Lost in Place:: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia

Memoir of Mark Salzman's adolescent years in Connecticut. Outrageously funny in spots, touching in others, and interesting throughout. The author's description of Sensei O'Keefe and the stories surrounding the Kung Fu Dojo are riotous. Ed, his eternally pessimistic father, adds another element of humor to the story. The novel describes an eccentric teenager's failed attempts to "change myself into something I'm not. The story of my life." He obsessively pursues first Kung Fu to become a fearless warior, then years of cello training to achieve a dream of becoming a concert celloist, and majors in Chinese at Yale because "it was the one subject I had a head start in and could therefore look smarter than I really was." The book is a good reflection back on the eccentricities of adolescence with a profound message offered in the end.

I just happened across Salzman's video of "Iron & Silk" (about his experiences teaching English and learning wushu in China) and I was so charmed, I decided to give "Lost in Place" a try. From page one I was laughing out loud. There is much more here than just a boy's quest to be a wandering Zen monk from the age of 13. He also has a sometime career as a cellist, a summer as a pothead and an everlasting struggle with the public school system. The main theme of this book is that basic question: what's the purpose of my life? Salzman explores this in tandem with touching vignettes of his relationship with his implacable father, an amateur astronomer, painter and disenchanted social worker.As someone who has recently taken up martial arts, I enjoyed the descriptions of Salzman's early training. How I'm glad I didn't go to his school!The book is a quick, pleasureable read. Even though Salzman describes some dark times in his life, his self-analysis is too interesting to put down. I wish I could recommend this to the under 18 crowd, but due to vivid descriptions of drug use, a lot of musings about sex and a lot of profanity on the part of his kung fu instructor, I'd hesitate to give this book to any but the most mature of teenagers. Highly recommended for parents trying to renew their familiarity with the teenage mind, though!

A GREAT READ. If you have any memories of adolescence, this book will make you laugh out loud. Salzman is a master storyteller, even telling the smallest anecdote. What I really like about this author is that his books are strikingly different from one another -- from "Iron and Silk" (about living in China, a classic!) to "The Soloist" (about a former cello prodigy and a murder trial of a zen student, a totally unique story) He's one of the most interesting writers out there. This book is one of his most entertaining.

I started reading Lost In Place one night when I couldn't sleep. I laughed so loud and long I awoke my husband sleeping upstairs who came down to check on why I was, he thought, wailing and weeping. Tears of amusement, certainly. There isn't a wrong note in this memoir. The gloomy father remarked upon in some customer reviews is hardly any gloomier than most fathers raising kids in the 70's and unlike a good many of them, he retained the deep love and respect of his son. I have given it to my own kids (16 and 19) to read, to kids graduating from high school this year. A friend of my sixteen-year-old read it in two days and it was the only nonrequired book she read all year. For those who grew up in the 70's it will strike one kind of chord; for any adolescent it is a shining example of how becoming caught up in an obsession, of training oneself (voluntarily), of learning everything you can about something can turn out to be the most important thing you ever do. Comic books, kung fu, BB guns, decorating teeshirts--these are paths to Yale as surely as being the scholar/athlete held out as exemplars by our high schcols.

We read this for our book group and everyone in the group -- folks from about 50 into their early 70's -- thought it was great. Salzman captures the mind of the teenage boy and presents it in a wonderfully well written story. I had finished it and my wife then kept me awake for two nights with her chuckles as she read it. The mother in the story does not get much press but she is the real hero in Mark's life. She supports each of his youthful plunges into finding his way in life from the little kid in the box playing like a captain on a space mission to his leaving high school a year early after getting himself into Yale before graduating from high school. I am certain that we would have never seen this wonderful book had it not been for his mother and her fierce support for Mark as he worked through life "Absurd in Suburbia." I have read two of his other books and have just ordered the only one that I have not yet read.