"Like a lot of other men, I have sought out transformative experiences in the belief that I need to be transformed. Unlike a lot of other men, I have found them while trying to find out the truth about my father."
"Lou is a traveling handbag salesman with peacock style - bright colors, fancy suits, turtlenecks, and bikini bathing suits - who buys a home on Long Island for $75 and a beach house in the Hamptons for $20,000 cash. He is a Purple Heart World War II vet who was injured at Normandy and a wannabe Sinatra-style crooner whose failed dream to make it as a singer fuels a loneliness hidden beneath his flamboyant performance of masculinity."
Tom Junod, known for his essays on 9/11 and Mr. Rogers, has spent decades writing about his father. His new memoir, In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, combines traditional memoir with investigative journalism to explore his relationship with his father, Lou Junod. Lou was a charming, flamboyant traveling salesman and World War II veteran whose peacock style and Sinatra-like aspirations masked deeper loneliness. Through archival research, family conversations, and interviews with people who knew his father, Junod uncovers Lou's numerous extramarital affairs and secret family members, revealing the gap between his father's public image and private reality.
Read at Vulture
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