A Step from Death: A Memoir

This is the second Woiwode memoir I've read. Neither are "easy" reads. You have to pay pretty close attention to follow the circuitous paths of Woiwode's logic and writing style, which often seems unnecessarily elaborate and labyrinthian. But the effort pays off in the anecdotes he offers about his realtionships with his father (his mother died when he was nine) and his son. Woiwode is speaking throughtout the narrative to his son, Joseph, who was an army helicopter pilot in Iraq as he was writing this. There are also more stories here about Woiwode's long friendship with William Maxwell, who was the fiction editor at The New Yorker magazine. And anecdotes about other writers abound too, as was true in his first memoir, What I Think I Did. I was particularly taken with a story about Jim Harrison and pal Tom McGuane who came to do some bird hunting on some property Woiwode was renting in Michigan. You get the definite impression that Woiwode is a perfectionist in his writing to the point of obsessive compulsive disorder, as he documents a couple of near breakdowns trying to complete his magnum opus, Beyond the Bedroom Wall. Marital complications and separations are also given space here and Woiwode holds little back. Tempted as I was at times to simply toss the book aside, I'm glad I finished it. It's worth the slog. I may try to find Beyond the Bedroom Wall, if only because the book seems to have come close to killing its author. Larry Woiwode sounds like a very interesting guy. ( )