What I Think I Did
by Larry Woiwode

List Price: $15.95
Our Price: $3.74
You Save: $12.21 (77%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.56 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of What I Think I Did

Book Review: a subtle & intricate autobiography
Summary: 5 Stars

now to his book, WHAT I THINK I DID, which is a clever title. Woiwode juxtaposes two struggling times of his life: the late 50's/ early 60's as a writer/novelist-to-be and the early 90's in a bleak North Dakotian mid-winter, fighting blizzards for warmth and possibly survival.

Woiwode has always struck me as a pioneer, both in his writing and his frontiersman lifestyle. Woiwode is somewhat unique in his "voice" along with Lawrence Dorr and a few others, in trying to communicate subtly the tender Mercy of an interactive God in our complicated lives. Alongside that he is an itricate surgeon of experiences and nuances and very literary without being too pompous.

Woiwode's loving & detailed description of the humbly, paternal William Maxwell, of the New Yorker, left me hungering for such a mentoring experience. I am convinced that Maxwell's care established Wiowode's "voice" & "vision", and as such, was pre-ordained. He is extremely fortunate to have had such an important man of letters take such an interest in him. The inner workings of the New Yorker magazine are interesing to one of the other side of the Atlantic.

The second emphasis in this memoir is Woiwode's early friendship with the pre-Hollywoodian Robert deNiro and family. There are comic moments when deNiro-the- chauffer drives Larry & his wife in the in-law's black Lincoln Town Car to a restaurant. deNiro paves the way for these two celebs, with his hand in his coat, as if to check his gun!

in closing, there are the tender mercies of Woiwode towards his wife & children in the midst of the blizzard. his hazardous attempts to get firewood for a temperamental boiler, newly installed, endangers life and I, as a father, cringed with him, as he re-told this frightening incident.

conclusion: a book to be savoured slowly, beside a fire, with a cup of coffee and a snowstorm raging outside, rattling the windowpanes...