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Cocaine's Son: A Memoir
by
Dave Itzkoff
With sharp wit, self-deprecating humor, and penetrating honesty, New York Times journalist Dave Itzkoff turns a keen eye on his life with the mysterious, maddening, much-loved man of whom he writes, “for the first eight years of my life I seem to have believed he was the product of my imagination.”
Itzkoff’s father was the man who lumbered home at night and spent hours mur...more
Itzkoff’s father was the man who lumbered home at night and spent hours mur...more
Hardcover, 240 pages
Published
January 18th 2011
by Villard
(first published January 7th 2011)
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Amazon.com Review
Dave Itzkoff on Cocaine's Son
Whatever the circumstances of our childhoods, we all grow up to become adults with questions about our parents and how they shaped the trajectories of our lives. What lessons were our mothers and fathers trying to impart to us? What pitfalls did they want us to avoid, and what mistakes of theirs did we end up repeating anyway? And how might we treat our parents differently if we were given a second chance with them?
These are all questions I confro
...more
Itzkoff's distress and embarrassment at his father's behavior are tangible in this unflinching portrait of a troubled childhood. While the critics generally enjoyed this new addition to the genre, a few flaws hampered that enjoyment. Some thought that Itzkoff's story, with its rosy, upper-middle-class veneer, lacks the edge of similar memoirs, while others raised objections to Itzkoff's singular focus on his father, whose larger-than-life personality eclipses the other characters -- including It...more
Um, alright. I am not really sure how to review this book. Allegedly it’s about a boy “coming of age” under the specter of his father’s cocaine addiction. First of all, he’s in college by page 44 so it’s not really a childhood story. Also, for the first half of the book, you could replace “getting high” with “working” and not have to change anything else. Kid has charismatic and often absent father: welcome to the 1970s/1980s. Where was the grit? The horrible, life-changing moments? There were n...more
Itzkoff's memoir is funny, honest, and touching. The book is a rather nonjudgmental examination of addiction, yet it is also so much more. Even without cocaine, Itzkoff's father probably would have provided enough material for an intriguing memoir. While addiction does play a central role, the reader - and I think the author - come to realize that the heart of the trouble is the inherently complex and angst-riddled personality of Itzkoff's father. The book delves unsparingly into the damage addi...more
I don't know quite what to say about this book. I will say that I'm glad that I listened to it as an audio book on my drive to and fro from work and didn't waste time actually reading it.
While David Itzkoff seems like quite a pleasant guy, his father does not. His father seems altogether unpleasant, but that nastiness does not appear to be related to his cocaine use. His father did unpleasant things, whether he was high or not. However, Dad never did anything quite unpleasant enough to warrant a...more
While David Itzkoff seems like quite a pleasant guy, his father does not. His father seems altogether unpleasant, but that nastiness does not appear to be related to his cocaine use. His father did unpleasant things, whether he was high or not. However, Dad never did anything quite unpleasant enough to warrant a...more
First off, I have to clarify my rating for this book. I really enjoyed it, but had to take one star away because of all the typos. It was so bad it actually distracted me from reading at some points. I did receive this book in a giveaway as an advance copy, so I'm hoping there will still be some more proofreading and edits done.
Other than that, I really enjoyed Itzkoff's portrait of his father and their relationship. It was painful, complicated, but also simple, in the ways that many people stru...more
Other than that, I really enjoyed Itzkoff's portrait of his father and their relationship. It was painful, complicated, but also simple, in the ways that many people stru...more
This was an interesting memoir, but less interesting to me than many others. The title oversold the contents.
This plays out to be a decent story about a son struggling to live with his difficult, addicted father. But the father is complex--not simply an addict, but sometimes clean for months at a time, and in the end, clean for years. Then the book becomes a story of the son's struggle to forgive his father. He is not so much the son of cocaine as he is the son of a sometimes-addicted father.
H...more
This plays out to be a decent story about a son struggling to live with his difficult, addicted father. But the father is complex--not simply an addict, but sometimes clean for months at a time, and in the end, clean for years. Then the book becomes a story of the son's struggle to forgive his father. He is not so much the son of cocaine as he is the son of a sometimes-addicted father.
H...more
I was pleasantly surprised by Dave Itzkoff's memoir of his efforts to reconnect with and better understand his father whose long addiction to cocaine had made him a shadow figure in his son's life. I appreciated that this was not a book charting the actual recovery of his dad or a book that soley focused on the author's childhood and how that childhood suffered under his father's addiction. It was refreshing to see that the book was set more in the not so distant past and included what happens t...more
I so wanted to like this book. After all, I'm a big fan of stories of recovery and redemption and one of my guilty TV pleasures is the A&E show, INTERVENTION. But the book was a disappointment from the very beginning. For a topic so freighted with the potential for drama (a childhood shadowed by the specter of addiction), this was curiously bland. The writing, although it was competent, clear, and simple, was also colorless and flat. The author seemed to ramble and never develop themes that...more
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Mr Itzkoff details his father's coke addiction, the effects on his own life, and his eventual attempt to come to terms with his relationship with his father by attempting to force his now-clean father to personally document his his life and addiction. It turns out they're both pretty nutty, and yet the book ended up being very funny to me. It looks pretty harsh to me seeing that sentiment typed out, but I'll try to mitigate that by suggesting the author's keen sense of self-deprecation cause tha...more
Memoirs are understandably intensely personal for the author but they should be relatable as well. Unfortunately this book only fell into one of those categories. I appreciated that the book was not necessarily constructed chronologically but reflecting on the past as the author experienced things now. Our present always colors our recollections and it was easy to see how Itzkoff's childhood with an addicted father made him the man he is today but also how the man he is now affects his view of t...more
I really thought the book was was going to go into addiction as a disease and how it developed in the father. However, it appropriately touched on how a family member's addiction affects everyone's life...not just the addict. I thought it had the right amount of humor...especially towards the end when the son and father were discussing what the father should say at the son's wedding:) I really felt like I got to know the father's personality and demeanor. Not a wonderful book, but not terrible e...more
I was willing to play along with the author's hyperbolic memoir until the anedote about how installing a ceiling fan with his father "dismantled" their relationship and all the progress they had made in counseling. Oh, it took an extra day to install the fan after hiring someone off craigslist. There were ladders in his apartment all day! His dad said "whoost" too many times! The horrors! Hopefully the author grows up by the end of his story, but I decided there are many books I'd rather read in...more
This book could have been better. The premise is what attracted me, and while reading about the relationship between a drug addicted father and a resentful son, the whole time, i was wondering when I was going to hear the authors real emotional termoil! Over all the tone lacked the rises and falls a reader would expect. It was pretty anticlimactic. The best part of the entire book was one passage in the end. I could very much relate to it's content. You can find it in my quotes.
Cocaine’s Son is the story of David Itzkoff's childhood and his very damaged relationship with his cocaine addicted father and his journey to establish a true relationship with his father post drugs. This is Itzkoff's first book and although it is very well written it was lacking in emotions. If you are looking for a book that tackles this subject, I highly suggest Beautiful Boy written by David Sheff.
A funny, observant, and unsentimental memoir by the son of a quirky, sweet cocaine addict. The structure sags in the middle, but the opening chapters are great, and the chronicle of Itzkoff's wedding feels completely fresh and very loving, without ever getting cheesy. It's fascinating to see how Itzkoff's dad--and his relationships, and his relationship with drugs--changes over time.
Would recommend to others. A highly interesting memoir of how a writer grew up with a cocaine addict for a father and his attempts to heal their relationship in his late 20's. What is unusual about this memoir is that the father was a fairly successful man and remained married to the writer's sound mother through all of this turmoil.
This book was about a man who wrote about his Dad who loved the crack cocaine more than he loved him. It has some stuff about coming to terms and stuff like that. It lacked interesting stories about the quacked up lives of addicts. It you are going to depress me about an addicts life, at least entertain me.
A really fascinting memoir of growing up the child of an addict, and the conflict between who his father should be and who he actually is as an addict. Some of the most powerful parts of the story come in adulthood, when he has to come to terms with not only his father's addiction, but who he has become as a result.
I found his style of writing incredible and his use of words and imagery sublime. It was ironic to me how self-indulgent he was (the first time I noticed he wasn't an only child was in the fourth chapter) as that was precisely his criticism of his Dad throughout the majority of the book.
I love memoirs and I found this one to be a unique style. The story is all over the place in terms of the timeline, but I loved it that way. I felt the emotional connection between all of the parties involved, although I wish there was just a little bit more .
A well-told exploration of the complicated relationship between the author and his father, Cocaine's Son is a no-frills, honest, and insightful memoir that realistically deals with themes present in many--if not all--relationships and legacies. (I recieved an advance release copy through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.)
Actually, the most interesting thing about this book turned out to be the glimpse into the author's father's life as a fur merchant, not his cocaine addiction. I felt the material was thin for a book-length memoir, and some of the most interesting parts were not presented until the very end. Tighter editing would have helped this story.
I wish the author had spent more time describing what it was like to be raised by an addict, rather than the author's journey as an adult to accept/understand his father.
I would have liked to know more about how his father's addiction affected his life. I would also liked to have had some discussion as to how his father was able to stop using drugs.
A rather superficial look at what it was like to grow up as the son of a middle class cocaine addict furrier. Not a lot of depth or feeling. Blah.
I don't get it - this book was not interesting at all - he should've just written this and gave it to his Dad - I do not recommend it!
Unfailingly witty and honest, Dave Itzkoff explores his complicated relationship with his quirky drug addicted father in his memoir, Cocaine's Son. Itzkoff describes his childhood where his parents struggle with their marriage and his father constantly lets him down. He comes of age trying to distance himself from his father as his father comes to rely on him to bail him out of drug fueled situations. The latter part of the book is dedicated to the slow reconstruction of their relationship. Swee...more
I couldn't finish it. Although the prose is sometimes very beautiful, the story is so melodrmatic and self-serving that I couldn't finish it.
Dave Itzkoff writes well of his growing up with a cocaine addict for a father. While this was not my favorite book, I was interested to read about this strange life of living with a father who spent his life getting high in filthy drug houses, but who managed to somehow continue to build a fur business. A crazy life for a kid.
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Dec 18, 2010 11:56pm