I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a T..., Kent Russell
I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a T..., Kent Russell
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I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son
Essays

Author: Kent Russell

Narrator: Sean Pratt

Unabridged: 9 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/14/2015

Synopsis

Locked in battle with both his adult appetites and his most private childhood demons, Kent Russell hungers for immersive experience and revelation, and his essays take us to society's ragged edges, the junctures between savagery and civilization. He pitches a tent at an annual four-day music festival in Illinois, among the misunderstood, thick-as-thieves fans who self-identify as Juggalos. He treks to the end of the continent to visit a legendary hockey enforcer, the granddaddy of all tough guys, to see how he's preparing for his last foe: obsolescence. He spends a long weekend getting drunk with a self-immunizer who is willing to prove that he has conditioned his body to withstand the bites of the most venomous snakes. And in the piercing interstitial meditations between these essays, Russell introduces us to his own raging and inimitable forebears.



Blistering and deeply personal, I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son records Russell's quest to understand, through his journalistic subjects, his own appetites and urges, his persistent alienation, and, above all, his knotty, volatile, vital relationship with his father.

About Kent Russell

Kent Russell's essays have appeared in the New Republic, Harper's, GQ, n+1, the Believer, and Grantland. "American Juggalo," Kent's piece for n+1 about Insane Clown Posse fans, was awarded a 2013 Pushcart Prize. He lives in New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Printable Tire on April 20, 2015

(Composed for a class) I want to like Kent Russell. We have a lot in common: a love of horror movies and islands; fathers who need to talk like “sharks need to swim”; a tendency to root for the slob over the snob. And the subjects of the essays collected in I am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid S......more

Goodreads review by Candy on January 28, 2015

I really wanted to love this book. I made it about half way through before I realized that I probably wasn't going to. I finished it hoping I'd grow to love it. It just didn't happen. And that was disappointing because this is one of my favorite genres and I actually enjoy the off-kilter. I think the......more

Goodreads review by Myles on April 24, 2015

Yeah this wasn't so bad, but it also wasn't so good. I wrote a really long essay on the Gathering of the Juggalos when I was eighteen, and it was only maybe 30% less good than what Kurt Russell gives us. His style is very "now," very committed to dry ironies and the idea that fathers and sons might......more

Goodreads review by Biblio on January 23, 2015

After I read Kent Russell's book, I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son, I looked him up to see what else he's written. Although this is his first book, he is all over the internet, having been published articles in Harper's, n+1, The Believer, Huffington Post, GQ, and so on. How have I miss......more

Goodreads review by Simon on April 26, 2015

2.5 stars...An ambitious nonfiction book that I don't think quite comes together in the end. Kent Russell has collected several longer pieces (some previously published) that seem to center around extreme ideas of masculinity. Russell meets a hockey enforcer, a man practicing "self-immunization" wit......more

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