Customer Reviews

Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story

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I could not put this book down which made it hard to get to work and keep my appointments, not to even mention getting sleep. I think I expected something mildly amusing, a respite from the reality of life, but what I found was more real than life (mine, anyway), very very touching and unbelievably funny. Even the acknowledgements were very funny. Sort of an amuse bouche - but at the end. All of you who are reading this review must already know that this is a book about a disfunctional family but what makes it unique is Dylan's compassion, his unbelievable tolerance and a week in a baking class with his very annoying father whom Dylan nonetheless loves. Dylan Schaffer I love you! I finished the book last night. I ordered your other two published books today.

Even though I'm not a cook by any means, this book about Dylan's journey with his father had me wishing I was right there in the cooking school with them. This author took a wholly unpleasant subject - death - and managed to chronicle it in a way that brought out the best (and the best of the worst) of his father, in the process making me laugh out loud on the subway and shed tears for a man I never knew. I can only hope that, as a writer, I am one day able to tackle such a tough topic with Dylan's extraordinary, no-BS but still tender manner.

What I liked best about Life , death & bialys is the tone of the

speaking voice, which reminded me of something Glen Gould once said of

Chopin : he should be played with austerity. Dylan Schaffer voice's

speaks of emotions with restraint, using detours, leaveing room for

the reader's emotions to pitch in and bring a passage to life.

Although the narrative, in general, is matter of fact and funny, it draws its full meaning from sentences that hide pain and grief rather then expose them.

As if words were too shallow to convey what is too heavy for them ,

without caving in. To speak of his father leaving home (read leaving

him) Schaffer will say : "Half a tree did not decide one day to move across the park". The detour one can apply to the book as a whole : how does one speak of the impending death of a father, even one who has left you at an early age, except through some down to earth event such as a cooking class? "Competing urges " keep the narrative moving, the author forever pulled between two poles: "bury my face and bowl" or "hit", the

polarity creating an unsetled/unsetling feeling. Until the very end. There a sentence opens up the narrative as if a flash back for a new reading:

"When it was my turn to handle the bag, I tipped it into my palm,

letting the ashes collect on my hand and spillover unto the ground. My tears fell down unto my palms."

Dylan Schaffer is an exceptionally good writer, thoughtful, empathetic. Moreover, he has a story to tell. I recommend this book to anyone interested in, or enmeshed in, an especially fraught parental relationship. I read the book over about 36 hours, thanks in large part to Dylan Schaffer's prose, but also because I have a personal interest in the subject. Alan Schaffer hired me as a visiting assistant professor of history in 1979, and I taught at Clemson until leaving for a senior post elsewhere in 1995.

I had a fraught relationship with Alan as department head. Alan liked to pick scapegoats among the junior faculty, and I served in that role for several years. I noted traits in Alan that Dylan Schaffer mentions: arbitrariness, difficulty hewing to the truth, being an expert on everything, lecturing other experts on their own fields. (Example: We understood that Alan had written a scholarly book, only to be forestalled by another. However, the alleged book in question was said to be a biography of Scott Joplin, not a monograph on the Federal Writers Project.) I would add others: Alan liked to stir up trouble in order to see how colleagues would react. He liked to give tsurris to the junior faculty especially. He was imperious, again with the junior, untenured faculty. (Example: he once called me in to complain that I didn't have enough office hours, and urged me to model myself after the senior faculty. I looked up the office hours of the most senior professor in the department, and promptly reduced mine by two.) I ended up not acknowledging his existence, save to transact necessary business. After I resigned to go elsewhere, Alan came to tell me that he could not understand why I treated him so. This fits in with Dylan Schaffer's description of what appears to be major denial in his father.

This book has given me a greater understanding of why Alan behaved as he did as department chair and colleague, although at his core he remains an enigma to me. Alan was very charming when he wanted to be, but one learned to be on one's guard. I am in awe of Dylan Schaffer and his siblings, and of what they have accomplished with their lives.

In this, the age of the memoir, there are few as well-written and poignant as this one. The subject -- the author's struggle to connect with and understand his dying father -- is not unfamiliar. But this book stands out, and is exceptional in several important ways.

First of all, the writing is suburb. This book was a pleasure to read, and, like a well-crafted novel, it demanded that I keep turning its pages. In many places it is laugh-out-loud funny and in others, heart-breaking. Fans of literary writing will find plenty of interesting sentences -- Schaffer knows how to work with words -- but the writing is never over-wrought, and is accessible and conversational throughout.

Secondly, Schaffer's honesty, insightfulness, and self-effacing humor makes him a likable narrator. In this way he reminds me of David Sedaris. From the very beginning of the book, when he fears that he's lost his wife's cat (who loathes him), you'll be laughing with him and feel like he's a friend.

Most importantly, the author's father, the iconoclastic Flip Schaffer, is one of the most complex, intelligent, fascinating characters you'll ever see described in print. Despite his foibles, by the end of the book you'll have succumbed to his irresistible, curmudgeonly charm, and you'll wish you'd had a chance to know him yourself. You will also, like the author, lament that he didn't play a bigger part in his son's life.

If you're a parent or a child, you'll find something in this book that will touch you, and make you consider your own relationships with those you love. This is more than we can expect from most books. Buy it. You won't regret it.

I am becoming very impressed with Dylan Schaffer. This is the third book of his I have read; I love his writing and he is very, very funny. In this memoir he is brutally honest while still entertaining and humorous. I highly recommend this book.

I read this in less that 24 hours. The journey Dylan takes us on is amazingly satisfying. Against all odds, through the precision of a surgeon, large pieces of himself are excavated and taken back. This is a guy with big balls, and perseverance. This is beautifully written. I felt more whole when I finished this book. I gained faith in life and feel validated, has all the things I look for in a book, Thank you!!

I got started on a father-son memoir kick after reading David Gilmour's The Film Club, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I wanted a similar book that would mix poignancy and humor. A hot book right now is David Scheff's A Beautiful Boy, but I didb't want to read something that heartbreaking (about a son's methamphetamine addiction). This book delivered exactly what I was looking for. Schaffer does a masterful job of addressing his own anger over his father's abandonment of him at a young age, with humorous anecdotes about how stubborn and difficult his father was. Shortly before his father's death -- the father has terminal cancer -- Dylan and his father spend a week at the French Culinary Institute to take a course on artisanal baking. The details on how to make baguettes and properly prepare dough offer perfectly timed breaks from the rather harrowing story of how difficult it was for Dylan to be left behind to be raised by a chroncially depressed mother, who, when he reached adult age, would commit suicide. Dylan has some great ruminations about what it means to forgive a parent, even when they've done something that is unforgivable. He writes self assuredly, and with amazing candor about his own limitations and overpowering emotions. If you want to laugh, be moved, and gain some great insight into child/parental relationships, I strongly recommend this book.

I've heaped heartfelt praise on two of his fiction works. Someone forwarded him my reviews and we've exchanged a bit of email correspondence. If you remember me writing that "Uncle Dylan convinced me to wear a bicycle helmet," this is the guy. I let a few of his articles carry my other newsletter when it was slumping, after thanking him profusely for giving me permission. So, I sure hope this book doesn't suck. I'd hate to bag my buddy here, since "he saved my life." Keep this in mind if you, too, aspire to review books. Authors might read your words.

One of the first things I learned from the book is that I should stop calling him Uncle Dylan. He was born three months before my little brother was.

"I haven't spent more than a day or two alone with him in thirty years." Thus writes Dylan about his father, who ran off when Dylan was 6 years old. His mom, who had four kids and no husband, was institutionalized. If you're one of those readers who has no idea what such relationships are like, none whatsoever, Dylan can show you in less than two pages and put a knowing smile on your face.

Dad's calling out of the blue about them taking a baking class together, but Dad's got metastatic and lung cancer and will probably be dead before the class starts. If you're already a natural-born author, regardless of whether or not your personal backstory is part of the reason, how do you not write about this if it happens to you? And this is non-fiction, by the way. Seven days together, getting to know each other. Can they avoid the family history that long, as they have all these years?

It's the shortest book I've ever read by Dylan Schaffer. If you're an author, you appreciate how hard he worked to make it that way. It's also witty, observant, irreverant, moving, and understated. A quick read that will give you much -- please excuse the pun -- food for thought. I can't imagine anyone not being glad that he or she read it. I certainly am.

Dylan Schaffer has really performed a miracle, in writing a truly engaging and funny book about a very grim subject. Both his childhood and the impending death of his father were obviously tough subjects, and a lesser writer would have written an unreadably sad or disutrbing book. But somehow, both as a writer and, apparently, as a person, Schaffer has managed to pull the beauty and the humor out of a devastating situation, and allow the reader to experience it. What a triumph -- both the book and the life.