Between Panic and Desire

This is simply an amazing book: funny, accessible, poignant, avant garde, and silly all at the same time. It is an easy read, as it is organized in short, punchy chapters. If you were born in the 1950s or 60s, the book will be even more meaningful for you. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Or perhaps that should be "a gorgeously surprising memoir." Inventive in form, carefully beautiful in language, funny, unexpected, heartbreaking, amusing, filial, universal... this is not just a good read but a terrific choice for book groups or just sharing with a friend. If you've had a father, if you haven't had a father, if you are a father, or if you just know what it's like to be stuck between Panic and Desire (the real towns, or just the states of being), this is a book for you. Unreservedly recommended.

Early in his completely original and frequently hilarious memoir Between Panic & Desire, writer Dinty W. Moore learns that he has double vision. As a boy, he had just seen two of everything pretty much all of the time. That was his normal. Lucky for us, because Moore's singular way of looking back on his world--from families and marijuana, to Richard Nixon and the number nine (my personal favorite, number and chapter)--lets us witness more than just his personal history. Somehow Moore seems to see, simultaneously, what is funny and sad, momentous and fleeting, then and now. Between Panic & Desire is a trip worth taking. And I'd highly recommend letting Dinty W. Moore drive.

Moore, the master of literary nonfiction, brings the reader into the moments that make up a life (a memoir) and explodes the meaning of them from the inside out allowing readers to glimpse reflections of their own lives refracted in the shattered glimmering fallout of a story (structured in experiential, experimental segments) well told.

Dinty W. Moore has written a completely unexpected memoir. This series of linked essays (with a quiz thrown in here and there for good measure) follows the path of a single life through the cultural touchstones that that shaped all of us who are old enough to remember Nixon, Squeaky Fromme, and Mr. Greenjeans. If you're not old enough to remember them, buy this for your father and write something on the inside flap like, "Thanks for not sending me hither and yon looking for a father figure, Dad!" Trust me. Next time you call home for money, you'll be glad that you did.