Jason Tougaw is a professor of literature at City University of New York. He is the author of two nonfiction books, Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel and Touching Brains: Literary Experiments in 21st-Century Neuromania. Excerpts from The One You Get have appeared in Boys to Men: Gay Men Write about Growing Up and Electra Street: A Journal of the Arts and Humanities. He blogs about the relationship between art and science at Californica.net.
"Chaotic, colourful family lore."
--The Guardian "Tougaw is great at capturing the somewhat
hallucinatory existence of childhood of adolescence, where children
are constantly learning, meeting new people, going new places and
learning new 'rules' about their world ... A mix of research, lore
and memory. It's something great made from what he got."
--Lambda Literary The story Tougaw tells is extremely well written
and will hold its readers' interest to its affecting end.
--Booklist Tougaw's brilliant and beautiful memoir, and winner of
the Dzanc 2017 Nonfiction Prize, takes two convergent paths: the
first is that of his own personal story growing up in the
sun-soaked Seventies and new wave Eighties of Southern California
in a family of outsiders; the second is one of scientific
interpolation. The book is alive.
--Scott Cheshire, The LA Times "This is an intelligent memoir that
is very funny at times as it tells the story of a very peculiar and
unconventional family...The self here is a mysterious and strange
accident that yearns to be understood by its possessor."
--Amos Lassen, author of My Jewish Learning and founder of Literary
Pride Tougaw's intelligent, funny, and deeply moving memoir is that
rare thing: the story of a family that is at once particular and
universal. The variously wild, tender, deluded, suffering,
incorrigible, and resilient people who are so vividly portrayed in
this book are nothing if not idiosyncratic. At the same time, this
story of a boy growing up in California during the years of a
waning counter culture deftly incorporates sophisticated
reflections on the brain science of human memory and development
and the ongoing mystery of why some of us survive a chaotic and
brutal childhood and others don't.
--Siri Hustvedt, author of A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women
Tougaw has written a profound meditation on the mysteries of that
strange accident, the self. A captivating mix of neuroscience and
wild, often heartbreaking, family lore, the book is a wondrous
mashup of the delight and curiosity of Oliver Sacks, the
expansiveness of William James, the shape-shifting glamour of David
Sylvian, and a fierce and generous heart all Tougaw's own.
--Maud Casey, author of The Man Who Walked Away What Tougaw does in
The One You Get is a feat of the imagination. Writing with striking
intelligence and deep empathy, he reveals the wondrous and
terrifying bonds that make a family. Tougaw has found that perfect
balance between insightful scientific analysis and sensitive
reflection, all of it held together with razor-sharp humor. A
spellbinding read, one that will linger long after the last
page.
--Maaza Mengiste, author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze
In this utterly unique memoir, we get a portrait, not only of the
boy, but also of the the man who is using a set of tools, including
social theory and neuroscience, to disentangle the strands that
make the self. Whether we are shocked by the conditions of his
young life--addiction, abuse, mental illness, mosh-pit
erections--is up to us. Tougaw's just trying to get to the bottom
of it all.
--Vestal McIntyre, author of Lake Overturn and You Are Not the One
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