All the Rage: A Quest to Understand Anger, Loss, and Forgiveness

by Martin Moran

A moving and surprisingly funny memoir about finding the right balance between anger and compassion

“Why aren’t you angry?” people often asked Martin Moran after he told his story of how he came to forgive the man who sexually abused him as a boy. At first, the question pissed him off. Then, it began to haunt him. Why didn’t he have more anger? Why had he never sought redress for the crime committed against him? Was his fury hidden, buried? Was he not man enough? Here he was, an adult in mid-life, with an established acting career, a husband. A life. And yet the question of rage began to obsess him.

As the narrative jumps from dream to memory to theory, from Colorado to New York to Johannesburg, Moran takes us along on his quest to understand the role of rage in our lives. Translating for an asylum seeker and survivor of torture, he wonders how the man is not consumed with the wrong done him, only to shortly thereafter find himself in a wild confrontation with his fuming stepmother at his father’s funeral. He admires a pedestrian’s furious put-down of a careless driver, and then, observing with a group of sex therapists at an S&M dungeon, he finds himself unexpectedly moved by the intimacy of the interchanges. Hiking the Rockies with his troubled younger brother, he’s confronted by the anger and the love that seem to exist simultaneously and in equal measure between them.

With each encounter, we move more deeply into the human complexities at the heart of this into how we wrong and are wronged, how we seek redress but also forgiveness, how we yearn to mend what we think broken in us and liberate ourselves from what’s past. It is in this landscape of old wounds and complicated loves that Moran shows us how rage may meet compassion and our traumas unexpectedly open us to the humanity of others.

Genres: Memoir

232 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2016

Reviews

[William Burr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martin Moran ultimately reflects on something bigger than anger here. It's a courageous piece of work. I found it didn't have the same compelling story arc as his previous memoir, but learned a lot from it, especially as someone also learning to get in touch with his repressed anger.

“Show me someone always nice, Marty, and I will show you someone sitting on a mountain of anger.”

'I ran and found a pay phone, got ahold of my shrink. “The thing is . . . OK, look, I mean I think this is like . . . hatred. I think I actually hate her. It’s so huge, this loathing. It’s not like she’s a Hitler, but I’m imagining a hatchet to her head. Or, machine-gunning her. It’s totally frightening! What is this?” She-shrink said, “Perhaps this fury is an invitation.” “An invitation to what? To kill her?” “No, to awake. To grow.”'

“Oh that. That’s my punching bag, honey. I can come out here and scream it all out as loud as I damn well please.” I stared at the green blob, strung up like a corpse. “Ma, who is it that you want to hit?” “Oh, it’s not like that, honey,” she said. “It’s not someone. It’s . . . everything.” Then she said—and I took this to be a major life clue—she said, “To be truly free, honey, you’ve got to get in touch with your anger.”

"My brother, whose sullen anger often frightened me, had witnessed a rage in me more violent than I had ever seen from him. I think of it now, this battle of ours, with an ache of guilt. And with gratitude for the intimacy."

"I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world. It is not that I do not get angry. . . . I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice." (Gandhi)

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him." (Dostoevsky)

'"I need to live. If I grieve all the time I will . . .” “Go blind?”'

[Maria Recken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unexpected, delightful, endearing, emotional, empowering.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

lo and behold

[Lisa Rutledge · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe if I had read the first book by this author, I would have liked this one more, but I find it quite boring.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading The Tricky Part, I wanted to read/listen more from the same author so I read his only other book All The Rage. Structured much more loosely that the previous memoir, All The Rage feels more like a series of linked reflections, ostensibly about anger but ultimately more about human connections. Alternating between his experienced helping asylum seekers in New York, performing his plays (including The Tricky Part) in different parts of the world and, most movingly, navigating his complex relationship with his late brother, the book meditates on grief and loss and ultimately the stubborn persistence of love. It is a gentle but profound work, performed intimately by the author in the audiobook version.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brisk, thought provoking read that leaves a lasting impression. Readers are taken along on Moran's Quest in a unique format that is not strictly chronological. Rather, the book progresses as more of a stream-of-consciousness discussion with oneself as Moran goes about his days. This approach keeps the book feeling fresh and fast paced and the journal like format is engaging and relatable. I could relate very well, and have since found myself thinking and self-evaluating. Much like the author, I was assaulted by someone I knew and trusted. Years later, when told by a friend that the former was dead, my friend asked if this knowledge made me happy. I replied that it did not, because his death will hurt all those who loved and cared for him. This friend was one of many that inquired if I was glad that the man that had assaulted me was dead. His death brought me no joy. Similarly, Moran is asked repeatedly why he is not more angry about his own sexual assault by someone he trusted. I think what both Moran and I felt more strongly than anger was a sense of betrayal. Working through that emotion, at least to me, is a journey that is never really complete and is comprised of so much more than just anger. Moran's journey takes us through different times and places earlier in his life that profoundly impacted his own outlook on humanity and what it means to be human. I would recommend this to anyone (over 18). It was a thoroughly enjoyable read full of Moran's self-contemplation, that brought about my own.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actor Martin Moran tapped a need for national discussion on the painful topic of child abuse when he wrote his memoir "The Tricky Part" in 2005. It focused on the three years he was abused as a young teen by a camp counselor and how it affected his life. With the concurrent one man play based on his book, he found himself in demand as a speaker and performer, especially to support groups and mental health professionals. Ten years later, the follow-up memoir "All the Rage" not only details the emotional and physical journey that came from performing the play, but tries to expand on larger questions it raised. How should humans react to those who commit unspeakable acts of abuse or violence on us or our children? Moran shows in a historical context on how humans have struggled (or not struggled) with handling anger and revenge. He's even invited to give his play in South Africa, where the post-apartheid government chose to not go after those who had tormented anti-apartheid activists if they admitted what they had done. Moran is a strong writer, weaving in details of his personal life--his father and brother's health struggles and his friendship with an immigrant from Africa (who is a political refugee) he tutors while gaining American citizenship. As harrowing a read as his first memoir was, his second provides a healing, thoughtful denouement. Recommended.

[Peg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martin Moran is a favorite Broadway actor of mine. This is his second book about how he has dealt with the sexual abuse he experienced as a boy at the hands of a camp counselor... Not a happy subject, but Moran has a fluid and poetic writing style and a compelling story to tell.