In the House of My Fear: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Joel Agee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2004

In the spring of 1964, Joel Agee, not quite at home in his native New York (having spent much of his youth behind the Iron Curtain), accidentally ingests a sizeable dose of LSD. He is thrown from the precincts of bohemian normalcy into a whirl of bizarre synchronicities, symbols, and omens. His brilliant, mentally ill younger brother is descending into a psychic netherworld without chemical inducement, and the culture at large is undergoing a mutation of its own. A small inheritance comes Joel’s way. Together with his wife and their infant daughter, he emigrates in search of kindred souls. On the way, a fantastic project takes root in his imagination: to exorcize his brother’s madness by transforming his own consciousness, first with “acid,” then in a quest for enlightenment under the tutelage of spiritual teachers. Thirty years later, a sobered Joel Agee sets himself the task of recounting his adventures. Somewhere, he knows, the ghosts of past terrors—his own and his brother’s, who died by his own hand at the age of twenty-seven—are still trapped and crying for release. To find them, to save them, he must write his way into the house of his fear.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born in New York City in 1940, Agee (son of writer James Agee and author of Twelve Years) spent much of his childhood in East Germany with his mother; half-brother; and German Communist expatriate stepfather, Bodo Uhse. After 12 years, Agee's mother divorced Uhse and took her two sons back to New York. Agee dabbled in various jobs, always aware that one day, he'd be a writer. He landed in New York's East Village in the mid-'60s, when the pot and LSD scene was taking off. Once Agee came into a small inheritance, he and his lover, Susan, left for Europe. They wandered the European hippie trail, forming impromptu communes, as Agee ingested vast quantities of LSD and sampled assorted religions. Susan finally had enough and took their daughter back to the States. Alas, here's where Agee's sharp, precise descriptions of growing up as a Cold War baby and grooving as a '60s hippie end. Agee stayed abroad and yielded to madness, which culminated in a full-scale breakdown in London in 1971. Accosting strangers to tell them he's God, reading street signs as divine messages, Agee's demons demanded he suffer to redeem the world. Readers suffer, too, wading through hundreds of pages of Agee's nightmares and hallucinations. By the end, when Agee explains that this book is about "getting lost and finding the way back," readers may be too exhausted to care.
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Review

"An unclassifiable work, hugely ambitious, exasperatingly self-conscious, but also, at its best, piercingly eloquent and intelligent. No ordinary memoir . . ." -- Morris Dickstein

"Daring, beautiful, and deeply satisfying, as when we find ourselves in the presence of someone who tells the absolute truth." -- O Magazine, January, 2005

"Formally daring, ruthlessly honest, and written in limpid, expressive prose, [this book] explodes the clichés and conventions of most non-fiction." -- Siri Hustvedt, author of What I Loved

"So rich in incident, so vividly told, and often so buoyantly funny, Agee’s miraculous book soars beyond glib classification." -- Erik Wensberg, co-author of Modern American Usage

"This voluptuously rendered account of a life lived with . . . unbounded curiosity . . . is among the most wonderful memoirs I've ever read." -- Jamaica Kincaid, author of Lucy

"With lucid, poetic realism, this book chronicles a harrowing journey into . . . a hell from which many people never return." -- Peter Fenner, author of The Edge Of Certainty

Here is the proverbial "fear and trembling" become an instrument of exploration, reflection. Grateful readers will cherish this work. -- Robert Coles, author of The Mind's Fate

This voluptuously rendered account of a life lived with unbounded curiosity's among the most wonderful of memoirs I've ever read." -- Jamaica Kincaid, author of Lucy

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (October 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593760450
• ISBN-13: 978-1593760458
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,884,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the House of My Fear, February 17, 2005

By 

Clayton A. Hubbs "Founding Editor and Publish... (Amherst, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the House of My Fear: A Memoir (Hardcover)

All of us who were "on the scene" in the sixties, that indescribable time of extacy and rage, now have a book that like no other helps us to understand our own experience of the time. Younger readers will learn more about this watershed moment in modern American history by reading this novelized memoir than by reading the historians. Unlike his father in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Agee's focus is inward, an attempt at a "rescue mission" to release the ghosts of past terrors. Agee's journey takes us on an often breathtaking trip in a VW bus through North Africa, Spain, France, Switzerland, and finally England, where he loses his bus and, temporarily, his mind. Readers of Agee's earlier memoir of boyhood, Thirteen Years, will welcome this continuation of a remarkable biography by a brilliant prose stylist.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A literary Masterpiece, February 11, 2005

By 

Joanna Hubbs "Professor of Russian and Compar... (Amherst, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the House of My Fear: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Joel Agee has written a memoir-masterpiece, which, in its orginality and interest rivals that of his father's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." What James Agee did for the America of the 1930's, Joel has done for the 1960's. No one who has lived through the so-called "Hippie revolution" can afford to miss reading this brilliantly written autobiography-novel which goes to the very heart of a key period in American history and illuminates it "from within." This is a work which should be widely read--and appreciated. It also happens to be a page-turner!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece!, October 21, 2005

By 

H.P. Albarelli Jr. (Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the House of My Fear: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Anyone who lived through the Sixties and has any sembalance of rememberance about those years should read this book. Agee's experiences and recollections are nothing short of amazing, and his unique insights into the metaphysical side of life and things is stunning. In the House of My Fear is a classic.