The Broken Places A Memoir eBook Joseph McBride
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In The Broken Places, Joseph McBride, an internationally acclaimed American cultural historian, recalls his troubled youth in the Midwest during the 1960s. Searingly immediate and yet reflective, this is the author's memoir of his breakdown as a teenager and triumphant recovery. It gives an unsparing look at physical and psychological abuse, family dysfunction and addiction, sexual repression, and Catholic guilt. And at its heart, this is a haunting, often joyous love story.
The Broken Places offers an unforgettable portrait of Kathy Wolf, a brilliant, vibrant, shattered young Native American woman who taught Joe how to live even though she could not save herself. Kathy's life exemplifies what Ernest Hemingway wrote, "The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially." This extraordinary love story will move you and disturb you.
Joseph McBride was born in Milwaukee and educated at Marquette University High School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He lives in Berkeley, California, and is a professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. McBride is the author of seventeen previous books, including biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg; three books on Orson Welles; and Into the Nightmare My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit.
The Broken Places A Memoir eBook Joseph McBride
For those in the Legion of the Damned, this is a very touching book. The author has shared his bitter experiences of the past involving individual turmoil and social alienation that will affect many who read it. Even in cultures where the standard prohibition was "If you ask for psychological treatment, it will go down in your record" (whatever that was?), readers will deeply sympathize with this autobiographical book and realize that they were not alone at their time of deep emotional pain. This is a very brave act on the part of the author re-visiting a psychological past that even the memory must have been difficult to deal with. Still for others daily contemplating Graham Greene's "Russian" solution in their own version of "Clapham Common", the fact that somebody else suffered in different ways and came out of it, broken, but not destroyed, will give hope to many. As I finished the last chapter of this very poignant book, my mind returned to that closing image in Tony Palmer's TESTIMONY when the Great Leader appeared as a ghostly presence to the dying Shostakovitch - "Without me, you would not have been creative" is his final sentence. I'm sure both composer and author of so many other creative works would have wished that the cost of such creativity was not that high. However, this book is essential reading. There is no such thing as standard normality and we should accept those who are different as well as understand the differences within ourselves, where they emerge from, and how they may be directed in creative and positive ways.Product details
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The Broken Places A Memoir eBook Joseph McBride Reviews
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Searing, compassionate, can't put down book - Catcher in the Rye meets Angela's Ashes. A stunning ending. Anyone with family dysfunction, a troubled childhood, who remembers their first relationship or a childhood painful emotional episode will love this book. I was stunned.
An incredibly honest story about having and recovering from a mental breakdown. Since McBride is a movie guy, I would say the story has elements of Oliver Twist, Heaven Help Us, The Snake Pit, and David and Lisa.
The Broken Places is a very open and harrowing account by author Joseph McBride of his troubled adolescence and the struggle between adherence to the Catholic faith and the natural impulses of a young man attracted to the opposite sex. The object of his desires, a young woman called Kathy, is also contending with her own demons. The account of their troubled affair is unstintingly frank at times, pulling the reader into the story right from the beginning until the tragic denouement of McBride’s relationship with Kathy.
As if his teenage upbringing wasn’t troubled enough, the story of the erratic and at times emotionally destructive attitude of McBride’s parents towards their eldest son almost deserves a book of its own. The passages on the author’s dysfunctional family give credence, as if it were needed, to the English poet Philip Larkin’s much quoted poetic observation that ‘they (expletive deleted) you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do’.
The author should be congratulated on recounting in explicit detail what was obviously a painful and traumatic period in his life. It deserves a much wider readership and I would urge those more familiar with McBride’s celebrated film writing to take a chance on The Broken Places. You won’t regret it.
This is a page turning story of one young man's struggle with mental illness. It points out the failures of our medical system, the agonies of mental illness, and the effect it has not only the patient, but all those around him/her.
McBride's description of his Catholic school sex education brought back not-so pleasant memories of my own 17 years in Catholic schools.
An outstanding coming-of-age memoir that unfolds like a good novel, knowing that it recounts a history makes it all the more powerful. McBride shifts effortlessly between the voice of a naive (albeit highly intelligent) youth and the wiser perspective of hindsight. The story is engrossing by expanding degrees as it depicts a world fraught with sexual repression, bullying, family dysfunction, and mental illness told with a brutal frankness that is shocking, touching, and, at times, amusing. The severity of a Catholic school upbringing in the 1950s is almost hard to imagine today, and this alone would provide enough material for a lengthy story, but McBride's narrative goes many more places (that I'll refrain from recounting). The central characters are vividly drawn throughout, illustrated with complexity and detail that makes them relatable and unforgettable. A bit soul-crushing but ultimately cathartic, the writing avoids sentimentality and banal life lessons that can make memoirs so off-putting. Highly recommended. (Side note, this story would make an excellent film).
I’ve long been an admirer of Joseph McBride’s important writings about film, but this memoir took me by surprise and left me with a great personal respect for him. It’s a brave, unflinchingly honest account of the traumatic family, religious, and educational experiences which, when combined with various aspects of his personality, led to his teen-aged crackup and commitment to a mental hospital. I suspect he was able to achieve productive maturity chiefly because of his manifest intelligence and capacity for love. The Broken Places reads with the power of a novel. It has an admirable objectivity and lack of self-pity, and its portrait of Kathy Wolf, the young woman who helped McBride survive but could not survive herself, is unforgettable. Kathy is brought so vividly alive that she fairly leaps off the page. James Naremore
For those in the Legion of the Damned, this is a very touching book. The author has shared his bitter experiences of the past involving individual turmoil and social alienation that will affect many who read it. Even in cultures where the standard prohibition was "If you ask for psychological treatment, it will go down in your record" (whatever that was?), readers will deeply sympathize with this autobiographical book and realize that they were not alone at their time of deep emotional pain. This is a very brave act on the part of the author re-visiting a psychological past that even the memory must have been difficult to deal with. Still for others daily contemplating Graham Greene's "Russian" solution in their own version of "Clapham Common", the fact that somebody else suffered in different ways and came out of it, broken, but not destroyed, will give hope to many. As I finished the last chapter of this very poignant book, my mind returned to that closing image in Tony Palmer's TESTIMONY when the Great Leader appeared as a ghostly presence to the dying Shostakovitch - "Without me, you would not have been creative" is his final sentence. I'm sure both composer and author of so many other creative works would have wished that the cost of such creativity was not that high. However, this book is essential reading. There is no such thing as standard normality and we should accept those who are different as well as understand the differences within ourselves, where they emerge from, and how they may be directed in creative and positive ways.
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