The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions

I truly enjoyed this rambling, spiraling, yet consistently coherent memoir. Moody's account of patrimony, addiction, family history, American history, Nathaniel Hawthorne, literary criticism, depression, and modern American does digress indeed, but always in brilliant sweeps that return the reader to the center over and over, even if that center itself is rather ambiguous. Moody is a brilliant writer whose use of italics creates a very personal vocal style. The bonus at the end is the complete reproduced text of Hawthorne's short story, "The Minister's Black Veil," which is the caption that defines the structure and theme of this amazing book.

This was lovely and peculiar and many different things all at once. I really appreciated the fact that it is a memoir of his drug/alcohol addiction without being self serving or grotesque and also that the metaphor he chose and the Nathanial Hawthorne short story that reveals it are so apt without being stridently blatant

Moody did manage to tie together his memoir with "The Minister's Black Veil," but ultimately it was because of a genealogy project--the Moody in the story being, according to family legend, one of Rick Moody's ancestors.

The memoir parts of the book were interesting, and I really enjoyed those sections. The criticism of the short story I have no intention to read, not so much. And really--is a stranger's genealogy interesting to anyone besides the person doing the researching?

Este libro conjuga la trayectoria del novelista Rick Moody y los elementos característicos de su obra: la familia disfuncional, el cuadro de época y la desesperación de ser joven en un mundo de adultos desequilibrados.

Non è molto chiaro sinceramente se questo vuole essere un romanzo o un saggio su qualcosa di altrettanto poco chiaro.
L'ho letto molto lentamente perchè noioso e snervante a tratti...