Men My Mother Dated and Other Mostly True Tales [Hardcover]

Brett Leveridge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2000

As heard on This American Life and NPR's All Things Considered, Brett Leveridge spins mostly true tales of small-town Lotharios and big-city dreams in a voice that is simultaneously hip and homespun--and utterly his own.

There's something universal in these tales of the dating life, peopled with well-intentioned boys next door, two-timing playboys, and traveling roustabouts with a girl in every town. You'll meet the fellow behind Mom's first arrest; get the unexpurgated truth about winking Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing; and learn why a young woman would consent to see The Eddie Cantor Story six times in two weeks--with six different men. Leveridge holds forth on many other topics as well, offering his decidedly contrarian views on major holidays, hilarious skewerings of television ads, and a bittersweet account of the life of a straight man often presumed to be gay.

Like the best of our current essayists--Roy Blount, Jr., David Sedaris, Sandra Tsing Loh--Leveridge is at once forward-thinking and nostalgic. With his enormously appealing voice and happy knack for taking a commonplace topic and veering off into uncharted territory, Leveridge is, as one scribe put it, "Will Rogers meets Garrison Keillor meets Jack Kerouac."

Men My Mother Dated and Other Mostly True Tales collects the best of Leveridge's work from his award-winning website, BRETTnews, and his long-running Might magazine column; it also boasts ten brand-new, never-before-published installments of Mom's romantic adventures, plus other assorted surprises.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA-These essays, ostensibly about the author's mother's dating days in Oklahoma in the 1950s, form the heart of Leveridge's commentary on myriad contemporary subjects-everything from panning ads to promoting tattoos. YAs will enjoy sinking their teeth into this quick, clever read. The author's agile wit about dating and slices of daily home, work, and social life have broad adolescent appeal. Sports fans will appreciate the foreword by popular anchorman Bob Costas, which offers insight into the author that coincides nicely with the "Other Mostly True Tales" part of the book. The beginning accounts of his mother's youthful dating have an over-the-fence gossipy tone while still sounding plausible. They serve as a reminder that parents had lives before they married. Photos of his mother's suitors-prospective and dejected-appear at the top of each vignette and add interest. It is easy to imagine why Leveridge used a personal ad to try to find a mate, and funny to learn how he copes in his still-single life. An engaging recreational read.
Karen Sokol, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The first half of this collection is a series of vignettes about the men Leveridge's obviously charming and attractive mom dated before she married his dad, in the early '50s. How true they may be is a toss-up, but they are engaging, partly for their stripped-down humor and partly for the spectacle of a man writing about his mom's supposed recollections. And she did actually meet Kerouac and Cassady in Amarillo, where she worked as a waitress. The second half is Leveridge musing with rue but without bathos about his life: heterosexual, single, not rich, an Oklahoma boy in New York City. His essay on his first massage is worth the price of admission. Much of this work appeared originally on his Web site [http:// www.brettnews.com], and his is a voice heard occasionally on NPR. There's a repetition inherent in this sort of collection, and like maple creams, it can make you a little bilious if you consume too many in a row; but he's a nice guy, and you won't regret the company. GraceAnne A. DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Villard; 1st edition (May 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375504001
• ISBN-13: 978-0375504006
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,798,758 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brett Leveridge was born at the Route 66 Lanes bowling alley in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, between the 7th and 8th frames of his mother's third perfect game in a four-day stretch. He saw very little of his father, a traveling Druid evangelist, during his childhood; as a result, he grew up rough and he grew up wild and, when he was only 15, he shot a man in El Reno just to watch him die.

Barely evading the heat, the fuzz, the coppers, Johnny Law, the gendarmes, he hotfooted it to New York City. It was in a Bowery mission, while awaiting a bowl of potato soup and some banana pudding, that he received his calling.

Publications such as New York magazine, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, .net magazine, Long Island Newsday, The New York Daily News, Virtual City magazine, NetGuide magazine, The Boston Globe, Time Out New York magazine, New York Press, The Joe Bob Briggs Report, The Web magazine, The Columbus [Ohio] Dispatch, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Psychotronic magazine have taken note of Leveridge's humorous musings, and he was cited as one of the members of the "It" Lit Pack in Entertainment Weekly's 2000 "It" issue.

Leveridge's "Men My Mother Dated" was a featured column in Daver Eggers' Might magazine for nearly two years, and he has also written for such print and online publications as Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Virtual City, The Oklahoma Gazette, Egg, Salon, Urban Desires, Tripod, City Search New York, and Oklahoma Today.

Leveridge is also an occasional contributor to the popular syndicated radio program This American Life and National Public Radio's All Things Considered and has also been featured on NPR's Weekly Edition.

Leveridge lives in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, where he spends most of his time alone with his memories. His critically acclaimed book, Men My Mother Dated (and Other Mostly True Tales), published in the spring of 2000 by Villard Books, was a finalist for the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor. His work was also featured in 101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells, a humor collection published that was edited by Michael Rosen and published in 2002 by Thomas Dunne Books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Slice of an American Life, May 28, 2000

By 

Harvey Eccleston - See all my reviews

This review is from: Men My Mother Dated and Other Mostly True Tales (Hardcover)

I picked up Brett Leveridge's new book Men My Mother Dated and thought to myself, "Now who would want to read a book filled with stories about the men someone's mother dated?"

The answer is pretty evident once you begin reading these humorous and wonderfully written stories. It got me to thinking just what types of guys my own mom must have dated and of the different stories all of our mothers could tell regarding the finer points of dating.

My favorite story had to be The Eddie Cantor Six in which Brett recounts the tale of his mother having dated six men who, over the course of two weeks, all took her to see The Eddie Cantor Story at a local movie theater.

The rest of the stories or commentaries, if you will, are just as well written and some are laugh-out-loud hysterical! You simply cannot go wrong with this slim volume of essays by a man with a truly observant eye toward our current state of social affairs. You'll pick it up and won't want to put it down!

Oh...and be sure to check out Brett's Website BRETTnews wherein you will have the opportunity to sign his Guest Book and be asked that all-important question - What Is Your Inseam.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Me, Biased?, May 19, 2000

By 

Carolyn Hahn (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Men My Mother Dated and Other Mostly True Tales (Hardcover)

OK, I've known Brett Leveridge for years, and have admired his writing for ages. I've followed his radio commentator's career with interest, as well as...let us be honest...tinges of jealousy. And why not? Brett's writing is so deceptively simple, I find myself thinking, studying, scheming. It was in this grumpily calculating spirit that I watched him write this book and invite me to a reading from it, little dreaming, I suppose what evil lurked in my heart. And damned if he didn't do it again, that Brett-like thing his writing does: within minutes of his starting to read a 'Men My Mother Dated' story, the one where his mom gets into a 'hair pulling, eye-gouging catfight, the first such row mom had ever been involved in,' I was laughing helplessly, as Brett went on to add, straightfaced, that mom's arrest ('her first') landed her in jail over night until her date 'took up a collection around the fraternity house and posted bail the next morning.' As always, Brett manages to create his own little world, marked by mom's cheerful resiliance and his own sly humor. Does he make this stuff up? It feels like fiction but it's so seamless that the only possible reaction is to relax and enjoy it. After the reading, I went home and read the second half of the book, the 'mostly true tales' of the title, in which Brett recounts a series of funny, sometimes touching vignettes from his life as a single man in New York. I found myself, again, admiring his honesty and essential generosity as a writer. I thought I knew Brett, who is, all competitive spirit aside, a great guy, but these stories revealed a whimsical side of him, of dating, of life in the city that are really magical. As he says in the disclaimer, they're 'mostly true', but there's a quality of infinite possibility he brings to the utterly commonplace, as in a story about waking up at 3 am because of street noise and realizing it's from the subtle sounds of four men tap dancing. Tap dancing! Only in Brett's world would a glance out the window reveal an elderly man 'relishing the opportunity to surrender, even in his limited fashion, to those same rhythms that the three younger men had marked with their feet, to perpetuate, in the pale glow of the late spring moon, what must surely now be, for him, several decades of dancing. His are slow and steady movements, long scraping sweeps of the foot, like a drummer using brushes instead of a stick, but they seem wonderfully economical after the feverish steps of the younger men...' Yes, this is a book of humor, but it's also a book about life's poignance and possibilities, and the tender gifts afforded by a look outside a window at 3 AM. In a world with a surfeit of hope, this book is a sweet talisman, and I'm glad I have it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Mother': Skirmishes After the Vote, but Before the Pill, June 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Men My Mother Dated and Other Mostly True Tales (Hardcover)

Brett Leveridge offers a generous portrait of the delights and dangers of dating, as seen through the wise (but not hard-bitten) eyes of a young woman in the 50's. The fact that this woman is his mother does not distract from his candid appraisals of the motives of men and women during their movie-going, dance-attending searches for companionship.

He creates a remarkable movie in one's head, full of Beat poets, seducing at dawn; confident sons of preachers (whose version of 'going fast' involves way more than the moves of 'third base'); rough men, humbled by her beauty; shy men, sometimes encouraged too far.

All these experiences tie in to Karen's ('Mother's') subtle construction of her dream man; the fidelity and kindness she shows to others during her dates become building blocks for the long-lasting fidelity of her only marriage.

Leveridge's view of human nature in his Mother stories (and in his short essays) is tasteful and respectful, but not conservatively retrograde. Men who might have kept a stash of physique magazines and women who might have had their secret love in the WACS also have their role (an appropriate one, neither cruel nor cold) in this girl's journey to womanhood and marriage.

This is the rare post-modern book that one could safely give to Mom or Dad, while feeling guilty about wanting to keep it for oneself. Play it safe -- buy two.