The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life

by Floyd Skloot

In his three previous memoirs, Floyd Skloot grappled with the brain-ravaging virus that struck him at forty-one. He was, as the San Francisco Chronicle noted, “shaping the experience of crippling illness into dazzling literature.” Sifting through memories and observations to discover how circumstance and nature conspired to make him the writer he is, Skloot enacts in this book the very process he describes, the shaping of a writer’s life. Among the influences of family and close friendship, experience and popular culture, he uncovers a unique and telling perspective on the forging of a writer’s individual sensibility. At the same time, his book explores fundamental questions about how life shapes the creative spirit—and how, in turn, the writer makes sense of it all and gives life a new and meaningful shape in the form of literature.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Floyd was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1947, and moved to Long Beach, NY, ten years later. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College with a B.A. in English, and completed an M.A. in English at Southern Illinois University, where he studied with the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella. From 1972 until becoming disabled by viral-borne brain damage in 1988, Floyd worked in the field of public policy in Illinois, Washington, and Oregon. He began publishing poetry in 1970, fiction in 1975, and essays in 1990. His work has appeared in many major literary journals in the US and abroad. His seventeen books have won wide acclaim and numerous awards, and are included in many high school and college curricula. In May, 2006 he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Franklin & Marshall College.


An Oregonian since 1984, Floyd moved from Portland to rural Amity when he married Beverly Hallberg in 1993. They lived in a cedar yurt in the middle of twenty hilly acres of woods for 13 years before moving back to Portland.


Floyd's daughter, the nonfiction writer Rebecca Skloot, lives in Memphis, TN, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Memphis and works as a freelance writer. Her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, was published by Crown Books in February, 2010 and became an immediate NY Times and Indie Bound bestseller. Her work has been included in the Best Creative Nonfiction, Best Food Writing and Women’s Best Friend anthologies as well as appearing regularly in the New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, O: Oprah’s Magazine and elsewhere. Her boyfriend, writer and actor David Prete, author of Say That to My Face (Norton, 2003), recently completed his second book of fiction and teaches writers how to improve their public reading skills. Floyd's stepson, Matthew Coale, lives with his wife and two children in Vancouver, Washington.


Floyd's current projects include new poems and essays that are slowly shaping into a new book.

Reviews

[Mel Luna · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are a fan of Floyd's poetry then perhaps you'd get more out of this memoir than I did having never read any. There wasn't much here for me in terms of content - I hate sports and don't care about ham sandwiches. His mother sounds like a nightmare, and the fact that he contracted a debilitating brain virus while breathing circulated air on a plane just made me petrified of flying. However, it did have a few lol moments. Overall it was a reminder that liking one family member's writing (his daughter, Rebecca's) does not necessarily translate to liking another's.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book. This is a memoir told in essays that range from Skloot’s childhood in New York to his 60s in Oregon. We read about his early obsession with baseball, his later love of music and books, his summers at camp, his relationship with his family, and the final years with his mother in a nursing home. We learn how he gradually discovered his calling as a writer. At age 41, Skloot suffered a virus that damaged his brain, making it difficult for him to retain memories or to think or write the way he used to. He wrote about that in two earlier memoirs, In the Shadow of Memory and a World of Light. Many years later, he is still dealing with the after-effects, but this book is testament that he has come a long way and has not lost his writing talent.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this. The author has had a brain disease - and yet the work that he has pulled together as a feat of memory does not seem to reflect that in any way - except in his reflections on it. Instead it is evocative of growing up out East, his volatile and interesting family and the gift that the years brought to him. I thought the writing was terrific - the way the pieces all fit together brilliantly rendered. There is both a challenge and a joy in here that I really liked. As is often true - it was a look at life and family that I otherwise would not know - and yet at some level feel a degree of familiarity with it. I’m very glad I read it

[Judy]

I liked Skloot's previous memoirs. These essays all have been published elsewhere, now collected around the theme of the development of a writer. Skloot was hit with a brain virus in 1988, and since then has struggled for every word. His childhood memories bring back some of mine, though our lives were/are vastly different.

I was sorry to finish this collection of essays. I like this man's sensibilities, his method of storytelling.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful, lyrical account of growing up in 1950s New York, being a boy, loving baseball, and becoming a writer. (And most of those things I don’t care about.)