The Boys of My Youth

Published in 1998, The Boys of My Youth received much acclaim and elevated Jo Ann Beard's reputation in the memoir/essay genre. Her most well-known essay, "The Fourth State of Matter," first published in The New Yorker in 1996, offers an incisive look into tragedy, grief, and the gift and curse of t......more

This book taught me a lot about reading and writing: that is, what I want to read and what I don't want to read; what I should write, and what Jo Anne Beard shouldn't. The ambiguous, vague touchy-feely pieces on her family were Important Because They Happened to Her. In a very, very negative way. Th......more

William H. Gass, that curmudgeonly king of American letters, proclaims with enormous exasperation that that “the perils of the present tense are pronounced.” In his 1996 essay, “A Failing Grade for the Present Tense,” he shakes his finger like a schoolmarm and scolds, “What was once a rather rare di......more

Just finished my annual reread of this, one of maybe ten books I'd rather die than be forced to live without. I stand by what I've said for a long time: there may be writers who write better books, better essays, better stories, better poems, but NOBODY writes better sentences than Jo Ann Beard. [An......more

Tras leer ‘Los chicos de mi juventud’, puedo decir Jo Ann Beard llega a mi vida para quedarse. Considerada una de las autoras y ensayistas más influyentes en EEUU, reconozco que hasta hace nada, no había oído hablar de ella y qué bien que eso haya cambiado.   Este volumen agrupa doce relatos (siendo......more