Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia [Hardcover]

Mark Salzman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 1995

Describes the author's early years as an ambitious and eccentric young man who stood out from his family and neighborhood, his kung fu lessons under the tutelage of a sadist, and his often misguided mimicry of Zen Buddhist practices. 35,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The author of Iron and Silk looks back to his tortured youth with self-deprecating humor and wistful fondness. The oldest child in a middle-class household in Connecticut, the son of a piano teacher and a social worker, by age six the author was an eccentric with enormous aspirations - none of them ever fulfilled - who stood out not only from his more conventional parents and brother and sister but from everyone else in his suburban neighborhood. A hilarious memoir in the tradition of Russell Baker's Growing Up.

From Publishers Weekly

This warm, entertaining memoir suggests that Salzman (The Soloist) was an unusual child. As a 13-year-old who was small for his age, he sought to prove himself through Zen studies and kung fu, paths he followed obsessively, just as he had decided, at seven, to train to become an astronaut. The oldest of three children, Salzman, who was born in 1959 and grew up in Ridgefield, Conn., admired his parents, his father a gloomy but companionable social worker and amateur astronomer, his mother a cheerful music teacher. Most amusing are Salzman's stories of his kung fu apprenticeship under a dissipated but sadistic sensei and his friendship with one Michael Dempsey, "the most feared boy in our school," a creative troublemaker and martial arts buddy. When he matured to driving age, Salzman had a penchant for buying lemons from used-car dealers and also became infatuated with marijuana, even trying to grow some at home. (Dad ordered an uprooting.) He studied the cello and was accepted into Yale, where his adolescent interest in things Chinese found fruition. If Salzman is reticent about some self-revelation, he taps enough poignancy and humor to shape his story into a memorable one.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 273 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (August 8, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679439455
• ISBN-13: 978-0679439455
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,511,956 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hysterically funny look at one boy's search for meaning., April 14, 2001

By 

LeeAnn Balbirona (Washington state) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost In Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia (Paperback)

I just happened across Salzman's video of "Iron & Silk" (about his experiences teaching English and learning wushu in China) and I was so charmed, I decided to give "Lost in Place" a try. From page one I was laughing out loud. There is much more here than just a boy's quest to be a wandering Zen monk from the age of 13. He also has a sometime career as a cellist, a summer as a pothead and an everlasting struggle with the public school system. The main theme of this book is that basic question: what's the purpose of my life? Salzman explores this in tandem with touching vignettes of his relationship with his implacable father, an amateur astronomer, painter and disenchanted social worker.

As someone who has recently taken up martial arts, I enjoyed the descriptions of Salzman's early training. How I'm glad I didn't go to his school!

The book is a quick, pleasureable read. Even though Salzman describes some dark times in his life, his self-analysis is too interesting to put down. I wish I could recommend this to the under 18 crowd, but due to vivid descriptions of drug use, a lot of musings about sex and a lot of profanity on the part of his kung fu instructor, I'd hesitate to give this book to any but the most mature of teenagers. Highly recommended for parents trying to renew their familiarity with the teenage mind, though!

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How peculiar enthusiams can dictate a course of life, April 10, 1999

By 

Alix Ehlers ([e-mail]) (Long Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost In Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia (Paperback)

I started reading Lost In Place one night when I couldn't sleep. I laughed so loud and long I awoke my husband sleeping upstairs who came down to check on why I was, he thought, wailing and weeping. Tears of amusement, certainly. There isn't a wrong note in this memoir. The gloomy father remarked upon in some customer reviews is hardly any gloomier than most fathers raising kids in the 70's and unlike a good many of them, he retained the deep love and respect of his son. I have given it to my own kids (16 and 19) to read, to kids graduating from high school this year. A friend of my sixteen-year-old read it in two days and it was the only nonrequired book she read all year. For those who grew up in the 70's it will strike one kind of chord; for any adolescent it is a shining example of how becoming caught up in an obsession, of training oneself (voluntarily), of learning everything you can about something can turn out to be the most important thing you ever do. Comic books, kung fu, BB guns, decorating teeshirts--these are paths to Yale as surely as being the scholar/athlete held out as exemplars by our high schcols.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great view into a teenage boy's mind, September 20, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Richardson TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia (Hardcover)

We read this for our book group and everyone in the group -- folks from about 50 into their early 70's -- thought it was great. Salzman captures the mind of the teenage boy and presents it in a wonderfully well written story. I had finished it and my wife then kept me awake for two nights with her chuckles as she read it. The mother in the story does not get much press but she is the real hero in Mark's life. She supports each of his youthful plunges into finding his way in life from the little kid in the box playing like a captain on a space mission to his leaving high school a year early after getting himself into Yale before graduating from high school. I am certain that we would have never seen this wonderful book had it not been for his mother and her fierce support for Mark as he worked through life "Absurd in Suburbia."

I have read two of his other books and have just ordered the only one that I have not yet read.