In My Father's Footsteps

by Sebastian Matthews
WW Norton & Company
2004

Read an Excerpt

Book Description

A brilliant father, a complicated legacy, and a son's hard-won journey of self-discovery. William Matthews was a much-admired, award-winning poet and teacher who lived hard and died suddenly in 1997 at the age of fifty-five. He was a jazz fan, a wit and raconteur, a connoisseur of fine food and wine, and a thrice-married womanizer.

This clear-eyed, often wryly funny memoir pays homage to a charismatic father as the son struggles to step out from his considerable shadow. In examining his father's death (and life), Sebastian Matthews explores his own chaotic past. A child of divorce, he was shuttled throughout his boyhood between parents and many geographies. In a confusing symbiotic time between Bill's marriages, the teenage son and his father "were roommates and drinking buddies--I took care of him; he parented me." Later came the son's wanderings, the failed commitments.

Finally Sebastian learns to confront Bill's mixed legacy. Striving to emulate the best of that "sad, happy man," he discovers new definitions of home, love, and marriage.

Reviews

Booklist

If readers turn to Sebastian Matthews' memoir as they did to Kim Stafford's remembrance of his father, the poet William Stafford, in pursuit of a unique perspective on a favorite writer, they will not be disappointed. Sebastian's frank, vivid, and haunting memoir does offer a provocative portrait of his nonchalantly elegant, always-in-demand, and artistic-to-the-bone father--a great connoisseur of wine, food, basketball, and jazz who "died at the height of his powers." We see William writing late into the night cocooned in a blue swirl of cigarette smoke and music. William holding audiences rapt at lectures and readings. And William as a compulsive womanizer seemingly determined to ruin his health. But we also see a great deal of Sebastian, doing his best as a lonely boy to keep up with his father's peripatetic life and many marriages and affairs and, later, struggling with his own inability to put down roots or commit to a relationship. Ultimately, Sebastian's lyrically confessional memoir evolves into a father-and-son duet, poignant testimony to the boon and burden of inheritance.
- Donna Seaman

Amazon.com

A son's relationship with his father can have profound bittersweet turns as boy grows into man. As Sebastian Matthews relates in this touching, often achingly personal memoir, that journey can be even more trying when son follows famous father's footsteps in both profession and personal dysfunction. William Matthews was a renowned, financially successful poet and academic, a seasoned lover of wine, women and song. His sudden death at 55 both shatters and focuses his son, and spurs him to a literary reconciliation that is as haunting as it is heart-rending. For beneath the elder Matthews' refined, world-wise tastes and sharp-witted poetry lie tragic compulsions--the very same trappings that seem to bless Sebastian with an uber-cool adolescence prove to have their own dark, destructive lining. Sebastian is not out to desconstruct his father, but rather to refine a deeper understanding and acceptance of him and their relationship--love is almost too tepid a word for it.
--Jerry McCulley

The New York Times

In his memoir, "In My Father's Footsteps," Sebastian Matthews writes that his father "led the working poet's life," with its "countless part-time gigs and readings," "nights in hotels" and "fans who loved you or wanted a piece of you." To say this is to take poetry for a lifestyle: Sebastian's memoir tries to understand that lifestyle, and to find something in it to admire. His father was, Sebastian writes: "A loyal friend who, in his own estimation, failed completely in marriage. A generous and beloved teacher who hit on his students." Matthews played many sports enthusiastically, but "smoked and drank too much," "bought wine by the case and drank it nightly by the bottle." "That he slept with his students was an open secret. I don't think he could help himself."

Matthews's life and his poetry together suggest the disadvantages of a system (academic creative writing) and a period style (accessible, autobiographical free verse) that asked poets to be only themselves writ large. Those hypertrophied selves, in life and in art, became spectacles of appetite, with readers, colleagues and students invited to watch: the poet was having more fun than anyone else -- he had to be holding court in order to feel comfortable," his son writes -- and his guests were free to join in.
- Stephen Burt

The New Yorker

When the poet William Matthews died, in 1997, his son Sebastian was left with the patchwork legacy of a father who was lovable but evasive--the kind of brilliant man who, when quizzed about his many infidelities, might deftly change the subject to viticulture or the glory days of the Cincinnati Reds. In this memoir, the son recalls his tumultuous childhood, spent shuttling between the hippie encampments where his mother lived and the college towns (with their college girls) through which his father drifted. As a teen-ager in Seattle, he discovered his father's world of wine, coffee, jazz, smoke, and poetry, and soon slipped into the imitative role of writers'-colony seducer and campus scapegrace. Buttressing the narrative with fragments of his parents' verse (his mother, Marie Harris, is also a poet), the younger Matthews describes his slow passage from being "the son of the famous poet" to establishing an identity of his own.

Publisher's Weekly

For most people, the death of a parent can bring a wave of self-reflection and consideration about one's place in the world. For Matthews, the loss of his father, poet and teacher William Matthews, sparks an even more intense journey into memory and meaning. At first, his memoir seems to be a dreamy valentine, complete with poetic phrases about the emptiness of the poet's apartment and Matthews wondering if his dad's cat had gone to its owner, "confused by the fallen body, crouching with him in the tub, leaning into the discharged heat coming off his body." But the romanticism quickly ebbs as Matthews contemplates how fully he has, indeed, followed in his father's footsteps. Not only did Matthews become a writer, poet and teacher himself, but he imagines parts of his father's life as his father might have lived them. He gives as much weight to his father's affairs with students as he does to his own memories, mixing recollection, reality and hypothesis. Because Matthews's thoughts bounce through time and include some unnecessary scenes, the work is at times patchy. Usually, however, the intricate weave deftly shows that William Matthews was more than an idealistic, larger-than-life figure to his son. Rather, he could be wondrous and infuriating, and Matthews doesn't flinch from describing the hurt and anger he sometimes felt growing up. Still, this is not a tiresome laundry list of complaint tempered with some lush, loving moments. Rather, it's a glimpse of two lives and a look at how complicated a father-son relationship can become, even when one member is gone. Illus. Agent, Diana Finch. (Jan.) FYI: Houghton Mifflin will simultaneously publish Search Party: Collected Poems by William Matthews (reviewed on p. 59). Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

American-born poet William Matthews (1942-97), who wrote fine autobiographical verse, died prematurely at 55. In this revealing memoir, his younger son, Sebastian, who coedited many of the poet's essays, interviews, and poetry collections and who is a poet and teacher in his own right, revisits his difficult relationship with his father. He grapples to understand his father's weaknesses (including heavy drinking, smoking, and many affairs), his reasons for divorcing his mother as well as two later wives, and his own early attempts to live the same kind of life. Fortunately, as the reader learns, Sebastian meets the right woman, marries her, and settles down to a career of writing and education. Sebastian's writing is at its strongest when focusing on his father's career and legacy, but it bogs down in the middle where the author relives his own immaturities. Recommended for public library collections and for those who enjoy reading about the tangled relationships of parents and children. [For a review of Search Party: Collected Poems of William Matthews, see p. 120.-Ed.]-Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology Lib., CUNY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The son of the late poet William Matthews debuts with an uneven memoir of his father's life, death, and enduring influence. The author begins promisingly with a powerful segment about visiting the apartment of his father in 1997 right after 55-year-old William's sudden death from a heart attack. "All I wanted to do was to sit down," Sebastian writes, "and immerse myself in the slowly dying energy of the room." The author discusses the poet's serial sexual escapades and failed marriages, his compulsive desire to sleep with his students (he finally had to leave the University of Washington after women filed complaints), his weaknesses and strengths as a father, his drinking, and his demons. Sebastian also shows us William's obsessions with jazz and opera and describes clearly his abilities as a writer, teacher, and performer. Because of the poet's peripatetic life, the younger Matthews had no stable home life in the conventional sense. As he grew up, the author realized he wished to be a writer as well, but was soon wrestling with the same demons that tormented his father. There is an uncomfortable account of teenaged Sebastian having Clinton-esque sexual relations with one of his father's graduate students, who stayed with him while Dad was away. Unfortunately, as the focus shifts from the poet to the memoirist, interest ebbs as triteness surges in. The expression "one day at a time" makes an unwelcome appearance and brings along many equally drab friends. The author experiences sexual dysfunction, enters therapy, joins a support group, screams "Fuck you!" at his father's picture, struggles in his relationships with women, marries, and moves to Asheville, North Carolina, where he currently lives, teaches, and writes. Succeeds creditably until the "me" in the memoir takes over. (7 illustrations, not seen) Agent: Diana Finch

Matthews tells story of life with father

Rebecca Rule
Published: Sunday, Aug. 15, 2004

In My Father’s Footsteps" by Sebastian Matthews; Norton; cloth; 274 pages; $24.95.
I hear you on the stairs,
an avalanche of sneakers, and then the shift
of your absence and then I’d begin to rub
the house like a lantern until you came back
and grew up to be me, wondering how to sleep
in this lie of memory unless it be made clean.
- William Matthews, "Housework"

If you’ve never heard of William Matthews, or have heard of him, vaguely, but didn’t know much about him, as I had, here’s the scoop: Born in Cincinnati; B.A. Yale; M.A. University of North Carolina; published 11 collections of poetry; National Book Critics Circle Award; president of Associated Writing Programs and Poetry Society of America; professor at several schools, including Cornell and the University of Washington. He was director of the creative writing program at New York City College when he died of a heart attack Nov. 12, 1997, the day after his 55th birthday.

Matthews was an important American poet. He has been called one of the greatest poets of his generation. Sebastian Matthews called him Dad.

In "In My Father’s Footsteps," Sebastian tells his story of life with father, and life as father with unflinching honesty and poetry, too.

Memoir is tough. And it can be brave. It’s tough because there is no curtain. In fiction (my medium of choice), writers use the Oz out: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." We tell our stories, but they are not about us. Not exactly. In memoir, though - honest memoir - the writer studies, explores and exposes his life, as well the lives of those who touch his. The writer looks out and he looks in. He slices a cross-section of his own heart, puts it under the microscope, analyzes what he sees, then he reports his findings to the reader.

That’s the brave part.

When Sebastian writes about his father’s accomplishments, his charm, his many friends, his wit, his sprezzatura ("a certain flair in lifestyle accompanied by an air of distain for one’s own importance") - that’s not so brave. But when he writes about his father’s affairs with his students, his inability to be faithful to Sebastian’s mother (and subsequent wives), his alcoholism (or is it just heavy drinking?), his excesses, and when Sebastian sees his father’s excesses in himself and says so, that’s brave: "The song of my father is also the song of myself."

When I get to the flume, I take off my clothes and climb into the pool of freezing water. I know it doesn’t work this way, but I want the water to purify me. And in a way it does, for as I walk back down the path, an understanding knocks into me, chest-level: I have been following in my father’s footsteps. I’ve tried to look like him, dress like him. He listened to Dylan and jazz, so I listened to Dylan and jazz. He stayed up late and wrote poems; I did too. And I’ve looked away from his transgressions. In fact, I’ve transferred his bad-boy behavior into my own life. Drinking, womanizing, leaving without saying goodbye. I’m sharing the world he invited me into . . .
I’ve criticized other memoirs (in this column and in my head) for evading the important questions, for skimming emotional wells, skipping across the surfaces of lives, for basically failing to show or tell me anything I didn’t already know.

In "In My Father’s Footsteps," a skilled writer with deep poetic sensibilities uses his gift for choosing significant details to illuminate significant moments to allow readers in, truly in, so we begin to understand his life’s complexities, which can’t help but resonate with the complexities of our own lives. (Hey, we’ve all got problems.) A boy pretends his parents’ divorce was fine with him, kind of a kick having two homes, two families. A young man pretends the cure for impotence is the next new relationship. A 28-year-old goes into a "familiar rant, a reel of self-pity and loathing," because his career falls short of his father’s.

Memory is a strange and elusive thing. One person’s recollections may be completely at odds with another person’s . . . and they are both remembering things that happened at the same time in the same place. My reaction to my son’s book - a brave and often funny account of a life we shared - is to take great pride in his considerable writing talent and, finally, to kick back and enjoy the story.
- Marie Harris, Barrington,
former N.H. poet laureate
William Matthews said: "The mysteries that lie in childhood are continually reinvented as we go through life remembering them."

Sebastian Matthews writes: "Believing this is true, I launch myself over and over into the reservoir of memory. Each time I dive, I hope to go deep. Each time I come up for air, I hope to emerge new."

"In My Father’s Footsteps" absolutely avoids the sinkholes of "Poor me" and "It’s somebody else’s fault." William Matthews was a brilliant, flawed man. I don’t much like what I see of him in this book; but I understand that his son loved him - still loves him - very much.

Sebastian Matthews, on the other hand, I admire. He has suffered. He has fought many demons. He has found his way. This is a wonderful, loving, truthful and hopeful book.

Asheville Citizen Times

CHOICE BOOKS: Warren Wilson College teacher explores legacy in memoir
By Rob Neufeld
March 5, 2004

`I launch myself over and over into the reservoir of memory," Sebastian Matthews writes at the end of his new memoir, "In My Father's Footsteps."

"Each time I dive," he continues, "I hope to go deep. Each time I come up for air, I hope to emerge new."

Matthews, born in Chapel Hill, has come to reside in Asheville, where he teaches at Warren Wilson College along with his wife, Ali Climo. His father was William Matthews, an exalted poet, whose death at age 55 in 1997 had come just after Sebastian had learned to embrace his father's dual legacy of greatness and weakness.

"My father always seemed to me," Matthews writes, "a bundle of contradictions - a `sad, happy man' . A walking oxymoron. A loyal friend who, in his own estimation, failed completely in marriage. A generous and beloved teacher who hit on his students. A highbrow with friends in low places."

Jazz, cooking and basketball were William Matthews' passions, and he developed an impressive level of expertise with them.

Both enamored of and intimidated by his father's achievements, and drawn into his damaging addiction to sexual liaisons, Matthews found himself walking "in his father's footsteps" in the most extreme way. He pulled himself out, which is part of the story - as is the general condition of children who seek identities in the shadows of intense, accomplished parents.

It's interesting. Last Saturday at Malaprop's, Matthews was talking with Brad Land about Land's memoir, "Goat," reviewed last week, and about the challenge of writing memoirs. Both authors agreed that they needed to alter the form in order to be deep and engaging.

In general outline, Matthews' form flows naturally. He begins with his father's death, moves backward through time to recall his parents' divorce and his own childhood, and then moves forward to arrive at his father's death again. Following that, he embraces his father's helpful legacy, which resides in dreams, interests and even furnishings.

There is one passage at the end of the book with which I'm in love. Sebastian is writing about preparing his father's favorite dish, risotto, while playing the music that both he and his father had cherished. The cooking not only honors his father but also the people for whom he makes it. In other words, it is a sacrament of communion.

Matthews writes supremely about music and food. Here's how he describes "Goodbye Porkpie Hat," Charles Mingus' jazz elegy for Lester Young, played by saxophonists Booker Ervin and John Handy. The song opens somberly, as if following a casket in a procession, but then Handy breaks away.

"It's as if," Matthews writes, "he has become the reincarnated spirit of Young, let loose after a hard life and a bitter battle with drugs. Eventually he comes back down, rejoining the band to moan out the song's final, descending dirge-like cry. Handy's voice is immediately subsumed in the band's song, which in turn has become infused by birdlike soaring. What starts off as sad, blue yearning winds up threaded through with joy and hope."

It is when Matthews comes to represent some of the harder- to-get parts of his family's story that he conjures up narrative tricks. Customarily, a writer faced with Matthews' challenge - describing events to which he had not been privy - will say, OK, I'll make it up and call it fiction. Not Matthews. He announces his detour from documentation.

"This is how I imagine it," Matthews begins his chapter, "Separating," before entering the scenes that had led up to his parents' divorce. Elsewhere, after describing what his father did on the morning of his death, Matthews admits, "Of course, I can only imagine all this. But as his son, as a fellow writer, I know my father's routines."

Two-thirds through his memoir, Matthews charges himself with the task of showing how he had muddled through his life before reaching belated maturity. None of the revelations here will be surprising, but the hangdog awkwardness is eventually relieved by substantial soulfulness, epitomized by poetry such as this line by William Matthews: "Fellow oddballs, here's to us,/ morose at dances, giggly in committee."

Ah, they're words to live by.

An interview with Sebastian Matthews

Q: How did you find your way to Warren Wilson College?

A: My wife, Ali, and I were living in Michigan, and had decided to move back to our home place, New England, and then start looking for jobs. Ali was invited to go to Warren Wilson College to teach social work. We came down and fell in love with the mountains. The community was vibrant, there was a mountain culture here and there were also a lot of newcomers. It really spoke to us.

Q: What vocation did you find here?

A: I got a part-time job working at Warren Wilson College, teaching creative writing to undergraduates. I also teach for (UNCAs) Great Smokies Writing Program. I'm a walker. I'm beginning to write about some of those walks on campus trails, downtown, along the river, at the Biltmore Estate, in the mountains, slowly getting a sense of place. As a poet, I'm turning to things that are pleasure-giving. I'm working on a book of poems called For Pleasure and Im also writing about brotherhood.

Q: It seemed like that there were things you left unsaid about your brother in In My Fathers Footsteps.

A: I had to cut a large part of the book out in order to focus on the main theme. Now, I want to write about my relationship with my brother through my experiences with my younger brother, Manny (adopted by Sebastians mother and stepfather), and through the young man Ive gotten to know through Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Q: You also wrote things about your parents that you had to make up, is that right?

A: I couldnt write about my parents divorce in any other way than going into my head. What I first wrote was boring. My justification is that a child of divorce is by nature someone who pays attention to his parents emotional states. Memoirs are first-person, unreliable narrations.

Rob Neufeld writes about books for the Citizen-Times. His "Choice Books" column runs in the Sunday Living section. Contact him at 768-BOOK or RNeufeld@charter.net