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Oh the Glory of it All

3.52 of 5 stars 3.52 · rating details · 2,423 ratings · 353 reviews

"In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess." With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families.

Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City) is a 19...more "In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess." With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families.

Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City) is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse, "eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills." His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms, "You should wash your hands first, before you use the urinal. Not after. Your penis isn't dirty. But your hands are."

When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy.

With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)—Oh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion.(less)

Paperback, 496 pages

Published April 25th 2006 by Penguin Books (first published May 19th 2005)

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Jul 05, 2008 Ted Gideonse rated it 4 of 5 stars

Having worked in publishing, I too often asked myself while reading Oh the Glory of It All, "How the Hell did this get published?" And I did not ask this question because I thought the book was bad. No, it's great. It's weird and funny and engrossing and moving and it takes you to places mostly everyone has never been to. But American publishing doesn't like 450 page memoirs that are weird and long, and this one was published by a major house. I guess the child of famous people gets a leg up in...more

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Sep 28, 2007 Candace rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of memoirs, like myself

I love memoirs. Let that be known before I say anything else. I enjoy reading about people's lives, if they're written about in a cool way. I wasn't sure about this one at first, as it started out fairly slow, and Sean Wilsey's writing style takes a while to get used to. I read about his childhood as the only child of two self-obsessed San Francisco socialites, until they went through an ugly divorce, and I was less than impressed. It was a bit dull, I suppose, with tons and tons of outside sour...more

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Mar 27, 2008 will rated it 1 of 5 stars

Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey is an autobiography. In theory it has the potential for a good story. Sean Wilsey and his parents are not people I have heard of before but they have travelled in circles that include the rich and the famous. Sean's parents divorced when he was young and the story of their divorce was a major news event in San Francisco. His father went on to re-marry (an evil step mum), his mother went on to set up a Children for Peace organisation (and has now written her...more Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey is an autobiography. In theory it has the potential for a good story. Sean Wilsey and his parents are not people I have heard of before but they have travelled in circles that include the rich and the famous. Sean's parents divorced when he was young and the story of their divorce was a major news event in San Francisco. His father went on to re-marry (an evil step mum), his mother went on to set up a Children for Peace organisation (and has now written her own reply: Oh the Hell of It All), Sean ended up dropping out of school after school.

The beginning of the book, the story of his parent's divorce, the moving between houses is interesting. You can understand his desire to be liked, to be loved. You follow his problems at settling in and school and you agree with his hatred of life in expensive private schools - it appears that lacrosse players have always been bastards! The book follows his descent into alcohol, drugs and skateboarding. His descent through schools that were full of over-privileged children who were going to somewhere to schools full of young adults who were going nowhere to a small school of eight who were trying to find their way back into society. The methods used in each of these schools to help Sean find himself are extreme - much worse than the military school that he ran away from before he even entered the door. And so, as a novel it has its interesting moments.

However, this was the 100 word synopsis that Mr. Wilsey used to sell the book to his publishers. Unfortunately, round about page 300, he gives up on this story and spends the next 150 pages telling the story of his relationship with his father/evil step-mother. Although this could have been a good story it isn't. Instead of writing a tale that is complicated and complex, he just whines and whines and whines. I finished the book but I sped-read the last 100 pages, turning over quickly and reading the odd paragraph here and there, trying to find something that might hold my attention. I didn't.

I finished the book (mainly because I didn't want to abandon another book in mid-stream) but it was with no sense of longing (wishing that I could follow more of the story, more of the characters), nor did I finish it with any sense of joy (feeling uplifted). I finished with more of a sense of "I've finished!"(less)

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Dec 20, 2007 Kirstie rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people interested in celebrity life

This follows the autobiographical (though I am sure rather embellished) account of the son of a famous millionaire family (the Wilseys) on the West coast of America. Life must be weird when you grew up around Danielle Steele and I would guess things could only get better from then on. Our protagonist is a wreck and can't seem to get over the separation and divorce of his parents. While it's true that their relationships becomes strained with him caught in the middle and that he is not given the...more

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Sep 08, 2007 Sierra rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: social climbers, fans of crunchy memoirs

I found myself alternately annoyed and enthralled by this book, which sports quite a few of those funny/trenchant moments that make great memoirs. It also provides many opportunities for silly-rich-people rubbernecking; in an attempt to highlight the flamboyant hypocrisy of the world's society pages, Sean Wilsey quotes extensively from newspaper reports of his family's ostentatious doings. More often than not, though, I found myself thinking, "Does anyone actually still read these things? Haven'...more

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Jul 24, 2007 Drew rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: narcaleptics

Shelves: memoirsbios

I finished this, and I'm still wondering how I managed to. I heard a lot of buzz about it before it came out, how it was supposed to be scandalous and whatnot. Well, unless you are a huge fan of the San Francisco gossip columns (since the 70's) you won't find anything too interesting here, beyond the first chapter. It seems like an open letter to a family from an emotionally wounded son, yet it goes on for a few too many hundred pages.

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Apr 05, 2008 Julie McNelis rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those who need a long obsessive book to read

Shelves: psychology, literary, autobiography

Addicting Obsessive fluff.

I bought this book at the Hong Kong airport last August and it has been my favorite flight companion since then. I was able to put the book down between flights, but the detail and depth of this long-winded memoir are so rich that the author has built a San Francisco high rise in my head.

The intimacy of Sean's tween/teenage confession brought me into the world of my new, wealthy, bad boy, wanna-be cool kid friend, suffering from his own entrapment in desire and frustrat...more

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Jan 22, 2009 Ginger rated it 1 of 5 stars

I read this book because I wanted to find out what this editor of McSweeney's own writing is like. The answer: derivative and boring. Wilsey says his family was "like the Royal Tenenbaums." Instead of describing one of his boarding schools, he says the school was like a clinic in a Haruki Murakami book...and then quotes half a chapter from Murakami's Norwegian Wood. The last fifty pages are about Wilsey struggling to finish his memoir after getting his advance.
Happily, I only paid $4 for this b...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Larry Hoffer added it

I've been on a bit of a memoir kick recently, perhaps in an effort to prove to myself my life isn't all that messed up or bizarre. This book is the story of Sean Wilsey, who grew up a child of privilege in San Francisco, raised by his socialite mother and wealthy father...until the bottom dropped out when his parents divorce and his father remarries. Bounced between both households, treated horrendously by his stepmother and stepbrothers, Sean's life becomes increasingly more chaotic as he rebel...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

For his first book, Wilsey, 34, an editor at McSweeney's, seems committed to rise above the kind of chatter that Oh, The Glory of It All has prompted in his native San Francisco. Critics praise the author's talent, particularly his ability to merge his childhood and adult emotions into a coherent, fluid voice. (Not surprisingly, they compared the memoir to McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, 2000) The sharpest criticism comes for his portrayal of his step

...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Nathaniel Eaton rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites

I read a lot of memoirs and this is by far my very favorite. When I was younger I was a big fan of Dave Eggers' A Heart-Breaking Work of Staggering Genius, feeling finally there was a memoir written from my generation that broke the rules of a lot of its predecessors and was enthralling. in my late 20’s I came out to San Francisco and actually got to work with Dave Eggers at 826 Valencia. He knew what kind of books I liked and he handed me a early proof copy of Oh The Glory of It All. Dave Egger...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Alec Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

McSweeney's editor Sean Wilsey has come out with a memoir which paints compelling (to me at least) scenes from bygone San Francisco. It also has an alluring title, Oh, the Glory of it All -- more on this shortly.

His parents are outsized figures and bestride mid-century San Francisco: Father Al Wilsey was the Bay Area's butter baron, a big game hunter, and helicopter pilot; his mother Pat, the beautiful daughter of an itinerant Evangelical preacher, who becomes a model, then writer, columnist, an...more McSweeney's editor Sean Wilsey has come out with a memoir which paints compelling (to me at least) scenes from bygone San Francisco. It also has an alluring title, Oh, the Glory of it All -- more on this shortly.

His parents are outsized figures and bestride mid-century San Francisco: Father Al Wilsey was the Bay Area's butter baron, a big game hunter, and helicopter pilot; his mother Pat, the beautiful daughter of an itinerant Evangelical preacher, who becomes a model, then writer, columnist, and TV host. For much of the '60s and '70s, they live in splendor atop Russian Hill in a two-storey penthouse. Theirs is a beautiful, a glorious life, with luncheon parties with the then-famous and fascinating likes of Gloria Steinem, Eldridge Cleaver, Joan Baez, Dear Abby and Jessica Mitford.

Wilsey's lead: "In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess."

In my favourite passage, the son writes: "'Oh, the glory of it all' was something I said when I was alone and things were glorious. I would only say it when I was alone. It came out spontaneously. It felt like an affirmation of my own identity in the face of my parents' overwhelming identities. I would say it slowly, drawing it out, when the world was more full than I thought possible -- when I could not contain myself, when I was alone and I was happy. I said it in the school bus under the willow. [Their wine country estate took over a former junk yard, and left behind was a school bus he used as a playhouse.] ... I said it looking out the backseat windows at Chinatown and the Broadway topless joints. The phrase just came out. I remember first saying it alone in the bathroom, when I had finally got a grip on potty training and could shut the door and have the room to myself." (How amazing to remember all the way back to potty training.)

One of the many lovely details: for exercise, father, mother, son all pace Russian Hill and its surrounds in matching track-suits -- a la Royal Tenenbaums.

So much worldly glory, such an excess of happiness must pass. A sensational divorce. The father claims he's leaving because the mother wanted to be a star more than she wanted to be a good wife. But actually, by the son's telling, Big Al had been dabbling extramaritally with a bunch of women, all, oddly, with names beginning with D. He was choosing between talk-show hostess Dinah Shore, a jewelry-loving socialite (and his current wife's best friend) Dede (a Dow Chemical heiress) and romance novelist Danielle Steele. (Another son observes that Al was the sort of powerful, handsome man who, in his prime, changed the sexual temperature of a room when he walked into it. Like Clinton.)

The San Francisco Wilsey depicts is barely recognizable. High society makes a much bigger splash there -- quotes from the papers indicate a level of coverage of the well-off that doesn't happen as much now. You see a fictionalized version in the Halcyon storyline in Tales of the City. Sidebar: When I told Christopher Plummer where I was living (at the beginning of our interview a couple years ago), he said he felt San Francisco had fallen from grace. He told me he long ago tried to get into the (still extant) deco bar, the Top of the Mark, but the whole place had been rented out by Howard Hughes, showing off to some starlet. "Now that was a glamourous city, but it's all gone. It's become ... sloppy."

Perhaps that type of San Francisco still exists -- not my circle! The money certainly is still here, but the Everyone-in-Khakis Internet titans are a different breed from the Old-Line money types. They disdain the obvious trappings (apart from the Teslas); are gluttons, instead, for the high-level experiences money can buy viz. Larry Ellison's sailing obsession.

Where was I? The divorce of Wilsey's parents generated much ink, with most of the observers criticizing his mother for her exorbitant claims. "The world's most expensive wife" was one headline. Who knew San Francisco's cuddly mascot columnist Herb Caen could turn so nasty when inclined?

Wilsey's mother then became a peace activist (after a series of past life explorations and vision quests under the guidance of an East Bay therapist). Another detail I loved: the letters from the children (which she's going to hand deliver to world leaders) jostle for space in the trunk of her car with a Rodin sculpture she's trying to unload for some quick cash. She's a force, this woman: she actually secures meetings with global figures including Mikhail Gorbachev, the Pope, Jehane Sadat.

Meanwhile, Sean's father quickly settles on his favourite D., his wife's best friend Dede. After years of currying favour with the son Sean, Dede becomes, once the ring is on her finger, the stepmother from hell -- all by the son's telling.

The New York Times ran a piece on the author and the ripples sent out by his book -- the stepmother is still very much alive, a going concern in San Francisco society. She inherited the lion's share of Wilsey Senior's money. So central (the article reports) was her contribution to the latest expansion of the De Young Museum, that local wits have taken to calling it the Dede Young. She questions the accuracy of her stepson's recollections.(less)

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Apr 04, 2011 Pooja rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really enjoyable read. I like the backstory to San Francisco society, and I like the author's honest and beautiful prose. The author is the son of well known San Francisco society personalities, and the stepson of a major society woman, and writes about the San Francisco he grew up in, and the people behind the society pages.

I loved a line within the first few pages, about his childhood: "Little did I - who had only known happiness or loneliness - know the variety emotion could provide. That pai...more

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Mar 12, 2011 Greg Zimmerman rated it 4 of 5 stars

Near the end of Sean Wilsey's hilarious, engrossing coming-of-age memoir, Oh The Glory Of It All, he explains that "A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are." But there are other reasons, too — like outing your evil stepmother as a gold-digging, morally barren ho-bag; like creating a tribute to your dead father, who wasn't always your biggest fan; and like illustrating how different rich people are than we normals.

Rich people are interesting. Crazy people are interes...more Near the end of Sean Wilsey's hilarious, engrossing coming-of-age memoir, Oh The Glory Of It All, he explains that "A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are." But there are other reasons, too — like outing your evil stepmother as a gold-digging, morally barren ho-bag; like creating a tribute to your dead father, who wasn't always your biggest fan; and like illustrating how different rich people are than we normals.

Rich people are interesting. Crazy people are interesting. And rich, crazy people, like Sean's parents and step-mother, are absolutely fascinating! It all starts with the divorce. Sean's mother and father are the prototypical rich, San Francisco socialites. And their split and the almost immediate re-marriage of his father to another San Francisco socialite, Dede, send shockwaves both through San Francisco society and Sean's delicate rich-kid life. (Random note: Dede's ex-husband then married Danielle Steele, who previously had been having an affair with Sean's dad.)

Sean's childhood and adolescence becomes a mess of under-parenting and over-schooling — he goes through three high schools, literally escaping from the third one, which is a cult-like, brainwashing place called Cascade. His father disowns him, his mother is furious, and Sean's on his own.

Sean's complicated relationship with his parents is the underlying theme of the memoir. His mother wavers back and forth with a strange version of love, and totally using Sean to advance her own agenda. His horrible stepmother Dede never misses any opportunity to flat-out tell Sean what a screw-up he is, and what a disappointment he is to his father. But nevertheless, through all his misbehaving, and despite the fact that his father wants nothing to do with him (Dede's influence!), he still desperately seeks his father's approval.

What's most interesting about the book is about how Sean changes in the reader's eyes several times throughout the memoir. He starts off as a "character" for whom readers have this incredible sympathy because of his horrible parents. At one point, his mother suggests that she and Sean kill themselves together, ostensibly to avenge the divorce! But then he becomes your typical rich kid brat — he's cruel to his boarding-schoolmates, he has no concept of consequences, and he does things for no other reason than to be a jerk, like throwing fruit at cars off the balcony of his mother's 30th floor penthouse. It's not until an arrest and a deal to attend a school in Italy that he finally has the experiences necessary for him to mature, and finally graduate high school at age 20. Then, throughout the last third of the book, we're squarely on his side as he battles Dede and grows into manhood.

This book came out more than five years ago and has been on my shelf most of that time, but it recently showed up on Jonathan Franzen's list of "Four Overlooked Books," so I finally took it down. I loved it! It's absurd at times (Sean is SURE he's going to lose his virginity to his step-mother Dede. But that's before he's SURE he hates her more than any other human in the world.) It's hilarious in a sarcastic, smart, but also understated way. (Sean relates how angry his mother was when she lost to Elie Wiesel for the Nobel Peace Price — "When it was announced that Wiesel had won, Mom, crushed, threw the pyramid (a glass desk ornament) into a mirror." I literally laughed out loud after reading that scene.) And it's even often sad and affecting, especially near the end as Sean relates his father's death. It's a long book, but definitely worth a read.(less)

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Jun 18, 2011 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Born into a life of wealth and privilege, Wilsey spent some of his childhood touring the world with his mother as part of her traveling "Children as Teachers of Peace" events, staged during the height of the Cold War. So it was during childhood that he met all sorts of famous people, including notable writers, high-ranking Soviet officials, and the Pope! As a teenager, he lived with his father and his emotionally abusive stepmother, and learned to love both skateboarding and drugs. Sent from boa...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Mostly entertaining, this memoir recounts the strange and chaotic upbringing of Sean Wilsey, son of SF socialite Pat Montandon and SF millionaire Al Wilsey, as he goes from living the high life in SF (literally, in a penthouse apartment in Pacific Heights), to various U.S. reform schools, all the while trying to win the love and attention of his neglecting father. Wilsey paints a nasty portrait of his stepmother, who in real life tried to take legal action against the publisher for defaming her...more

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Aug 28, 2008 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

This guy's story is a pretty perfect example of why the rich aren't necessarily to be envied. Not that some of us regular folks don't experience some of the problems that he confronted in his formative years, but, man, if detached rich people don't come up with some new and interesting crap to throw at their kids. This is a good story, and though primarily a memoir, secondarily it acts as a descriptive tour of the San Francisco and Marin areas in which he grew up.

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Jan 26, 2010 Liz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, san-francisco-society

An amazing read and one of the only stories written about the very wealthy society crowd of San Francisco. As my best friend said, "if just 5% of what Sean Wilsey has to say is true, Dede Wilsey is psychotic."

This book is a childhood memoir, and recovery confessional. What makes it interesting is all the history of people like the Traina family, Danielle Steele, and a host of other minor players. There is almost no information on San Francisco society types from the modern era other than this bo...more

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Jan 03, 2011 Katie G rated it 4 of 5 stars

I promise that you will never again think of your own family as dysfunctional after reading this book.

I stumbled upon a $4 copy in a used bookstore in San Francisco while looking for a book set in San Francisco. Reviews were glowing and saturated with Dave Eggers comparisons and, like I said, it was $4. Clever and unconventionally written, it kept me riveted throughout my 24-hour Amtrak ride. For that I am grateful.

Be forewarned that it’s definitely not for everyone: masturbation, pubic lice, at...more

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Mar 26, 2011 Jamie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Christine, Miina

Oh the story of it all…
A long-time admirer of the memoir, that is, the well-done memoir (which has to be EXTREMELY difficult considering the subject matter is all about YOU and who could possibly care more?) “Oh the Glory of it All” exceeded even my wildest expectations (I found it amid a stack of “to reads” on Moses’ side of the bed, so I suppose I had utterly no expectations, but even so). On my way out the door to the airport I realized I need a new book. Skimming only two sentences I knew it...more Oh the story of it all…
A long-time admirer of the memoir, that is, the well-done memoir (which has to be EXTREMELY difficult considering the subject matter is all about YOU and who could possibly care more?) “Oh the Glory of it All” exceeded even my wildest expectations (I found it amid a stack of “to reads” on Moses’ side of the bed, so I suppose I had utterly no expectations, but even so). On my way out the door to the airport I realized I need a new book. Skimming only two sentences I knew it was a done deal.
Before even venturing into the extraordinary subject matter, it must be said one of the most tantalizing aspects of any story; memoir in particular is narrative voice. Memoir gives the typical role of narrator a run for its money. Sometimes a narrator is a thief, murder, slime ball. Other times narrators are instead over the top, grandiose and utterly unbelievable, and so on. Sean Wilsey makes this a memoir worth reading not only because he was fortunate enough to survive the events within it’s pages, or organized and dedicated enough to write a book about it; but instead because he is every narrator all at once.
As a reader follows Sean from a babyhood in a penthouse in San Francisco’s Russian Hill to a precocious boy with a “larger than life” mother and extremely masculine bread-winner- (butter winner?) times a million; only one personality trait is undeniably defined: Sean’s an observer. Hyper-aware of the opinions of others, Sean’s own attributes become largely absent in the wake of his society darling-parents scandalous divorce. Tabloids eat up the messy divorce headlines and rumors of infidelity while poor eight year-old Sean is left trying to please his father (who constantly reprimands his son for being “too bouncy” of gait and reminds Sean he is the “child” of the “world’s most expensive wife.”), and meanwhile pacify his histrionic and utterly self-absorbed mother.
To make matters worse, Sean’s father didn’t just leave his mother—he specifically seems to have left her for Dede, Sean’s mother’s former best friend. It’s the stuff of a Danielle Steele novel, and ironically, Steele plays a part, too (writing from life, it seems), as a potential mistress for Wilsey Senior as his marriage dissolves.
As only an eight year-old can, Sean sublimely misinterprets his stepmother, desperately trying to shower her with love in the hope she’ll value him in return. No dice. Dede instead values dogs and diamonds and see’s Sean’s mother in his every move, receiving peace of mind upon a Rapunzel-style exile to the third floor of the family’s country home and forbidding him to drink or eat anywhere other than directly over the kitchen sink.
And there are other doozies competing—waiting for status of “blowing your mind completely;” a marble palace, helicopters, boarding schools, suicide pacts, robberies and one utterly shuddersome case of “crab lice,” but those things are best read for yourself.
Unbelievable as the stories can be, Wilsey masterfully compiles his childhood and adult experiences into a well-formed and miraculously relatable novel. Because Sean manages to come out without hating any of the many, many people in this novel that probably SHOULD be hated; the reader doesn’t either. Sean readily admits to things most people are too insecure to even acknowledge privately, but some how, you really believe he’s seen it, lived it, grabbed it by the whatever and used it to define who he is as a person and writer.
“Oh the Glory of it All” is a masterpiece in personal psychology, not to mention the powers of not only forgiveness, but also introspection. While, inevitably I did stumble across a few posts of perturbed “pals” of Wilsey saying individual pieces of this prose are not quite as accurate as the author leads you to believe, it’s impossible for anyone to expect otherwise. As Wilsey so astutely sums it up with an allegory on elephants: three man are touching different parts of the elephant—one the trunk (thinking it’s a snake), the next the middle (thinking it a wall) and the last the tail (again, something individual and different than a sum of parts); proving every man has his own interpretations of the events that transpired—this aspect didn’t floor me nearly so much as Wilsey’s obvious gifts as not only a writer, but compassionate person. No part of this novel seems malicious or self-sparing, and in many of the situations no maniacal ideas on the motivations of others are ever given. Perhaps Sean’s stepmother never understood her actions to be interpreted as they were—but that is what a MEMOIR ought to be about—our lives are a sum of our experiences. “Oh the Glory of it All” throws one man’s carefully arranged memories into the context of an extravagant, beautiful Bay-area back drop and introduces you to some very complex people. I’m glad I’m not Sean, but in reading this book I found myself a little happier to be me. We are what we perceive, and this book was powerful and motivational, simultaneously being well done and frequently indescribably beautiful.

**I write on books and other stuff at www.snapshotnarrative.tumblr.com
(less)

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May 23, 2009 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Oh the Fabulousness of a very fun memoir of a son growing up with a crazy mom and an even crazier step mom, both members of San Franscisco high society. Have you ever met someone in real life who is larger than life, yet all slightly unbalanced (I mean truly, isn't it hard to be the former without the latter)? In the memoir, the writers mother is just that. She is a society lady who goes hippy and starts a movement to save children in a very pop, almost Michael Jackson (without the child molesta...more

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Aug 20, 2011 Mandi Matlock rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's so hard to give this one a star rating b/c I LOVED it sometimes and was mightily annoyed by it at others. The first 1/3 of the book held me spellbound. It was moving and captivating. His descriptions of everything - San Francisco, his mother, his feelings of isolation and longing - were absolutely riveting and evocative.

But his overindulgence in this skill wore me out at times. Especially in the second third of the book, when he went away to school after school. I admit my repulsion has mu...more

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Nov 30, 2008 Jewel rated it 4 of 5 stars

The first section is difficult to put down. Clever, witty, heartbreaking, hilarious, honest and engaging. A refreshing and provoking style, somewhere between Eggers and Augusten Burroughs, Wilsey takes me from a fantastical childhood straight down my own memory lane with the "evil stepmother", favoritism and the ultimate need to be loved.

The middle sections, focused on the schools is ironically my least favorite and I set the book down for a week. (Wilsey mentions at the end, his original inten...more

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May 24, 2011 Lindsey rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book wins. By which I mean, I lose. I was initially hooked by the wow factor of Sean Wilsey's life--an unbelievably plush childhood in the eccentric and unstable bosom of dairy heir dad and socialite mom at the tippy top of SF--literally and figuratively. The details of their inevitable divorce are outrageous enough to fill reams of gossip columns--and they did. And here they are, jammed in without--as far as I can tell--very careful curation. The book clocks in at 482 pages--all of it rich...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Lani rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: not-impressed

I was interested in reading this book because the bulk of it is set in SF, and since I am from the bay I love reading about it. The backdrop of the story did not disappoint, but unfortunately, the book was 1-200 pages too long. It dragged in a major way, especially the details about the author's time spent in several different schools. Also, at one point he uses a passage from the book Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami to help describe one of the schools he goes to, and the passage goes on for m...more

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Jan 17, 2009 Vickynave rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow - such a shocking story about Sean Wilsey's crazy upbringing in San Francisco. He comes from a family deeply entrenced in SF society. His memoir begins with his parents very public divorce wherein his father left his mother for her best friend. Both parents and his stepmother are completely self-absorbed and narcissistic, but he manages to tell his story with a shred of sentimentality. What makes the story so fascinating is that he really dishes about his stepmother, who is still alive and a...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Ayelet Waldman added it

Ok, I have to admit it, this is not a book I would normally pick up, but Melissa at Diesel (a fabulous local bookstore-unlike Black Oak which is a nightmarish local bookstore owned by a truly vile cretin who screamed at us last time we were there spending over one hundred dollars in his store because our children had pulled about ten books off the shelf in the children's section. We were happy to clean it up, we always do, and a little confused at the abuse.) insisted I read it. She was so compl...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Caitlin Creevy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Highly recommend. What a writer. What a story. What a bitch. Satan has nothing on Dede Wilsey.

My only criticism is that it seems that Al Wilsey was never really confronted about his 1) adultery 2) abandonment of his child 3) psychological abuse of his child 4) choice to marry a truly evil person who wreaked unbelievable havoc 5) choice to abandon philanthropic efforts that, if in the hands of Sean Wilsey, could have made a genuine difference in the world. Instead, he is only loved and forgiven,...more

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Oct 30, 2009 Vicki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

Wilsey is derived from German (I think Sean Wilsey told us in the book). Originally, it mean "wild sea" and that's sort of how you feel as you go along. You're on a wild sea -- Wilsey's chaotic early life alternately makes you feel fascinated, horrified, and weirded out. I think some people found themselves annoyed, and yes, things do tend to go on here and there, but Wilsey's an Eggers kid, so it's gonna be...sort of Eggersish. But Wilsey's a likable person, and that's what makes it work. I esp...more

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Feb 20, 2012 Alicia rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've had numerous people recommend this book. Sean Wilsey is the son of a San Francisco socialite, and (by my calculations) about 35 years old. The book gets off to a running start, detailing the excesses and idiosyncracies of his highly colorful parents. By the half-way point, however, the book has lost its focus. What's the subject? Sean's life? His mother? Boarding schools of the 1980s? Ultimately there's enough good material here to make it a worthwhile read, but you'll have to wade your way...more

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About Sean Wilsey

Sean Wilsey (born 1970) is the author of the memoir Oh the Glory of It All,[1] which was published by Penguin in 2005. He is the son of Al Wilsey, a San Francisco businessman, and Pat Montandon, a socialite and peace activist, and the stepson of socialite and philanthropist Dede Wilsey (Diane Dow Buchanan Traina Wilsey). He is married to writer Daphne Beal, a former editor at The New Yorker, and t...more

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Books by Sean Wilsey

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America

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Out of the Book Volume 3: State by State

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Quotes from Oh the Glory of it All

“We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows -- a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we.” — 4 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51296.Oh_the_Glory_of_it_All?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309199273l/51296.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51296.Oh_the_Glory_of_it_All?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Oh the Glory of it All by Sean Wilsey[/url]

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