Mentor: A Memoir, by Tom Grimes, is a tribute to a great teacher and writer, an inside dish on Iowa/agents/deals, an anatomy of a mental breakdown, and a tour-de-force through the famous: Marilynne (never Robinson), Mailer (never Norman), Charlie (Charles D’Ambrosio), and Frank (Conroy).
It’s such a mesmerizing book I read it in one sitting. But maybe I’m just a glutton for writers’ lives.
It would be reductionistic to describe the book as a relationship between two writers, Tom Grimes and Frank Conroy, because there’s so much else going on here. But some of the psychology going on between the two men, in particular the father/son overtones of the relationship and the overlap between artistic and emotional sentiments, is quite complex:
“Over time it became clear to me that my confidence had all along been Frank’s confidence. So deeply had I sought his approval that I never questioned his judgment. I hadn’t been able to separate my need for Frank’s affection from my need to look at my novel [Season’s End] as objectively as possible. Which is why it’s taken me twenty years to understand that our unexpected friendship, rather than my novel, was the real work of art.”
Mentor: A Memoir
comes out in August from Tin House.
