Rate this book

Long Past Stopping: A Memoir (2009)

by Oran Canfield(Favorite Author)
3.71 of 5 Votes: 2
ISBN
0061450758 (ISBN13: 9780061450754)
languge
English
publisher
William Morrow
review 1: I felt little empathy for this author. I feel like this book has been written a dozen times or so. Child of hippie parents experiences an eccentric type of childhood: goes to circus camps, attends liberal arts-type boarding school, adept at music and art. Kid goes on to pick up one helluva drug habit. Here's the problem though. Oran Canfield just comes across as a snarky, uncaring dickhead. He is spoiled beyond belief, funneling money from a family trust and bilking his millionaire father out of thousands of dollars to first build a recording studio, then to support his drug habit, then to attend countless rehab facilities. Wouldn't matter much if he didn't reiterate every other chapter how much he loathes trust fun babies. Look in the mirror dude. The memoir dovetails... more into this snarky, hip, all knowing, cynical, irony-speak that get's on my fucking nerves. This guy might be alright in person, but it's this emblematic attitude that has places like the Mission District in San Francisco and Williamsburg, Brooklyn give me such a disdain for twenty-something snarky, arching knowitalls. Will someone/something please usher in a New Sincerity Age. The vapid and vacuous irony concerns me little.
review 2: i thoroughly enjoyed this book. honestly, i probably enjoyed it as much as i did because i could relate on so many levels. oran was raised mostly in the bay area to strange parents and then ends up living in the mission in SF, playing music and doing drugs. the book alternates every other chapter between his childhood and his adulthood. it ends up being largely a book about getting clean, but it's about so much more. Oran's writing is accessible and funny... and we're facebook friends. radical. less
Reviews (see all)
sid
A powerful "Dear Dad" memoir. It strikes me as being quite truthful.
Shubhu
exhausting...but well written.
lisadubose2010
Unbelievably funny and tragic.
booklover21
Fascinating.
Write review
Review will shown on site after approval.
(Review will shown on site after approval)