutout to the Irish author Claire Keegan, whose Small Things Like These is the shortest book nominated in Man Booker history, coming in at 116 pages.

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Book Events

Author events

• KATHLEEN BAILEY and SHEILA BAILEY present their book New Hampshire War Monuments: The Stories Behind the Stones at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Aug. 11, at 6:30 p.m.

• R.A. SALVATORE presents Glacier’s Edge at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Friday, Aug. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

• E.B. BARTLES will sign and discuss (with Sy Montgomery) her book Good Grief: On Loving Pets Here and Hereafter at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough (12 Depot Square; 924-3543, toadbooks.com) on Saturday, Aug. 13, at 11 a.m.

• CASEY SHERMAN presents Helltown at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600) on Sunday, Aug. 14, at 1:30 p.m. Free event; register at www.bookerymht.com/our-events.

• VIRGINA CHAMLEE presents Big Thrift Energy: The Art and Thrill of Finding Vintage Treasuresat Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Monday, Aug. 15, at 6:30 p.m.

• TOM MOORE Andy’s Summer Playhouse (582 Isaac Frye Highway in Wilton; 654-2613, andyssummerplayhouse.org) and Toadstool Bookshop will present an event with Tom Moore, one of the authors of the book Grease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More: Stories from the Broadway Phenomenon That Started It All on Friday, Aug. 19, at 5 p.m. at Andy’s Summer Playhouse. See andyssummerplayhouse.org/grease to RSVP to the event.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email [email protected].

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.