Lost In Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia [Paperback]

Mark Salzman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 1996

From the author of Iron & Silk comes a charming and frequently uproarious account of an American adolescence in the age of Bruce Lee, Ozzy Osborne, and Kung Fu. As Salzman recalls coming of age with one foot in Connecticut and the other in China (he wanted to become a wandering Zen monk), he tells the story of a teenager trying to attain enlightenment before he's learned to drive.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Salzman's memoir of his Connecticut childhood tells of his early adolescent devotion to Zen and Kung Fu.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (May 28, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679767789
• ISBN-13: 978-0679767787
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #359,919 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.