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Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving amidst Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children’s imagination, instructing them physics, geology, and above all, how to hug life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn’t stand the obligation of providing for her family, called herself an “excitement addict.” Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Later, when the cash ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town — and the family — Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery cash and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents’ betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
What is so astonishing regarding Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and persistent determination and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep positive feeling of liking and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph versus all odds, but likewise a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that in spite of it is unfathomed flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor. An exclusive Q&A with Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle
Q: How long did it take you to write The Glass Castle and what was that routine like?
A: Writing regarding myself, and regarding intensely personal and potentially embarrassing experiences, was not similar to anything I’d done before. Over the last 25 years, I wrote numerous versions of this essay — now and then pounding out 220 pages in a single weekend. But I always threw out the pages. At one point I tried to fictionalize it, but that didn’t work either.
When I was at long last ready, I wrote it exclusively on the weekends, getting to my desk by 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. and continuing until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. I wrote the primary draft in regarding six weeks — but then I expended three or four years rewriting it. My husband, John Taylor, who is likewise a writer, observed all this approvingly and cited John Fowles, who said that a book must be like a child: conceived in passion and reared with care.
Q: How did you determine to follow The Glass Castle with Half Broke Horses?
A: It was wholly at the suggestion of readers. So a lot of humans kept saying the next book will have to be with regards to my mother. Readers understood my father’s recklessness because they understood alcoholism, but Mom was a mystery to them. Why, they would ask, would an individual with the resources to lead a normal life choose the existence that she did?
I would tell them a little bit when it comes to my mother’s childhood. She not only knew that she could survive without indoor plumbing, but that was the idealisti amount of time of her life, a time that she tries to recreate. I think that for essay readers, it’s not with regards to a freak show– they’re just looking to grasp people and get into a life that’s not their own. I thought, let me give it a shot, let me ask Mom. And she was all for it. But she kept insisting that the book ought to actually be when it comes to her mother. At basi I resisted because my grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, passed from physical life when I was eight years old, more than 40 years ago. But I have a very bright memory of this tough, leathery woman; she sang, she danced, she shot guns, she’d play honky tonk piano. I was always captivated by her. Lily had told such compelling stories—I was stunned by the number of anecdotes, and that Mom knew so much detail regarding them. Half Broke Horses is a compilation of family stories, stitched together with gaps filled in. They’re the sort of tales that pretty much every one has heard from their parents or grandparents. I realized that in telling Lily’s story, I could likewise explain Mom’s.
Q: Why did you determine to write Half Broke Horses in the basi person, and how much of this “true-life novel” is fiction?
A: I set out to write a biography of Lily, but from time to time books take on a life of their own. I told it in primary person because I wanted to capture Lily’s voice. I’m a lot like my grandmother, so it came effortlessly to me. I planned to go back and change it from basi person to third person and put in qualifiers so the book would be with respect to history accurate, but when I showed it to my agent and publisher, they both said to leave it as it is. By doing that, I crossed the line from nonfiction into fiction. But when I call it fiction it’s not because I tarted it up and tried to decorate things, but wanted to make it more readable, fluid, and immediate. I was attempting to get as close to the truth as I could.
Q: How has your kinship with your mother changed in recent years?
A: Several years ago, the abandoned building on New York’s Lower East Side where Mom had been squatting for more than a decade caught fire and she was back on the streets again at age 72. I begged her to come live with me. She said Virginia was too boring, and besides, she’s not a freeloader. I told her we could actually use aid with the horses, and she said she’d be right there. I get along great with Mom now. She’s a hoot. She’s always upbeat, and has a very dissimilar take on life than most people. She’s a lot of fun to be around — as long as you’re not looking for her to take care of you. She doesn’t live in the house with us– I have not reached that level of understanding and compassion– but in an outbuilding in regards to a hundred yards away. Mom is great with the animals, loves to sing and dance and ride horses, and is still painting like a fiend.
Q: What do you hope readers will gain from reading your books?
A:Since writing The Glass Castle, so galore people have said to me, “Oh, you’re so strong and you’re so resilient, and I couldn’t do what you did.” That’s very flattering, but it’s nonsense. Of course they’re as strong as I am. I just had the great fortune of having been tested. If we look at our ancestry, we all come from tough roots. And one of the ways to discover our toughness and our resiliency is to look back at where we come from. I hope humans who read The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses will come away with that. You know, “Gosh, I come from hearty stock. Maybe I’m tougher than I realize.”
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving amid Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children’s imagination, instructing them physics, geology, and above all, how to hug life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn’t stand the obligation of providing for her family, called herself an “excitement addict.” Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Later, when the cash ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town — and the family — Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery cash and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents’ betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
What is so astonishing in regards to Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and persistency and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph versus all odds, but likewise a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that in spite of it is unfathomed flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #142 in Books
- Published on: 2006-01-09
- Released on: 2006-01-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.00″ h x 5.20″ w x 7.90″ l, .60 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
Features
- ISBN13:
- Condition: USED – Very Good
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Reviews
843 of 877 people found the following review helpful.
True to Life Account
By beckybramer
I grew up in Welch, WV and was acquainted with Jeanette and Brian(Lori was older and Maureen was younger). I can attest that her harrowing account of growing up with an alcoholic father and mentally ill mother in the coalfields of WV was as she says. This was a compelling read, all the more so, because it was about people and places I knew so well. As I read, I was filled with sorrow and shame because I was one of those people who didn’t want to have close association with them because they were so different from me. I try to asuage my guilt by telling myself I saw things from a child’s maturity level. I wish I could apologize and find myself wondering what would have happened if I had befriended Jeanette. She could have enriched my like tremendously. For those of you who doubt things could not have happened like it was written, don’t. I knew it and I saw it, and to a degree, lived it. And as tragic as it was, it was true.
783 of 834 people found the following review helpful.WHAT A COURAGEOUS MEMOIR – - BRAVO!
By andy behrman
First, “The Glass Castle” is a real page turner – - I couldn’t put it down and finished it in about four hours – - a record for me!
It’s probably the most thoughtful and sensitive memoir I can ever remember reading – - told with such grace, kindness and fabulous sense of humor.
It’s probably the best account ever written of a dysfunctional family — and it must have taken Walls so much courage to put pen to paper and recount the details of her rather bizarre childhood – - which although it’s like none other and is so dramatic – - any reader will relate to it. Readers will find bits and pieces of their own parents in Rex and Rose Mary Walls.
Her journey across the country, ending up in a poor mining town in West Virginia and then finally in New York City, is a fascinating tale of survival.
Her zest for life, even when eating margarine and sugar and bundled in a cardboard box with sweaters, coats and huddling with her pets, is unbelievably beautiful – - and motivating.
If I could give a book ten stars, it would be “The Glass Castle.”
371 of 400 people found the following review helpful.Inferno to Paradiso (or close enough)
By Thomas M. Seay
Jeannette Wall’s trek, as depicted in “Glass Castle”, recalls Dante’s
journey through Hell and eventual ascenscion to Paradise. The comparison may seem risibly over-dramatic, but just as Dante had to go through the experience of the Netherworlds before he could be led to Heaven, so, too, is Jeannette’s eventual triumph the FRUIT of a childhood filled with poverty and, what some would call, parental neglect or even abuse.
In the opening section about Jeannette’s early childhood, sort of the outer rungs of hell, we are introduced to the author’s quirky family. Her father, Rex, is a brainy underachiever who cannot keep a job and has a bit of a “drinking situation”.
The mother is an eccentric artist who cannot be bothered too much
by mundane tasks- you know, like cooking or cleaning the house. The children, all extremely bright, are often underfed and left to fend for themselves. However, if the parents have failings, they also have redeeming qualities. The children are immersed in an environment that values art, music, intellectual pursuits, freedom and self-sufficiency and spurns racism and all forms of bourgeois superficiality. Above all, the reader never doubts that Rex and his wife truly love the children. One gets the feeling throughout that Jeanette never doubts that either.
In any case, the early years are bittersweet. If there is squalor and hunger there is also humor and magic. Most of all, there is hope. The family frequently moves and, although that is frustrating, it also provided the background for a myth: that the next town would provide prosperity.
But then to Welch they did go! And, it is in this West Virginia town where her father grew up,the “Nation’s Coal Bin”, that Jeannette and the rest of the family descend into the lower regions of hell. All the problems are exacerbated. The father, having returned to the place he said he never would, drinks with abandon and applies more and more of the family’s slim resources toward his habit. Jeanette resorts to scaveging trash barrels for sustenance and is humiliated for her tattered clothing. There is not water in the house for bathing and no heat in Winter. Swallowed by the appalachian mountains with only the two-lane US 52 out, you feel stuck. Even the pilgrim parents are unable to muster the strength to break the gravity of this place. With this immobility came the final destruction of the myth (that the family would move somewhere else and find prosperity) and, as a consequence, the destruction of hope. However, it is in this darkness that Jeannette finds her calling. She becomes a reporter for the “Maroon Wave”, the Welch High School student newspaper. The rest of the book details how her dream to become a “high falutin” journalist led her to New York City and her current incarnation. Maybe not Paradiso, but close enough considering her formative years.
A number of components conflate to push Jeannette towards a succeful resolution. Certainly the positive legacy of her parents: culture, books, self-sufficiency, etc. But also the dire situation gave her a sense of urgency and the focus that comes with it: She had nothing to lose. She was lucky enough to have discovered early on a career path and did not have the leisure to ruminate ENDLESSLY on it.. This latter often brings self-doubts that paralyze youth. Unlike so many memoirs about unhappy childhoods, the author never plays the John Bradshaw card by irately denouncing her parents, nor does she try to facilely excuse them. Life is more complex than that and she understand that syzygys cannot be tampered with, lest you destroy the whole. You cant take eggs out of the cake.
On a personal note, I grew up in Welch, went to Welch High School and knew Jeannette (though not very well) who was two grades behind me. I have not seen her since High School. For those reviewers who expressed doubts about the authenticity of her story, I can tell you that at least the Welch part of the story rings true to my memory.
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