Title Every wrong direction an emigré's memoir / Dan Burt

Published New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2022]

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Description 1 online resource Contents Frontmatter -- Contents -- Author's Note -- Part I Certain Windows -- Part II Credentials -- Part III Between the Kisses and the Wine -- Part IV Every Wrong Direction -- Part V Last Window -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- About the Author Summary Every Wrong Direction recreates and dissects the bitter education of Dan Burt, an American émigré who never found a home in America. It begins in the row homes of Jewish immigrants and working-class Italians on the mean streets of 1950s South Philadelphia. Every Wrong Direction follows the author from the rough, working-class childhood that groomed him to be a butcher or charter boat captain, through America, Britain and Saudi Arabia as student, lawyer, spy, culture warrior, and expatriate, ending with a photo of his college rooms at St John's College, Cambridge. Between this beginning and end, through a Philadelphia commuter college, to Cambridge, then Yale Law School, across the working to upper classes, three countries, and seven cities over 43 years, it maps his pursuit of, realization, disillusionment with and abandonment of America and the American Dream. Praise for Dan Burt's previous memoir, You Think It Strange: "Burt's early life was indeed a triumph of wit and will. He managed to escape a world filled with violence and a culture that valued street smarts over book smarts, all the while knowing that just about everyone around him thought little of his prospects. That he made it out at all is extraordinary. That he became a successful lawyer and writer is virtually unimaginable." --Commonweal "Dan Burt is a fine poet, and this memoir has all the sensitivity and vigilance you might expect from a writer with such a background. But his prose also has a robustness and documentary power that continually startles and engages. As it combines these things, You Think It Strange catches the strangeness of the world and makes it familiar." --Sir Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, 1999-2009 Analysis émigré, St John's College, the American Dream, Dan Burt, memoir, memoirs, American émigré, immigrant stories, immigration, Jewish immigrants, educational journey, spiritual journey, working-class stories, self discovery, CBS vs. Westmoreland, La Salle, exceptionalism, ex-pat, Cambridge University Subject Burt, Dan M., 1942- SUBJECT Burt, Dan M., 1942- fast Subject Poets, English -- 21st century -- Biography Americans -- Great Britain -- Biography BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General Americans Poets, English Social conditions SUBJECT South Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pa.) -- Biography United States -- Social conditions -- 20th century Subject Great Britain Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia -- South Philadelphia United States Genre/Form Electronic books Biographies Form Electronic book ISBN 9781978830158 1978830157 9781978830165 1978830165

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