Damaged People

“Joe McGinniss Jr.’s Damaged People is a major work in a minor key. Beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking, funny, evoking the universal in the particular story of two writers, father and son. Sr. is famous, distant, utterly self-absorbed. Jr. is honest, anxious, searching for something he fears is beyond his reach. I loved this book.” —David Maraniss, author of A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father “Heartbreaking … Eloquent … Joe Jr. twins his candid postmortem of the wreckage of his father’s life with an account of his own struggles to parent his son Jayson, a bright, sensitive only child… . Whether he’s describing his father’s shortcomings or assessing his own failings as a parent, Joe Jr. is unsparing. Damaged People is an almost relentlessly bleak book, but what redeems it from voyeurism and makes it well worth reading is Joe Jr.’s candor and graceful writing that would elicit his father’s pride even as he undoubtedly would cringe at some of the harrowing scenes portrayed here.” —BookReporter“Damaged People is a story about a son and his father, and another story about a father and his son; both stories full of love and recrimination. This book cries out with tenderness and nostalgia. Deeply felt and deeply moving.” —Lili Anolik, author of Didion & Babitz“Damaged People is brave, sometimes painful, and always engrossing—about resilience, love, and hope. McGinniss is fiercely candid and a wonderful writer.” —David Sheff, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boy“Every son is torn, perhaps, between a fear of turning out like his father and a fear of failing to live up to him. Joe McGinniss Jr.’s tender, searching, beautifully self-interrogative Damaged People threads the eye of both questions with remarkable intelligence and sensitivity. The result is book that is at once powerfully moving and utterly riveting, a lovely document of what it means to be a child, a spouse, and a parent.” —Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood“A beautiful written, compassionate but unsparing chronicle of a decent man enduring, learning from and trying to overcome the pain and wounds of life with (and more often without) a famous father, whose name and profession and writing talent he shares, but whose reckless, irredeemable selfishness he refuses to inherit.” —Kurt Andersen, New York Times bestselling author of Evil Geniuses“The son of a prominent writer contemplates difficult father-son relationships and the possibilities of healing… . The resulting memoir becomes an act of narrative therapy, as well as a raw and often poignant tribute to a difficult dad.” —Booklist“Moving between the 1970s and ’80s, when the author was a young boy anxious for his father’s attention, and the 2000s, when he’s grappling with being a father to a young son, McGinniss Jr. draws comparisons between who he was becoming and who McGinniss Sr. was as a writer and father… . His determination to break generational patterns resonates.” —Kirkus ReviewsPraise for Carousel Court: “A fearless novel about a family and a society on the brink … Harrowing but, against all odds, ultimately tender … [Nick and Phoebe] offer the possibility of a simple but enormous grace: that we may fail and still be loved, if only imperfectly, if only for a time.” —O, The Oprah Magazine“Fast … Foreboding … This couple will stop at nothing to keep their house and marriage afloat… . McGinniss spins an edgy tale, often laced with a reporter’s eye for the little details that make characters pop and convey a sarcastic take on what a certain slice of people need nowadays to feel uplifted: anti-anxiety pills, yes, but also the produce section of Whole Foods, where Phoebe has spent so much time that she’s learned ‘the fine mist showering the mustard greens, arugula, and summer squash is on a forty-second cycle—ten seconds on, thirty seconds off.’” —The Washington Post

Joe McGinniss Jr. is the author of Carousel Court and The Delivery Man. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.