Truth Comes in Blows: A Memoir

by Ted Solotaroff

Winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir and finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, Truth Comes in Blows is renowned editor and critic Ted Solotaroff's prize-winning account of a coming of age at once quintessentially American and especially vexed. Planted between Ted and a normal boyhood was Ben Solotaroff, as hard a father to placate, defy, and finally accept as can be found in the annals of the American memoir. Tough, bullying, seductive, Ben Solotaroff was a self-made man―"almost all ego and almost no conscience"―who made a success of his glass business and a wasteland of his home life. Against a crystalline view of American life in the 1930s and '40s, Truth Comes in Blows places its classic themes―the ambivalent love of a son for his victimized mother, the romance of post-immigrant Jews with middle America, sports and masculinity, the guilty imperatives of breaking away―and renews them with a candor Philip Roth praised as "not only a literary achievement but a considerable moral achievement as well." A reading group guide is bound into the paperback.

Genres: Memoir

290 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

Reviews

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very honest, well-written memoir that avoids self-pity. Also interesting look at Jewish-American culture in the 20th century, without being dull. There are a million memoirs about horrible parents, but this one seemed different, more reflective somehow. Recommended.

[Kate D]

Without a doubt the best title for a book.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another dysfunctional family memoir. Ted survived his father, who was impossible, not only with him, of course, but everyone, i.e. his way or the highway.