DAMAGED PEOPLE

A writer examines the inherited legacy of fatherhood and dysfunction from his successful writer father.

In this deeply personal if occasionally uneven memoir, novelist Joe McGinniss Jr. (Carousel Court, The Delivery Man) explores his relationship with his father, Joe McGinniss, who by the time of his son’s birth in 1970 was already established as a hugely ambitious, bestselling nonfiction author. McGinniss Sr. would go on to write three acclaimed true-crime thrillers, including Fatal Vision (1983) and Blind Faith (1989), all adapted into television miniseries, before his career and personal life were derailed by a scathing New Yorker piece by Janet Malcolm, and his later work faced harsh critical attention claiming shoddy research and reporting. Along the way there was increasing alcohol and substance abuse, a legacy that went back to his own father and beyond. “He knew firsthand from his parents what addiction and depression looked like,” writes the author. “He knew the damage they could do to a child.” 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. “Writing came first for him, always and ahead of everything—family, money, and stability.” By comparison, his aim is “not to write, like my father. But to be a father who writes.” The memoir succeeds as a portrait of cyclical family dysfunction but sometimes feels more cathartic than crafted. McGinniss Jr.’s prose compellingly relates his father’s career trajectory, yet the emotional register can become overwrought when addressing his own present circumstances. While his determination to break generational patterns resonates, the execution often favors raw confession over genuine insight into his inherited trauma and artistic ambition.

Sincere family reckoning at times undermined by therapeutic processing over storytelling discipline.