MY CHILDHOOD IN PIECES

An eminent cultural figure finds a funny way to tell his life story.

Hirsch, a poet, a bestselling author, and the president of the Guggenheim Foundation for more than two decades, channels the voices and personalities of his Chicagoland Jewish childhood to create a memoir composed of jokes and short vignettes, one setup-and-punchline after another—probably surprising himself as much as the reader when the gimmick holds up for nearly 300 pages, until the author leaves home for college at Grinnell, where an angry high school French teacher lobbied madly to prevent his admission because of a profane question he posed about Santa Claus at a senior assembly. Though he’s toned it down a bit since the days of using the f-word in high school, in essence he’s still that guy: sometimes silly, sometimes off-color, often Yiddish-flavored, with a penchant for puns and dad jokes that never quits. Here is an entry titled “Brain Sale”: “‘If we sold everyone’s brains,’ my grandmother said to me, ‘I’d charge the most for yours.’ ‘Why, because I’m the smartest one in the family?’ ‘No, because yours have never been used.’” Another entry is “Celebratory Dinner”: “Whenever I got laryngitis, my mom served steak to celebrate the fact that I couldn’t talk. That was tough to swallow.” A wonderful section recounting the fate of a series of aquatic pets is titled “The Goldfish Variations.” All the jokes don’t stop him from filling in along the way the details of his quirky mother, his two fathers, his siblings and his extended Jewish family, his sports achievements and romantic conquests, and the Jewish migration to the suburbs. Particularly telling is one of the final sections, “How To Remember Childhood”: “This book is dedicated to my sister Lenie. We lived through everything together. We share a sense of humor and a history. She has vetted my stories, but she also remembers our childhood as traumatic. I prefer to recall it otherwise. Her way was more expensive. It required psychoanalysis.”

A unique re-creation of a great life in a largely vanished world. Bada bing, bada boom!