Customer Reviews

In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ok. I'll admit it. This book attracted me initially because of a sort of prurient curiosity about the author's cousin...the famous Edie. I got way more than I bargained for.

I loved this book for many reasons. First there is just the plain courage of the author. He knows what he's going to find as he follows the dark strand of manic depression through his exploration of his ancestors lives but still faces it head on with courage, directness and an appealing, understated sense of humor. He probably had to decide to laugh or cry and chose the former fortunately.

What holds everything together (and makes the pages fly by) is Sedgwick's highly literary prose and facility with all manner of detail. Others have talked about Sedgwick's ability in this regard, and it is on full display here. Many of his descriptions of people and events are breathtaking. You're a witness to a head on collision and don't want to look, but thanks to that combination of courage and description you can't and don't want to avert your eyes... nor will he let you. For example, his description of smallpox is excruciating...made even more so by the fact that the man who started the family, Theodore, gave it to his first wife and had to live with that guilt for the rest of his life.

It's an amazing tour through the colorful background of a family that was important to this country in many ways. And, of course, the common thread through all the generations is the battle with depression. Sedgwick takes you through it all, a Shackelton of genealogy, and in the end finds much to help in coping with his own disease...not the least of which is his father's love and wisdom both of which were--typical of the times--difficult to access while his father was alive.

I recommend this book highly.

To reveal the dark secrets of one's family--and one's own--is a difficult and delicate task; John Sedgwick accomplishes this intimate feat with honesty and compassion. Depression and bipolar disorder stalk six generations of the Sedgwick family and its connections, beginning with the family matriarch, Pamela Dwight Sedgwick, in the early days of our nation and ending with Mr. Sedgwick himself. These disorders were (and are) extremely disabling, but were not infrequently accompanied by great creativity and achievement--many in the Sedgwick family have reached positions of prominence in Americal life--and this gives Mr. Sedgwick comfort. Teasing out how our environment interacts with our genetic heritage is an important part of mastering who we are, and Mr. Sedgwick provides us with a fascinating look at one man's attempt to understand how these forces work within him.

Years ago, I read Jean Stein's book on Edie Sedgwick; I was interested to learn more about some of the many contemporary Sedgwicks who contributed to that book, and to hear from a different point of view why so many of them led such troubled lives.

This book will appeal to the historian and to the reader trying to understand or cope with manic-depression and depression. I found Sedgwick's opening chapter to be one of the most harrowing and painfull experiences of my life. This is a fine discussion of the Sedgwick's and their role in American history. Unlike Henry Adams, as the Wall Street Journal reviewer correctly pointed out, Mr. Sedgwick pulls no punchs. Parts of this work are not for the faint of heart. As a Southerner I know only too well of what Mr. Sedgwick speaks. This is not a clinical discussion of two heart-breaking mental health problems, but a story of what they are, how they destroy, and how, sometimes, you can cope and live.

John Sedgwick has written a "family memoir" that encompasses six generations of his Boston Brahmin brood. His decision to mine through letters, public records, diaries, and the like came after his own breakdown in 2000. Very much wanting to make sense of his hypomania -- a mild form of manic depression -- he turned to his family history, which itself is intertwined with American history. And that's part of what makes this "memoir" so special. Instead of a salacious confessional, the reader is taken on a personalized tour of the Revolution, Shays Rebellion, Black-White relations, and more -- all viewed through real people in real time. His portrait of the dignified Mumbet, a freed female slave is priceless, as was her character. The writing is at once eloquent and accessible. If I have one quibble, and it's a minor one, it's over Sedgwick's own story within the story. His WASPY discretion dictates that we get only a cursory picture of his struggles with his father, Minturn, a Groton gentleman of Old School manners whose emotional distance cannot be bridged -- perhaps another memoir, specifically focused on his immediate family and its travails, is in Sedgwick. "In My Blood," however, still stands on its own as a literary gem.

...That's the word that the author invents to describe the existential mood among his family members, a strange mix of Brahman pride and manic-depressive despair. What's so brilliant about this multi-generational memoir is that by the end of the book you know exactly what the author means by "Sedgwickiness" and the word lingers in your mind long after you close the pages. Nowadays, I catch myself thinking, "Well, that's a very Sedgwicky person," or "Oh what a Sedgwicky thought I just had." When an author changes the way you see the world, even by one or two clicks, he has achieved greatness.

"In My Blood" reminded me of how few generations it takes to get from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to present times. John Sedgwick is a very engaging narrator of his family history. After experiencing an emotional breakdown and going into therapy, Mr. Sedgwick decides to delve into a treasure trove of family documents going back to Revolutionary times to examine the interplay of mental illness and success and creativity in his family. The house built by Theodore Sedgwick is still in the family, held in trust, full of old pictures, letters, and diaries. More documents from important members of the family are in library collections. This book could be stuffy and self-important, but John Sedgwick somehow manages to bring out the admirable, the deplorable, and the tragic in these generations in a loving, easygoing way that made me feel like I had sat down for a very interesting talk with a very nice person.

John Sedgwick is a scion of one of those old, distinguished New England families whose name reverberates through the centuries. The Sedgwicks rose to prominence in colonial days and helped establish the infant Republic. They are quintessential WASPS, with a long lineage, proud traditions, and an ancestral home in the Berkshires. Unfortunately for them, the Sedgwicks also carry DNA which inclines some members of each generation to manic-depression and other mental/emotional problems.

I was engrossed in this book from page one. As a genealogist who hails from a WASP family even older than the Sedgwicks (though Southern and far less prosperous), I enjoyed reading about the successive generations of the family and their dramas and scandals. I was also interested in the descriptions of the Sedgwicks' struggles with depression, which has darkened the lives of some members of my own family. I appreciated the cost to John Sedgwick himself of telling this story, as he had to work through a depression of his own while dealing with issues which must have been very painful for him and for his siblings and other family members. I finished the book hoping and believing that John and his family have at last achieved some sense of peace and accomodation with their pasts.

The author here starts 7 or 8 generations back, and traces the tale from about 1700 of his relatives coming to America, picking up some land from the disenfranchised indians, and building a small empire. The general family profession is writing and the law, and there seems a requirement to attend prep school at Groton, then college at Harvard.

This book struck a chord with me, having attended an Ivy League school, and was on a trip to visit Harvard while I read it. One could view this book as an intimate portrait of a certain kind of preppie, as he/she evolved over time.

The ostensible theme, madness and accomplishment in the author's family, mainly just provides the opportunity to document the establishment and maintenance, and the latest minor decline of an especially noteworthy family from before the Revolutionary War up to the present. I suspect many such prominent families, perhaps families in general, have their share of insanity and black sheep, they just don't parade it out in view. It is fascinating, however, to see the contrast of some relatives limited by their bipolar tendencies to other relatives who could harness their manic energy to great ends.

Maybe I was overinterpreting, but despite the claims of openness, it seemed some scandalous behavior was only hinted at and other such probable behavior explicitly denied, as one might expect from someone still close to some of his subjects and the descendants. Also, despite the presence of some random numbers, the total wealth of the family that allowed many members to have multiple homes in various garden spots went unstated.

If the author sees this, please show more of the portraits, photographs, and pictures of the ancestral homes in the next edition. By the 6th generation, it was sometimes elusive to separate the various Sedgwicks in my memory. Maybe a more clear genealogical table would help as well.

Any book that kept me rapt on a pair of cross-country plane trips, when I had other good books and the laptop charged up, gets five stars from me.

I was very excited about this book, and the first half of the book lived up to my expectations.

The second half, the book fizzles and becomes quite boring, and feels as though the author is struggling to flesh out his book.

Nice read, not great though.

I once asked E. Digby Baltzell, who popularised the term WASP, why he wrote so little of the poor, and he said, "Because they are only statistics". The same frustration went with his native Philadelphia; the
Episcopalian-cum-Quaker gentry left behind few words about themselves. We
have the opposite ethos here.

As an exact contemporary of John Segwick, I have been reading him since
the Gil Lewis book, even saving articles from the late NEW ENGLAND magazine. Because of Baltzell and Sedgwick, I also visited Groton School
a few times (and wrote a precipitous and disastrous letter to a
distinguished alum, a total stranger, which I bitterly regret to this
day - oh, well). The last section of IN MY BLOOD hurt to read.

This is a superior book, which I believe took no little guts to write.
And writing is what the Sedgwicks have done for centuries now. But
we see the truth that behind the ornate doors of those estates in Social
Register country, human frailty lives as it does in the trailer park,
only magnified cruelly sometimes by the glass of great expectations.

I could not put it down.