Overview

"""Wasted Youth is James Wright's vivid and emphatically unromantic memoir of his late teens and early twenties, when his life derived its meager meaning from consuming drugs and alcohol, dodging authority, and simply staying alive day to day. Relentlessly self-critical, Wright is not looking for pity or even sympathy from his reader. But the reader can't help but extend it anyway, knowing from the evidence of this beautifully written book the great potential that was once in danger of being lost."" Richard J. Maiman, author of A Man for all Branches Coming of age in the social turbulence of the late 60s presented a challenge for the young men of the time. If there was a legitimate rite of passage, the author didn't know about it, and if he did, he wouldn't have done it anyway, preferring to chart his own course into the underworld of change. Wasted Youth is his account of that passage, a tale of survival and slow learning. Told with humor and an eye for absurdity, the memoir follows the author down blind alleys and through close calls, wandering in the darkness of drugs and crime, looking for something he might not recognize if he found it. A personal journey of getting lost and never quite found, the author avoids triumph but discovers something far more meaningful: the path to a place where grief can be felt at the heart of being."

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Reviews

"""Wasted Youth is James Wright's vivid and emphatically unromantic memoir of his late teens and early twenties, when his life derived its meager meaning from consuming drugs and alcohol, dodging authority, and simply staying alive day to day. Eventually, with no place to go but up, he did exactly that, discovering in rock climbing his means of ascent into the beginnings of a disciplined life. Relentlessly self-critical, Wright is not looking for pity or even sympathy from his reader. But the reader can't help but extend it anyway, knowing from the evidence of this beautifully written book the great potential that was once in danger of being lost."" Richard J. Maiman, biographer, author of A Man for all Branches and Zion Home ""Raw, unflinchingly honest, often hilarious, frequently self-effacing, and always self-aware, James Wright's Wasted Youth captures one young man's coming of age in an era when the world was full of undiscovered territory, when youngsters had the courage to venture out into it, sometimes with only stolen church tithings in their pocket and a ratty rucksack on their shoulders. James Wright lived a life many of us only fantasize about or fictionalize, be it rubber-tramping, rail-hopping, or climbing for months in Yosemite, all while evading the grinder of the Vietnam recruitment scheme. Simultaneously a tale of a man on the run and a man on a quest, there is little wastage in here. These high-paced and riveting memoirs speak of life lived on its own terms and might have you questioning your own life and whether the path that brought you here was close enough to the bone. It might even spur you to raise your thumb high and see where the next ride takes you."" Christopher X. Ryan, novelist, author of Heliophobia"

Author Information

The author lives with his dear wife in a creaky old house on the coast of Maine. He worked for thirty-five years as a psychotherapist specializing in family therapy and wilderness-based therapy. Before that he planted hundreds of thousands of trees in the industrial forest of the Pacific Northwest. During those years he lived off the grid, built log cabins, learned how to lay stone, and survived numerous exploits of mountaineering, rock climbing, and backcountry skiing.

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