conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled Oh the Glory of It All about ldquo;The, lsquo;truth, mdash with the genre: History, Americas?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: &ldquo;The clich&eacute; &lsquo;truth is stranger than fiction&rsquo; may well have been coined to describe the author&rsquo;s wild, wise, and whip-smart memoir.&rdquo; &mdash; Elle
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: 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.
  WE WERE MOM and Dad and I—three palindromes!—and we lived eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills.
  Mom was the center. Mom was irresistible. Whatever she was saying or wearing or smelling of was captivating—all our senses were attuned to her. As soon as I was old enough to walk I tried on her shoes and evening gowns and perfume, admired and wanted to be like her, so much that they had me seeing a shrink by the time I was three. The shrink said I needed to spend more time with my dad. But how? Mom was irresistible.
  As far as I could tell Dad's job was to please Mom. He was solicitous and full of care. He gave Mom everything she wanted. He helped her want things she did not know to want.
  Early every morning, Mom, Dad, and I took walks around Russian Hill in matching blue jumpsuits with white piping, Royal Tenenbaums–style.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Lots of other boys came, from prestigious places like Deerfield Academy, but we Woodhall boys—with our drug stashes and earrings and bandannas and beards and flasks (necessary for any Woodhall outing); our Zippo tricks and roll-your-own cigarettes; our psychotic weight lifter—were intimidating and mysterious and caught everyone off guard. No one had ever heard of Woodhall before. Who are these guys? they seemed to be thinking. And they were scared. We ruled the building where they had everyone bunking, a huge Victorian-Gothic ex-infirmary full of horny boys, median age sixteen. Our contingent was brazen, loud, adrenalized, median age nineteen. I felt proud to be a Woodhaller.
  In the shower, some preppy Leggat–like jock from Deerfield started giving me shit and the weight lifter stepped in, got right in his face, told him to "say that shit again to me or fuck off and apologize." Apology accepted. It was so cool I wanted to hug him right there in the shower. And when some smart-ass little shit started making anti–weight lifter remarks, Steiner and I fucking castrated him with sarcasm. High-five between me and Steiner!
  Using our unique talents we romanced more Emma Willard girls than any other school. We were freaks and mutants. We were the X-Men. The XXX-Men. (Steiner: Heh.) Usually we were stoned or otherwise neutralized, but on this occasion we were able to use our mutations in concert.
  We cleaned up. We applied cologne. We menaced the prepster competition. Then we came cruising into the big Saturday night dance, cologne wafting ahead, and deployed our unconventional tactics. We saw that there were balloons, so we began popping balloons, making noise, creating little explosions around ourselves, attracting attention, and then gathering up the colorful deflated skins and giving them to suave Robin—the icebreaker—Montgomerie. We'd been noticed, people were staring at us and wondering, Who are these bearded kids destroying the decorations? He turned all this to our advantage, by charming the ladies. We all followed behind as Robin cruised the periphery of the dance floor, country-club preppy, cleft-chinned, dressed in an immaculate seersucker, posture impeccable, bearing his handful of deflated balloons with great dignity, beaming a totally sweet, affectless, well-bred smile, and proffering them to clusters of girls with the words: "May I offer you a prophylactic?"
  And the girls loved it. They gathered round. They liked us. Rich Devore, the intellectual from Oklahoma, with his mysterious and compelling long hair and John Lennon specs; brooding Rhame; the twenty-year-olds; even Steiner—we were something new to these girls, with their huge gabled stone campus, their sprawling lawns and rooms high up under lead roofs. They were interested.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about compared.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Lots of other boys came, from prestigious places like Deerfield Academy, but we Woodhall boys—with our drug stashes and earrings and bandannas and beards and flasks (necessary for any Woodhall outing); our Zippo tricks and roll-your-own cigarettes; our psychotic weight lifter—were intimidating and mysterious and caught everyone off guard. No one had ever heard of Woodhall before. Who are these guys? they seemed to be thinking. And they were scared. We ruled the building where they had everyone bunking, a huge Victorian-Gothic ex-infirmary full of horny boys, median age sixteen. Our contingent was brazen, loud, adrenalized, median age nineteen. I felt proud to be a Woodhaller. 
  In the shower, some preppy Leggat–like jock from Deerfield started giving me shit and the weight lifter stepped in, got right in his face, told him to "say that shit again to me or fuck off and apologize. " Apology accepted. It was so cool I wanted to hug him right there in the shower. And when some smart-ass little shit started making anti–weight lifter remarks, Steiner and I fucking castrated him with sarcasm. High-five between me and Steiner!
  Using our unique talents we romanced more Emma Willard girls than any other school. We were freaks and mutants. We were the X-Men. But compared to all the little prepsters, we were studs. The XXX-Men. (Steiner: Heh. ) Usually we were stoned or otherwise neutralized, but on this occasion we were able to use our mutations in concert. 
  We cleaned up. We applied cologne. We menaced the prepster competition. Then we came cruising into the big Saturday night dance, cologne wafting ahead, and deployed our unconventional tactics. We saw that there were balloons, so we began popping balloons, making noise, creating little explosions around ourselves, attracting attention, and then gathering up the colorful deflated skins and giving them to suave Robin—the icebreaker—Montgomerie. We'd been noticed, people were staring at us and wondering, Who are these bearded kids destroying the decorations? He turned all this to our advantage, by charming the ladies. We all followed behind as Robin cruised the periphery of the dance floor, country-club preppy, cleft-chinned, dressed in an immaculate seersucker, posture impeccable, bearing his handful of deflated balloons with great dignity, beaming a totally sweet, affectless, well-bred smile, and proffering them to clusters of girls with the words: "May I offer you a prophylactic?"
  And the girls loved it. They gathered round. They liked us. Rich Devore, the intellectual from Oklahoma, with his mysterious and compelling long hair and John Lennon specs; brooding Rhame; the twenty-year-olds; even Steiner—we were something new to these girls, with their huge gabled stone campus, their sprawling lawns and rooms high up under lead roofs. They were interested.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I'm also grateful for the help of Bruce Diones, Francoise Mouly, Alice Quinn, Bill Buford, Deborah Treisman, David Remnick (for hard truths and a crucial vote of confidence), Willing Davidson, Rebecca Tracey, Izumi Nakamura, Liza Darnton, Darren Haggar, Sarah Larson, Sarah Hutson, Scott Seeley, and Matt Weyland.
  THIS BOOK wouldn't exist without the influence and insight of Leopold Caligor, the man who showed me, just in time, what it was like to have a father.
  FINALLY, Mom, back to you at the end. Thank you for your unswerving support and your big, courageous heart—this is crazy, and I'm grateful to you for not just putting up with it, but, as always, embracing it.
  SEAN WILSEY'S writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, and McSweeney's quarterly, where he is the editor at large. Before coming 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 in New York with his wife, Daphne Beal, and their son, Owen.