My First Cousin Once Removed: Money, Madness, and the Family of Robert Lowell – A Hilarious Yet Sad Memoir of Boston Brahmin Life($11.20Value)

Description

The art of being truly funny is an undervalued one in these angst-ridden times, but it is an ability that acclaimed novelist Sarah Payne Stuart has in abundance. Her talents have never been on more glorious display than in My First Cousin Once Removed , a memoir--at once hilarious, personal and sad--of her extraordinary Boston Brahmin family, whose most famous member is the legendary poet Robert Lowell, the author's first cousin (once removed). "Stuart [is] an exceedingly likable memoirist, showing rueful grace, a sharp sense of humor, and a charming directness."-- "Boston Sunday Globe""Fine, sad, funny...Like all good memoirs, Stuart's provides entree into an entire swath of history and the places where it unfolded, with the added bonus that her family's story is attached to 300 years of America's...She learned many lessons from her study of a distinguished, tragic past, and we can count ourselves lucky that she put them together in this outstanding book."-- Celia McGee, "Boston Magazine""Vivid and compelling...What makes Stuart's volume impressive is her empathetic group portrait of the Lowell clan, her unflappable refusal to sensationalize or aggrandize them, and a dry wit that is her principal tool in making sense of a large extended family." --" Chicago Tribune""This story about family craziness seems, in and of itself, so remarkably and cheerfully sane. It is a survivor's story, with so much intelligence, humor, and affection brought to bear that even the monsters it occasionally offers up arc appealing."-- "New York Times Book Review" The art of being truly funny is an undervalued one in these angst-ridden times, but it is an ability that acclaimed novelist Sarah Payne Stuart has in abundance. Her talents have never been on more glorious display than in My First Cousin Once Removed , a memoir--at once hilarious, personal and sad--of her extraordinary Boston Brahmin family, whose most famous member is the legendary poet Robert Lowell, the author's first cousin (once removed). Sarah Payne Stuart is the author of the acclaimed novels Men in Trouble and The Year Roger Wasn't Well. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children. My first cousin once removed was Robert Lowell, The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet--a fact I just happened to mention on my application to Harvard College. The worst part was that I had to work this genealogical information into the essay. The application had a section for listing family members who had gone to Harvard, but it was only supposed to include immediate family members. The essay wasn't a real essay, just two little white spaces under the questions: "How have your personal experiences contributed to your intellectual growth?" and "How have your academic experiences contributed to your personal growth?" It was three o'clock in the morning, and the application was due the next day. So I started writing something moronic about my intellectual development--or was it my personal growth?--all the while saying to myself, I can't, I can't, when suddenly out of the blue came, "As I was having dinner last night with my first cousin once removed, Robert Lowell, the poet, I turned to him and said. . . ." That was a long time ago, in 1969, and it is time to make a clean breast of it now. Also, I might just as well admit that I don't get poetry. In high school I was good at subjects like "the Negro" and the "Culture of Poverty," but when it came to analyzing poems, forget it. To this day, put a gun to my head and I still cannot tell you the difference between the mood of a poem and the tone of a poem. My parents were no help. When I went to them with my homework, my father would just shake his head and say he wondered how he ever got such smart kids. My father is a big bragger about us kids--a feat, considering all that has transpired. Not long ago we were at a wedding reception, and across the room I saw my father motioning to me wildly, with his fingers in his mouth, trying to get me to whistle through my teeth, a talent of mine he had obviously just bragged about. It is lucky for my father that he has four kids, because usually one of us is doing all right. One kid might be in a mental hospital, another with the Maharishi, and another with a marriage on the rocks, and my father can turn to someone and say, "My son Bill just got a raise at his job." Still, I did not lie on the application to Harvard, technically speaking. Bobby--"Bobby" is what we called him in the family--had been over for dinner the night before. Bobby came out to visit us in Concord whenever he was teaching at Harvard. Concord, Massachusetts, is where I grew up, under the influence of the writings of Louisa May Alcott. My mother said there was an excruciating period when I called her Marmee and helped with the dishes every two seconds. Eight years ago, as a grown-up, I moved my husband and children from New York to Concord, on a wave of nostalgia. "So the kids can have swimm