Robert goolrick biography

Biography.
Born in Virginia, The United States on August 04, 1948.
Robert Goolrick, who after being fired as an advertising executive in his early 50s wrote a blistering memoir of his Southern family and a.

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Robert Goolrick

Born

in Virginia, The United States

August 04, 1948

Died

April 29, 2022

Website

http://robertgoolrick.com/

Genre

Biographies & Memoirs, Literature & Fiction

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I was born in a small university town in Virginia, a town in which, besides teaching, the chief preoccupations were drinking bourbon and telling complex anecdotes, stories about people who lived down the road, stories about ancestors who had died a hundred years before. For southerners, the past is as real as the present; it is not even past, as Faulkner said.

I went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then lived in Europe for several years, thinking that I would be an actor or a painter, two things for which I had a passion that outran my talent. I wrote an early novel, and then my parents disinherited me, so I moved to New York, which is where small-town people move to do and say the things they can't do or say at home, and I endeI was born in a small university town in Virginia, a town in which, besides teaching, the chief preoccupations were drinking bour

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Most of my life has been fairly thoroughly explored in my earlier memoir, THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. I was born in a small university town in Virginia, a town in which, besides teaching, the chief preoccupations were drinking bourbon and telling complex anecdotes, stories about people who lived down the road, stories about ancestors who had died a hundred years before. For southerners, the past is as real as the present; it is not even past, as Faulkner said. I went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and then lived in Europe for several years, thinking that I would be an actor or a painter, two things for which I had a passion that outran my talent. I wrote an early novel, and then my parents disinherited me, so I moved to New York, which is where small-town people move to do and say the things they can’t do or say at home, and I ended up working in advertising, a profession that feeds on young people who have an amorphous talent and no particular focus. Fired in my early fifties, the way people are in advertising, I tried to figure out what to do with the rest of

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Goolrick, Robert 1948–

PERSONAL:

Born 1948.

CAREER:

Writer. Previously worked in advertising.

WRITINGS:

The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life (memoir), Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Commenting on Robert Goolrick's memoir The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life, Newsweek contributor Malcom Jones wrote: "The beauty of the story is in its language and its keen appreciation for the details that turn a childhood into an understated Chekhovian nightmare." The End of the World as We Know It recounts the author's loveless childhood with alcoholic parents who never expressed affection and eventually lived in squalor. The book, which Entertainment Weekly contributor Jennifer Reese called an "unnerving, elegantly crafted memoir," leads to an unexpected climax when the author reveals a family "secret" of abuse. Goolrick also includes the details of his suicide attempt when he was thirty-five, his subsequent self-maiming, and his eventual commitment to an institution. "In the end, Goolrick has written a movi