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The Boys of My Youth

4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 · rating details · 1,562 ratings · 249 reviews

Rarely does the debut of a new writer garner such attention & acclaim. The excitement began the moment "The Fourth State of Matter," one of the fourteen extraordinary personal narratives in this book, appeared in the pages of The New Yorker. It increased when the author received a prestigious Whiting Foundation Award in November 1997, & it continued as the hardcove...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published January 29th 1999 by Back Bay Books (first published January 1st 1998)

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Jul 01, 2007 Brendan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: William H. Gass & Eric Clapton

William H. Gass, that curmudgeonly king of American letters, proclaims with enormous exasperation that that “the perils of the present tense are pronounced.” In his 1996 essay, “A Failing Grade for the Present Tense,” he shakes his finger like a schoolmarm and scolds, “What was once a rather rare disease has become an epidemic.” And sounding like our elders in Washington, who wonder where in the world the outrage went, he woefully concludes that “if there is an academic prose, this prose is coll...more William H. Gass, that curmudgeonly king of American letters, proclaims with enormous exasperation that that “the perils of the present tense are pronounced.” In his 1996 essay, “A Failing Grade for the Present Tense,” he shakes his finger like a schoolmarm and scolds, “What was once a rather rare disease has become an epidemic.” And sounding like our elders in Washington, who wonder where in the world the outrage went, he woefully concludes that “if there is an academic prose, this prose is collegiate.”

Well.

Now enter Jo Ann Beard, a Quad Cities native and graduate of the University of Iowa Program in Nonfiction Writing, whose 1998 collection, The Boys of My Youth, is gleefully, seemingly tauntingly, composed in the present tense. “Here is a scene. Two sisters are fishing together in a flat-bottomed boat on an olive green lake,” begins her essay “Cousins.” A page later: “It is five a.m. A duck stands up, shakes out its feathers, and peers above the still grass at the edge of the water.” And not even a page later: “It is nine o’clock on Saturday night, the sky is black and glittering with pinholes, old trees are bent down over the highway.” In Beard’s writing, time splashes its way downstream, taking with it the bits and pieces of what she admits to be the “blistering, stupefying boredom” of her everyday existence. She, in turn, becomes like one of the fish she describes, who restlessly combs the depths until she discovers something interesting. Then, “the skin of the lake twitches suddenly” and her “fish springs loose into the air” and “drops back down with a flat splash.”

It’s an enticing metaphor for not simply the everydayness of our everyday lives but for the possibilities of beauty that, in our own humility, we sometimes overlook. And an unwavering faith in the moment, in the end, makes our mortality all the more uncomfortable. By the end of “Cousins,” that fish has transformed into a twisting baton, which “rises miraculously, lingers for a moment against the sun, and then drops back down,” and, finally, through the fading eyes of a dying mother, her mind muddled by morphine, becomes something of both. This time, however, it refuses to come back down.

In essay after essay of The Boys of My Youth, the fleeting becomes forever and the timeless timeful, as Beard scrunches the memories as varied and far apart as a nighttime tantrum in her crib and toking up at a Clapton concert into the infinitely tiny speck of her called now. The result? As much as any more celebrated memoirist who dwells exclusively in retrospect, Beard gives us herself in all its tantalizing particularities -- friend, daughter, cousin, colleague, wife, divorcee, incurable wiseass -- while also managing to carve out a voice, a spirit, that is unmistakably unified.(less)

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Aug 21, 2008 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Megan by: Sarah Lawrence College

This book taught me a lot about reading and writing: that is, what I want to read and what I don't want to read; what I should write, and what Jo Anne Beard shouldn't. The ambiguous, vague touchy-feely pieces on her family were Important Because They Happened to Her. In a very, very negative way. The piece "Coyote" particularly stands out as one that I absolutely had to skim over. It must have been laborious as hell to write, because it was laborious as hell to read. I'm not a courtesan. I don't...more

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Sep 06, 2007 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: oldfavorites

One of my all-time favorites. Jo Ann Beard writes like a friend -- does that make any sense? Or maybe it's her writing style that just makes me *wish* we were friends. I first read this book for a memoir writing workshop, and I immediately realized that this is exactly how I wish all my own writing could turn out. Her collection of essays is just spot on -- in tone and character and so much wonderful detail. A particular stand-out for me is the story 'The Fourth State of Matter,' which -- withou...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This feels like a cohesive memoir even though the chapters are self-contained essays. I really enjoyed this collection even though some of the topics of the essays are more common like first loves, childhood crushes, and a mother's death. Almost all of the pieces are grounded in present tense even though Beard jumps around in time. This ability is particularly impressive in the title story, "The Boys of My Youth." Her most interesting essays to me were the one about the shooting at Physics Depar...more

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Jun 07, 2011 Anittah rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People looking for a beach read

Recommended to Anittah by: Elaine Edelman

Well-written, clearly, (Beard's essay "Werner" in the Best American Essays 2007 convinced me of her ability to write) but it fails to achieve peaks because it fails to achieve depths, and I like a book that's insightful, as an insightful book reminds me of stuff about me (my most cherished topic, bien sur). But I didn't underline jack in this book, and I get the sense that Beard is unwilling to explores truths about herself in a dirty, honest, messy-hands kind of way, and this unwillingness come...more

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May 30, 2011 Henry Le Nav rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an interesting collection of essays and stories of Beard's life. The excellent essays deserve 6 stars, if not 7. The so-so? Perhaps 3. Some of the essays have a contrived, "I am experimenting with writing styles" air about them that subtracted from the book. I am not sure whether the random chronology of the essays worked or not. It gave the book something of a shotgun approach, yet it prevented me from getting bogged down and setting the book aside--which considering the excellence of s...more

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Jan 17, 2011 Darice rated it 4 of 5 stars

In this collection of short creative nonfiction essays which string together childhood emotions with the perspicacity of adult observation and the diction of a artist thoroughly familiar with the mundane and popular, Jo Ann Beard draws a picture of her life that is at once unique in its specific stories and immensely relateable as her emotional repertoire is refreshingly modern. The conversational style Beard employs is intimately simple, but full of details stemming from the rich continuity of...more In this collection of short creative nonfiction essays which string together childhood emotions with the perspicacity of adult observation and the diction of a artist thoroughly familiar with the mundane and popular, Jo Ann Beard draws a picture of her life that is at once unique in its specific stories and immensely relateable as her emotional repertoire is refreshingly modern. The conversational style Beard employs is intimately simple, but full of details stemming from the rich continuity of her youth, her cigarette-smoking and beer-chugging family and eccentric friends.

"In the Current," is a short memoir of being an awkward pre-teen who becomes aware of boys through the juxtaposition of paralyzing self-consciousness and immobilizing fear. "Bonanza," about her weekend stays with her recently remarried grandmother and Ralph, is an investigation of a powerfully influential childhood experience with monotony and death. "Cousins" traces the intimacy between her mother and aunt, herself with her cousin, the pairing of women holding strong throughout age. "Behind the Screen" retells the fickleness of childhood watching fireworks, an experience of such visual depth that the awesome and casual intermingle. "Coyotes" is the first mention of Eric, Beard's husband, whose initial impression is of a dependable countryman, stargazing and repeating constellations to Jo, of easy companionship on a trip to the desert where they met a coyote. Then, in "Against the Grain," her husband's character takes on another dimension, but still caring and tolerant of Jo's many quirks. "The Fourth State of Matter" seizes upon the idea of plasma, that cloud of elements ionized in space as it tells the shocking end of her job as a managing editor of a Physics magazine. The emotional thrall of collapse and destruction is handled with delicacy and moment to moment honesty, converging in the most powerful and poetic piece of this collection. "Bulldozing the Baby" is a riveting and unapologetic account of the impulses of a toddler and her reaction to the loss of her favorite toy. "The Family Hour" is a disturbing and moving piece about a car accident her alcoholic father barely survived, with compelling anecdotes about each family member's way of coping. "Waiting" is about the death of her beloved mother. In "Out There," Beard escapes from the hatred of a stranger who wants to kill her to the apathy of her husband who can't wait to leave her. Finally, the eponymous "The Boys of My Youth" brings readers right into the midst of her unraveling marriage, stringing together pieces of youthful friends, parties, boys, focusing on the strength of her friendship with Elizabeth, who restores Jo Ann Beard to the liveliness of youth.(less)

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Jul 09, 2010 Harkinna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Everyone loves this book. No one writes bad reviews of this book. The Boys of My Youth is Jo Ann Beard’s only book to date. Everyone is right. The book is amazing, but I am going to tell you what I did not like about the book.

Beard’s descriptions of childhood are just too well done. While reading them, memories of your own childhood bubble up. And not just the good memories, but also the memories that sting, the memories you thought were gone.

And really, as you are reading the book, she flits ar...more

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Apr 28, 2010 Luann rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, essays

This book of essays is one of my favorite all-time reads. Beard has a particularly Midwestern voice, in my opinion (I grew up in Illinois) and that identification really struck me. Some of the pieces continue to haunt me years later. Very occasionally I've seen something of hers in The New Yorker - but I've been waiting and hoping for another book for a long time.

I highly recommend this. In fact, I think I just talked myself into rereading it.

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Apr 17, 2013 Constance rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I liked these a lot and would recommend them. Some of the essays here are just so nice to read. (Skip Coyote though; as one wonderful gr reviewer put it, “It must have been laborious as hell to write, because it was laborious as hell to read. I'm not a courtesan. I don't have time.”) While the overly-dramatized, overly-neat memoir style seems slightly dated, it is really satisfying for an essay to have a cohesive narrative and Jo Ann does it well. (The post-modern “I think this happened but I ca...more

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Sep 30, 2009 Jody rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jo Ann Beard
Interviewed by Michael Gardner

JoAnn Beard is a graduate of the Nonfiction Program at the University of Iowa. JoAnn Beard served as a visiting writer to the MFA program at Saint Mary's College of California in the fall of 2003.
MG: This is the first year that the nonfiction genre exists in the MFA Program at Saint Mary's College and will also be the first year in which works of nonfiction will be included in Mary Magazine. In developing my ideas about the genre of nonfiction, I couldn...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Denise rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I did enjoy this book..but it seemed to take an effort to make it through some parts. Some of the stories in it just could not hold my attention and others I could not put down. I enjoyed reading about her family and growing up years.

The chapter on the shooting was very good. I had to look it up. I sort of remember when it happened but hearing about it from someone who had actually lived it put it in more personal terms. I like how she related it to us in terms of her life and not just stating...more

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May 17, 2013 Melanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This dark and luminous collection of personal essays is worth reading if only for the essay entitled "The Fourth State of Matter", first published in The New Yorker in 1996. The heartbreaking essay is probably one of the best that I have ever read, both for its deep humanity and the elegance of its stylistic structure. I won't even tell you what it's about for fear of ruining any part of it.

Jo Ann Beard is a ridiculously gifted writer and her recollections of youth (she is especially remarkable...more

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Apr 12, 2011 Kristen Chavis rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Boys of my Youth by Jo Ann Beard

The Boys of My Youth is a Memoir about the boys in Jo Ann’s past and the people and animals that replace them when they are gone.
There are many poignant stories in this memoir, however, I find the most poignant to be The Fourth State of Matter. It’s about a shooting that occurs at the science lab where Jo Ann works. It happened after she had gone home early for the day. She walks the readers through what she suspected happened that day. Through this story, s...more

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May 22, 2011 Elisamatt rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobiography-memoir

The title of the book intrigued me which is why I started reading it. As it turned out, it is not a memoir, per se, but rather a collection of stories/essays about pivotal times in her life.

What I missed the most was some sort of temporal progression--that is, some context in time. Her essays/stories happen at different times in her life, and it was impossible for me to get a sense of her as a person and why some stories came about. In a sense, she seemed to be an eternal victim, though the sto...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Erik Eckel rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don’t possess an MFA in literature. Nor do I own a doctorate. All I earned are degrees in English and Microsoft Engineering. Yet, I feel the liberal arts education, combined with real-world experience, decades of reading and a proven ability to leverage the analytical left brain, provide qualification to at least describe which authors and books I appreciate and enjoy.

I like Jo Ann Beard. Prior to learning of The Boys of My Youth a few weeks ago, thanks to Flavorwire’s 25 Greatest Essays Of A...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Ruth rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved the voice in this gathering of autobiographical essays that hops around between childhood and adulthood, especially the sassy, bright, opinionated, funny voice of the wayward child. Reminds me a bit of Mary Karr. I wish I’d had that kind of spunk. Unlike my friend, Joan, though, I felt the sections set in Arizona, and especially those personifying the coyote, were the weakest in the book. Perhaps it’s because that setting is not one that Beard knows like her home territory in the Midwest...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Tabitha Blankenbiller rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading Beard’s memoir is like being invited into the home of a poor hostess. She’ll open the door and let you stay, but you’re never going to be offered an ice tea or coat rack. She doesn’t seem to be writing for an audience, but for a purpose higher and much more personal—therapy, enrichment, growth, discipline, all of the trademarks of a great writer. As a result, The Boys of My Youth is very honest and open, ripe with scenes that linger in your mind long after you’ve turned the page. Her exp...more Reading Beard’s memoir is like being invited into the home of a poor hostess. She’ll open the door and let you stay, but you’re never going to be offered an ice tea or coat rack. She doesn’t seem to be writing for an audience, but for a purpose higher and much more personal—therapy, enrichment, growth, discipline, all of the trademarks of a great writer. As a result, The Boys of My Youth is very honest and open, ripe with scenes that linger in your mind long after you’ve turned the page. Her experiences and descriptions are familiar and latch onto your own memories, like the description of her grandparent’s living room: “framed sayings from the olden days, plaques with jokes about outhouses, a pair of flying ceramic ducks with orange beaks and feet, and on and on” (Beard 13).
Less familiar is the layout and arc of the book. Beard’s writing styles and techniques vary wildly throughout the book, evidence that this is likely a collection of essays created over a varying arc of life and experience. She seems uninhibited by experimentation, taking risks that I have not seen from many nonfiction writers. When it comes to that age-old “truth, whole truth, or nothing but the truth” debate that raged on within my first residency, Beard leans heavily on the almost-fiction side of the spectrum. On several occasions she delves right into straight fiction. Cousins is a perfect example, one that also uses the “braided essay” technique. She juxtaposes scenes of her childhood and young adulthood, spent with her cousin Wendell, with her mother and aunt. The essay culminates with her mother dying, slipping off into a peaceful netherworld of lakes and canoes and jumping fish. We know that Beard was not present at this meeting, nor can she know what her mother was feeling or seeing life slipped away. We can be confident that she is being true to the characters and the life she remembers, and surmising a truth that she can believe and that we can accept. She ties off the braid with a beautiful allusion to the parade scene at the beginning of the essay: a girl’s baton sailing up into the sunlight, “a silver hyphen against the hot sky” (Beard 24). It reappears in her mother’s looming afterlife, a flying fish sailing above her. The woven story of family; cousins and sisters, friends and foes, creates a harmony between the brightness of childhood and the eventual, inevitable sunset of life.
The braided essay/fictionalized writing is less successful in Coyote, where the activities of a desert coyote are contrasted with the author and her boyfriend on a camping trip. The delving into the coyote’s psyche seems obviously fake and forced, especially when used so heavily in the essay. Though his stalking of rabbits and passing of cacti is gorgeously written, it becomes dull and doesn’t seem to fit with the point of the essay or arc of the entire memoir. Is Jo Ann a coyote, running in solitude on little sustenance? Is the coyote a kindred spirit? Does she belong in the desert? Should her cad of an ex-husband be the coyote’s next meal? These questions distract from the overall story, and whatever answer you reach doesn’t add to the end message. Comparing Cousins with Coyote was a good example of what can go right, and what can go wrong, in adding the “braided essay” to my toolbox.
Looking at the construction of the book reminded me of Dorianne Laux and Bonnie Jo Campbell’s craft talk, The Architecture of the Book. Beard arranged her collected essays in an order that builds curiosity and tension, foreshadowing events and slowly unraveling them for us. We know early on that she gets divorced, but it isn’t until later that we have- collected enough snippets and peeks to know why. She ends on an extremely high note with the book’s title essay, The Boys of My Youth. This was my favorite piece in the book, which weaves the story that she’s trying to tell (about the “boys of her youth—and the men who replace them”, according to the book jacket) with the process of trying to write it, which is influenced heavily by her impending divorce. In the end, the essay does not end up being about the boys of her youth, but rather the girls within it; chiefly her best friend, Elizabeth. Beard’s story is one that is common to many women, of family and female friends being pillars of support and influence throughout life. The boys may ebb and flow, but these tenants are constants.
I admired Beard’s fearless style and techniques, especially from the perspective of example. Her book showcases the power of contrast and creative timelines, and has provided some good fodder for my own stories.
(less)

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May 11, 2013 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a beautiful collection of carefully crafted essays. The attention to detail and the imagery of the memories the author is describing are lovely and breathtaking. The honesty but careful evasion inherent many of the pieces is intriguing. Others have complained that the author does not let you in to see the real person under the writing. This is true for many of them, but it really wasn't her goal. She gives away exactly as much as she wants. The pieces are fantastic, but the one that real...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Jacki Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jo Ann Beard sits squarely among my small group of favorite authors. The beauty of language here is breathtaking and memorable. Years later, some lines and phrases still echo in my head. I love that Jo Ann tackles the impossible (writing from the perspective of a three year old, for instance) and makes it thoroughly believable. Every woman will resonate with her young girlfriend pairings, the peering into the world of boys, and sisterly kick-fights. Especially dear to me is the desolate sense of...more

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Feb 19, 2011 Vanessa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-for-school

I read just read this for my Creative Writing class in college and fell in love! Reading Jo Ann Beard's memoir was like spreading butter. Sounds weird I know, but the writing quality and word choice just flows so smoothly and naturally. She goes into such great detail creating this images of the simplest things. Her word choice makes you think, "Wow those words are exactly how I would describe that if I could think of the perfect way to say it." There are so many lines in the book that I just ch...more

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Oct 28, 2008 Amy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: didn-t-finish

I thought the writing was good, sometimes quite good, but I found most of the stories a little tedious.

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Apr 22, 2013 Marianne Gandee rated it 3 of 5 stars

So at first I loved this book. I hadn't read for fun in a while, so when I started reading it, I think I confused my I'm-reading-for-fun-right-now reader's high with loving this book. I'll be straight, the stories are entertaining, but not compelling. You can set this book down for days on end and then come back to it when insomnia strikes, but it's not the lust-after-must-finish now variety.

My biggest issue with it was this, Jo Ann writes lovely prose, especially about her childhood and adoles...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Joan Colby rated it 5 of 5 stars

. Beard is funny, moving and often poetic in these essay-memoirs. “Coyotes” is pure poetry in parts…”In the dark that, on my smooth ocean, inside my mind, he is already gray and golden like the desert, like the moon moving among them in the clearing…” “Cousins” will resonate with any girl who had a bosom friend for the wild and carefree times. I remember reading “The Fourth Side of Matter” years ago in the New Yorker, one of the most powerful and unforgettable stories I’ve encountered. Beard’s v...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Christina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, just-for-me

The title of this collection of fictionalized autobiographical essays is a tad misleading. It could, instead, be entitled "The Girls of My Youth," as much of the book dwells on her relationships with women (sister, mother, cousin, best friend, and even grandmother). At least the only healthy and meaningful relationships described are with women.

I found the essays highly enjoyable and oftentimes heart-wrenching. Beard has a distinctive writing style and her voice feels natural yet literary. Favor...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Chantal added it

The Boys of My youth is a collection of stories from Jo Ann Beard's life. In this collection, she reveals some of the moments in her life which she have left her with serious impressions. These moments have defined her as a person. Beard does a wonderful job of putting the reader into the story. It is a difficult thing to compose a book of a lot of little pieces of one's life and to keep a reader interested in it the entire time. It is also difficult to write a story that only takes place on abo...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Sonya marked it as to-read

I just read the essay "The Fourth State of Matter" in the New Yorker archive and since it's so raw and my eyes are still red, I can't separate the art from the craft. But if I were taking a class or teaching a class or were advising people I know who like books I like, I'd say to them that this essay, linked, is one of the best things I've read. The Fourth State of Matter

Someday I'll read the whole essay collection.

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Apr 05, 2013 Julia Smillie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Do you have those authors to whom you feel really grateful after reading their work? Beard's one of mine. Her novel In Zanesville is one I still miss from time to time. Now I can add her essay collection The Boys of My Youth to that category. I'd read some of the pieces before, but not all, and was once again delighted to be shown her world, her mind, her humor and pain. No one sums up grief better than she does in "The Fourth State of Matter," where she juxtaposes the powerlessness she feels in...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Our local writers group hosts events every once in a while, and the latest event was "Bookstruck"—bring a book you had read a while back and reminisce about how it still affects you. One of the writers touted this 1998 acclaimed story-style memoir, reading some passages from it which made me curious enough to get it out from the library. Really loved Jo Ann Beard's voice and writing style. The stories of being a girl growing up in the midwest resonated with me, although Beard had quite different...more

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Jun 04, 2012 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

This is a memoir by Jo Ann Beard ( In Zanesville ) and was published 12 years before her novel. She's very good at evoking strong memories from my childhood that I had not thought about in decades. Her narrative interlocks stories from her present day life at the time it was written with stories from her past. I found it to be entertaining, sweet, sad, and very engaging.

As you read through these stories, you can pick out things from her life that happened to different characters in her novel. I...more

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About Jo Ann Beard

Jo Ann Beard is the author of a collection of autobiographical essays, The Boys of My Youth. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Essays, and other magazines and anthologies. She received a Whiting Foundation Award and nonfiction fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

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“We sit silently in our living room. He watches the mute television screen and I watch him. The planes and ridges of his face are more familiar to me than my own. I understand that he wishes even more than I do that he still loved me.” — 8 people liked it

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