PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Chris Offutt owns one of the finest, surest prose styles around, ready and able to convey the hardest truth without flinching. Now Offutt enters the darkest and most mysterious of places--the cave of a monstrous enigma named Andrew J. Offutt--armed with nothing but his own restless curiosity. Spoiler alert: He makes it out alive, walking into the daylight to bring us a deeper, funnier, more tender and more heartbroken truth--and his masterpiece." --Michael Chabon When Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited a desk, a rifle, and eighteen hundred pounds of pornographic fiction. Andrew had been considered the "king of twentieth-century smut," with a writing career that began as a strategy to pay for his son's orthodontic needs and soon took on a life of its own, peaking during the 1970s when the commercial popularity of the erotic novel reached its height. With his dutiful wife serving as typist, Andrew wrote from their home in the Kentucky hills, locked away in an office no one dared intrude upon. In this fashion he wrote more than four hundred novels, including pirate porn, ghost porn, zombie porn, and secret agent porn. The more he wrote, the more intense his ambition became and the more difficult it was for his children to be part of his world. Over the long summer of 2013, Chris returned to his hometown to help his widowed mother move out of his childhood home. As he began to examine his father's manuscripts and memorabilia, journals, and letters, he realized he finally had an opportunity to gain insight into the difficult, mercurial, sometimes cruel man he'd loved and feared in equal measure. Only in his father's absence could he truly make sense of the man and his legacy. In My Father, the Pornographer, Offutt takes us on the journey with him, reading his father's prodigious literary output as both a critic and as a son seeking answers. This is a book about the life of a working writer who supports his family solely by the output of his typewriter; it's about the awful psychic burdens one generation unthinkingly passes along to the next; and it's about growing up in the Appalachian hills with a pack of fearless boys riding bicycles through the woods, happy and free.
Industry Reviews
""""My Father the Pornographer"is a brave, engaging, dangerous piece of work. An uncompromising examination of a writer's life, it raises questions both complex and haunting. Offutt is truly naked on the page, revealing his father's secret obsessions, and his own. I am lost in admiration for what he has done. --Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina" "With gripping precision, Chris Offutt tracks the hidden life of his brilliant, cruel and narcissistic father. My Father, the Pornographer is a son's reckoning not only with a parent's dark, often shocking secrets but with their human cost. This is an utterly absorbing and heartbreaking book." --Honor Moore, author of The Bishop's Daughter "The death of Chris Offutt's father left him with what amounted to a secret estate that redefined his family--and Chris himself. Only a writer of Offutt's caliber could transform that experience into this heartbreaking triumph. This is a must-read, an unforgettable and entirely original story." --Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night "My Father the Pornographer is a brave, engaging, dangerous piece of work. An uncompromising examination of a writer's life, it raises questions both complex and haunting. Offutt is truly naked on the page, revealing his father's secret obsessions, and his own. I am lost in admiration for what he has done."--Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina "Chris Offutt has written the finest book of his distinguished career, a memoir that delivers an understanding of the complicated negotiations we must make between our obsessions and those mysterious others whom we call family. Direct, forceful, and completely unsentimental, this book goes on the short shelf of our best literature about fathers and sons." --Ann Packer, author of The Children's Crusade "Chris Offutt owns one of the finest, surest prose styles around, ready and able to convey the hardest truth without flinching. Now Offutt enters the darkest and most mysterious of places--the cave of a monstrous enigma named Andrew J. Offutt--armed with nothing but his own restless curiosity. Spoiler alert: He makes it out alive, walking into the daylight to bring us a deeper, funnier, more tender and more heartbroken truth--and his masterpiece." --Michael Chabon "Everything Chris Offutt writes is beautiful and brilliant, but My Father, the Pornographer is an astonishing house of mysteries, and his most moving book yet. It's about family and secrets and a literal ton of pornography, but also, fascinatingly, what it means to make a writing life, whether high art or pulp."--Elizabeth McCracken The death of Chris Offutt's father left him with what amounted to a secret estate that redefined his family and Chris himself. Only a writer of Offutt's caliber could transform that experience into this heartbreaking triumph. This is a must-read, an unforgettable and entirely original story. --Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night" "With My Father, the Pornographer, Chris imparts many rich and hard-won lessons to his lucky readers. This is a memoir that's not only insightful but also funny, harrowing, and searingly honest." --Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times Bestselling Author "My Father the Pornographeris a brave, engaging, dangerous piece of work. An uncompromising examination of a writer's life, it raises questions both complex and haunting. Offutt is truly naked on the page, revealing his father's secret obsessions, and his own. I am lost in admiration for what he has done. --Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina" Chris Offutt has written the finest book of his distinguished career, a memoir that deliversan understanding of the complicated negotiations we must make betweenour obsessionsandthose mysterious others whom we call family. Direct, forceful, and completely unsentimental, this book goes on the short shelf of our best literature about fathers and sons. --Ann Packer, author of The Children's Crusade" Chris Offutt owns one of the finest, surest prose styles around, ready and able to convey the hardest truth without flinching. Now Offutt enters the darkest and most mysterious of places the cave of a monstrous enigma named Andrew J. Offutt armed with nothing but his own restless curiosity. Spoiler alert: He makes it out alive, walking into the daylight to bring us a deeper, funnier, more tender and more heartbroken truth and his masterpiece. --Michael Chabon" Everything Chris Offutt writes is beautiful and brilliant, but My Father, the Pornographeris an astonishing house of mysteries, and his most moving book yet. It'sabout family and secrets and a literal ton of pornography, but also, fascinatingly, what it means to make a writing life, whether high art or pulp. --Elizabeth McCracken" "" Chris Offutt has written the finest book of his distinguished career, a memoir that deliversan understanding of the complicated negotiations we must make betweenour obsessionsandthose mysterious others whom we call family. Direct, forceful, and completely unsentimental, this book goes on the short shelf of our best literature about fathers and sons. --Ann Packer, author of The Children's Crusade" "With "My Father, the Pornographer," Chris imparts many rich and hard-won lessons to his lucky readers. This is a memoir that's not only insightful but also funny, harrowing, and searingly honest." --Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times Bestselling Author Advance Praise for "My Father, the Pornographer " Chris Offutt has written the finest book of his distinguished career, a memoir that deliversan understanding of the complicated negotiations we must make betweenour obsessionsandthose mysterious others whom we call family. Direct, forceful, and completely unsentimental, this book goes on the short shelf of our best literature about fathers and sons. --Ann Packer, author of The Children's Crusade" "One part literary mystery, one part memoir--the death of Chris Offutt's father left him with what amounted to a secret estate, a high stakes game of hide and seek in which nothing less than his family--what it is, what it has been--and he himself are redefined by the secrets his father leaves to him. Only a writer of Offutt's caliber could make it into this heartbreaking triumph. This is a must-read, an unforgettable and entirely original story, the like of which may never happen again." "" --Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night Advance Praise for "My Father, the Pornographer " "With "My Father, the Pornographer," Chris imparts many rich and hard-won lessons to his lucky readers. This is a memoir that's not only insightful but also funny, harrowing, and searingly honest." --Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times Bestselling Author
