My Father and Myself

<b>NYRB CLASSICS: An adult son and acclaimed author offers a heartfelt gay memoir about uncovering his late father's secrets. <p/>A cross between Dickens's <i>David Copperfield</i> Rousseau's <i>Confessions</i> and the new pornography. </b>--<b>Donald Windham novelist and memoirist</b> <p/>When his father died J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died he left a surprise of his own--this coolly considered unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. <p/> But Ackerley's pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self--making <i>My Father and Myself </i>a pioneering record at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged of life as a gay man. This witty sorrowful and beautiful book is a classic of 20th-century memoir.