Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs
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THE SKINNY

Jonathan Wells

The story of a boy's struggle to establish his independence and identity against a rigid definition of manhood.

As a boy in preparatory day school in upstate New York in the 1970s, Wells's teacher abuses and humiliates him for his size, forcing Wells, for the first time, to question his right to take up space in the world. Wells's father, reading his weight as a clear deficit of masculinity, and perhaps sexuality, creates a workout regimen meant to bulk him up. When that doesn't help, he has Wells seen by a slew of specialists, all claiming he is in perfect health, and yet the problem cannot be denied: he is simply too skinny.

Wells's complicated relationship with his charming but elusive mother does not help matters. As the eldest son, he is privy to the struggles of a fraying marriage in which he, however slight, plays a divisive role. Wells is sent to boarding school in Switzerland, where his size continues to generate controversy, from the merely rude to the violently abusive. And yet, even as he manages to establish an identity of his own, one which must invariably contend with gender norms and conventions, his father's obsession with his size follows him to Europe, threatening to destroy the space he has painstakingly won for himself.

As he grows into an adult, combatting the intrusive liberties others take with his body, Jonathan must define masculinity for himself, ultimately coming to terms with the damage of a father's love.

The critically acclaimed poet and author of the collection Debris, Jonathan Wells gives us a thoughtful, candid, and powerful memoir about the universal exploration of adolescence and self-image, the frailty of masculinity, and all the places we seek comfort in a world trying to redefine us.

The former director of Rolling Stone Press (the book publishing division of Rolling Stone magazine), Jonathan Wells is a poet and prose writer. He has published three poetry collections: Train Dance; The Man With Many Pens; and Debris. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, AGNI and The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day program, among others.

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Book Published 2021-08-01 by ZE Books

Comments

Layer by layer, Jonathan Wells unravels the father-son knot in ways both troubling and uplifting. I was gripped by The Skinny, a remarkable portrait of the most tangled of relationships, written with a poet's eye and grace.

With a poet's grace, Jonathan Wells has written a harrowing memoir about growing up severely underweight, about surviving sexual abuse by a schoolmaster and about his tyrannical father's determination to transform his son's body into his own ideal of masculinity. The Skinny is a deeply haunting account of the lasting effects of emotional and physical bullying. I couldn't put it down.

One of the most vulnerable memoirs I've ever read, Jonathan Wells' SKINNY is the story of surviving the long, brutal gauntlet toward manhood that many boys who grew up in the 1970's and 80s endured. An important cautionary tale illuminating the devastating, life-long harm caused by rigid gender rules and the parents who try to enforce them.

Here's the skinny on The Skinny. Wells has written a memoir that's lean without being gaunt, rawboned without being fleshless. It's an elegant work of curving contours and sharp-edged insight that captures a world long gone in voluptuous prose that nonetheless, is delightfully devoid of flab or excess.

Jonathan Wells's extraordinary coming-of-age memoir, The Skinny, is not only startling and heartbreaking, but each page seems somehow even more riveting and moving than the last. If you want the skinny - I mean, the real skinny - about growing up in a male body in this country it's time you read this deeply compelling and eminently wise new book.

The Skinny is a poignant account of what it is like to grow up as a diminutive boy in a world that prefers its men big and strong. In precise and poetic prose, Jonathan Wells explores the intersection of wealth, sexuality, and body image, peeling back the glittering layers of privilege, searching for his father's approval, and examining the assumptions made about male size in a culture of toxic masculinity. Ultimately, The Skinny is an illuminating memoir of one man's search for meaning, acceptance and love.