Oh the Glory of It All

"In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess."

With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families.

Sean's mother is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse. His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms. When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow.

Follow Sean as he candidly recounts his life growing up in a wealthy family all while discovering who he is amongst San Francisco's social elite.

Author: Sean Wilsey
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 04/25/2006
Pages: 512
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 8.36h x 5.54w x 1.09d
ISBN: 9780143036913

Review Citation(s):
Entertainment Weekly 05/19/2006 pg. 80
New York Times 06/04/2006 pg. 44

About the Author
Sean Wilsey's writing has appeared in The London Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, and McSweeney's Quarterly, where he is the editor at large. Before going to McSweeney's he worked as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, a fact checker at Ladies' Home Journal, a letters correspondent at Newsweek, and an apprentice gondolier in Venice, Italy. He was born in San Francisco in 1970 and now lives with his wife, Daphne Beal, and his son, Owen.