Playing Catch with My Mother: Coming to Manhood When All the Rules Have Changed [Hardcover]

Greg Lichtenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 1999

After the Sixties, after feminism, after political correctness, how does a boy become a man? In Playing Catch with My Mother, Greg Lichtenberg speaks for the silent sons of the gender revolution. It is an astonishing debut: exquisitely written, funny, sexy, wise, and painfully honest about the fate of good intentions.

The family experiment began with hope and energy. His mother returned to writing poetry and found her first job. His father quit corporate life to become a rock critic. Together they set out to make a close and tolerant family, where men and women were equals, where a little boy who dreamed of sports heroism could still be allowed to cry.

With the intensity of a child's perceptions, Lichtenberg evokes both the promise of this brave new world and the searing disappointment of its downward spiral into harsh words, blows, and divorce. If his parents were at war, how could he trust the truth of what they taught? And if violence and doubt warred in him as well, how could he trust himself?

This is uncharted territory for both men and memoir, a minefield of contradictory ideals, and Lichtenberg maps it with a visceral sense of gender flash points: from schoolyard lessons in cruelty to the secret romances of eight-year-olds, from the politics of high school dating to a group of friends striving for honesty across gender lines.

Threaded like a fuse through it all is the power of sexual desire to explode every preconception. As Greg pursues the elusive, irresistible redhead who is everything he hoped for and nothing he expected, he confronts for himself masculinity's unanswered questions about love, equality, violence, and passion.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Skillful writing rescues this memoir from being just another chronicle of adolescent angst, and a genuine attempt to grapple with what it meant to come of age during the feminist movement of the late 1960s and '70s grounds it in the life of the nation, not just that of the memoirist. Lichtenberg successfully evokes the time when he was growing up in Manhattan with two parents whose marriage was impacted by the women's movement. After a trial separation, his mother and father experimented with a new lifestyle in which both worked and shared the housework. However, Lichtenberg recalls that their fighting continued to escalate until they eventually divorced. As a teenager, he was disturbed both by his father's brutal outbursts and by his mother's feminist consciousness, which, he recalls, sometimes caused him to feel guilty about being male: "My father had a problem. His problem was being a boy." Lichtenberg's sexual awakening further confused him, and he perceptively describes how his personal turmoil caused him to deliberately sabotage a relationship with a girl who cared about him. The book ends on a note of earned optimism, with Lichtenberg and his fiancee enjoying the fruits of the often tumultuous revolution in gender roles endured by their parents' generation, "imagining choices beyond the cruelties of tradition and the shortsightedness of rebellion."
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Narratives on gender identity from the perspective of straight white men are, well, rare. But Lichtenberg's debut, a memoir of childhood, is proof that the battles for equality fought in the 1970s have led to important new questions. Born in the middle of the chaotic sixties, young Greg grows up primarily in Greenwich Village with a hippie father and a feminist mother, a couple whose marriage doesn't survive the era's gender wars. His father, a frustrated music critic prone to violent outbursts and anger, eventually finds a new, younger wife. Across town, his mother attends women's groups and builds a career outside the home. Lichtenberg's narrative revisits the typical boyhood stops: neighborhood sports, adolescent friendships, dating, and sex. At different times, he finds himself straddling the gender fence, a "traitor" to both sides. Although he wants to embrace feminist ideas, he discovers he must reject some to feel like a man. Lichtenberg writes sharp, engaging prose, generous with insights, and in his hands even the most familiar subject matter holds the reader rapt. James Klise

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; 1ST edition (April 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553099825
• ISBN-13: 978-0553099829
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,820,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Strong Voice of a Boy - - With Insights Into Us All, June 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Playing Catch with My Mother: Coming to Manhood When All the Rules Have Changed (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed Lichtenberg's book. I grew up in the 60's too, a decade and a half older than the author. His memories of that period revived mine. I could taste and smell the confusion and remember what it felt like as I, too, without guideposts to follow, tried to sort out what the change meant for me as a woman. I enjoyed the book for all the flap promised -- especially the "intensity of a child's perceptions," but oh, there was so much more: The freshness of his descriptions and analogies; the honesty of the dialog; the insights into a boy, which I would have expected, but equally strong insights into girls; and the ending, which was left just as endings should be. I can't wait for Lichtenberg's next book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very funny, very touching, August 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Playing Catch with My Mother: Coming to Manhood When All the Rules Have Changed (Hardcover)

I am the same age as the author and am almost always bored by the self-absorbed, precious, and generally unoriginal spew that most of my contemporaries manage to have published or aired on TV or radio. It was so refreshing to read the experience of someone who actually THINKS about his feelings and who also understands that he has feelings about his thoughts. Balance, what a concept. And non-righteous, too.

It was a funny, poignant treat to read this book, which is so well-written, I really didn't care that, as one casual reviewer noted, he hasn't cured cancer or whatever. I didn't sense that this book was the ultimate in self-aggrandizement. The guy is just exploring his life and invites you to have a listen if you want.

When I finished reading the book, I felt like Greg could be a pal. I did not get the sense he had any illusions about this being the next Pulitzer Prize winner. But I do hope he feels that this book was a success, because it sure was touching and entertaining. And, lo, here is a man who seems to be a free thinker, not a victim of political correctness.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Playing Catch With My Mother : Coming to Manhood When All th, March 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Playing Catch with My Mother: Coming to Manhood When All the Rules Have Changed (Hardcover)

Greg Lichtenberg's memoir is one of the most insightful and enjoyable books I have read in years. A writer with a photographic memory and a flair for vivid yet unique descriptions, he evokes the details of my own childhood during the 1970's. But this remarkable story goes further than just memories. In a subtle, funny, and beautiful manner, Lichtenberg quietly guides the reader through a society that has very much changed over the past 30 years with regard to gender roles, the fracturing of the nuclear family, parents' expectations of their children and children's expectations of their parents. Through well-chosen and keenly described poignant moments, this book provided insight into not only my own life as a young girl raised during this confusing time, but also what it meant for my male peers. Lichtenberg is an extremely observant and talented writer, and I eagerly look forward to reading his future works.