Customer Reviews

Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather

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This is an impressive book everyone should read. Lee Gutkind starts off with a brief essay on being the "Godfather of creative nonfiction." When I read that, I thought "What IS creative nonficiton?"

I got my answer by reading the rest of the book. Gutkind writes autobiographical stories. He is comfortable approaching autobiography as an artform, one where you keep the stories interesting using the tools any fiction writer would use: good dialogue, parallel anecdotes, and vivid descriptions followed by heartfelt reflection. He tells you what happened, then he tells you how he feels about it.

It's a lot like Bukowski. Gutkind's life is completely different, but he writes for the same purpose, and with the same honesty, as Bukowski. By the end of the book, you feel you know the man. You feel like you read something REAL, not just another book of made-up, escapist fiction.

I'd give it five stars if it was just a little less middle class. Let's say it's a four-and-a-half star book.

"Forever fat: essays from the Godfather" seems to be the author's clever excuse for proving himself deserving of the positive attention he never received as a child. A universal thread: childhood scars that carry themselves into adulthood. Who hasn't been on the receiving end of a sucker-punch? While I admire Gutkind's honesty, oftentimes at the expense of too much information, I am not convinced that, as a middle-aged man, he's really dealt with any of his demons. In fact, his writing style seems overly structured and forced, and the book reads more as an in-your-face comeback to all the people in his life who've wronged him than a work of literature. And I'm still left confused as to what this problematic genre of creative nonfiction really is, which is perhaps a good thing. This book is a testimony to the statement: you can take the man out of the fat, but you can't take the fat out of the man.