Glory, glory, Hallelujah Life hit Sean Wilsey with a ruler BY SAM PFEIFLE
	OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL By Sean Wilsey | Penguin Press | 479 pages | $25.95

It’s kind of hard to feel sorry for a guy who has the job I want. Sean Wilsey is editor-at-large for McSweeney’s Quarterly, a publication I admire very much. I also have difficulty summoning tears for a guy who used to hang out with David Foster Wallace, whom I consider to be the best living author in the world. Among other odd revelations in Wilsey’s new memoir Oh the Glory of It All, you’ll discover that Wilsey used Wallace’s recently vacated place to have himself a days-long cry session while listening to show tunes at high decibels. That may give some of you the willies, but it makes me jealous — I think.

In fact, if you were to read a brief summary of Wilsey’s life, you’d have a hard time figuring out what the kid could possibly have to complain about. The son of uber-rich butter baron Al Wilsey (Diane Feingold spoke at his funeral), Sean grew up in a San Francisco penthouse, spent time at numerous Northern California country homes, was delivered with friends to arcades via helicopter, and, after flunking out of a prestigious boarding school or two, spent a great deal of time smoking dope and tearing up his skateboard on the thrilling hills of the city that probably has the best year-round skating weather and natural terrain of any in the country.

Yes, poor Sean.

Perhaps that’s not fair. He never in this memoir explicitly asks for sympathy, and he does have a self-deprecating delivery that keeps him largely above reproach, but, good god, the injustices! Like many of our generation, he got fucked up by a bad (and, in his case, very public) divorce. Since his mother was a well-known society type (the basis for an Amisted Maupin character, even), and his father was rich, their nasty money battle was all over the headlines in San Fran, and his mother was famously labeled "the world’s most expensive wife."

Thus, he got tossed back and forth between what seems to have been a very manipulative mother, a more manipulative step-monster, and an emotionally distant (and pussy-whipped) father. Any number of kids could have written this book, it’s just that the majority of them didn’t have the kind of life where their dad dated Danielle Steele and their mom took them on peace missions to meet world leaders like Pope John Paul II and Indira Gandhi, so their stories wouldn’t have been quite as engaging.

Plus, Wilsey does have a way with words. The book is fairly impossible to put down, despite the fact that Wilsey himself doesn’t come across as particularly sympathetic and that it is essentially the story of enormous opportunity squandered and heinous acts committed by any number of unlikable people. The excesses of his father and step-family are sickening. His mother lets Sean believe she has cancer for a long period of time, overreacting to a lump and enjoying the attention. Wilsey admits to selling out just about every friend who ever tried to get close to him in an attempt to avoid hazings by more popular kids at various boarding schools.

Wilsey at one point runs away before entering a six-week National Outdoor Leadership School program. Thank god he escaped the hell of backpacking around the Wyoming mountains, learning to flyfish, and understanding how to survive in nature. I mean, those kids would probably wear "Patagonia fleeces and mirrored Vuarnet sunglasses," and that obviously means they’d be homophobic.

What are we to learn from all this? Why is all of this worth nearly 500 hardcover pages of your time? It’s unclear, really. Wilsey is certainly funny enough that he could probably be writing about how your toilet works and you’d keep reading. Here’s how he lost his virginity: "I had sex on the floor of the Wykeham Rise photo lab with a bossy, racy, preppy girl named Heather, who told me, as though I should be flattered, that she was ‘so sore’ afterward, and then never wanted to see me again." She also gave him crabs, which went untreated for at least a year.

Some of the crabs stuff had my eyes watering.

Still, as sort of a coda, we’re offered this: "This book is the identity I’ve made — a better shot at salvation than trying to fix my father’s mistakes. Though the decision was made for me.

"I can’t wait to write about something besides myself."

What are we to make of that as readers? Someone knew this book would probably sell and so it’s been foisted upon us somewhat unwillingly by Sean Wilsey, a guy who’s just torn (at least pieces of) his soul apart over the course of 500 pages?

I think there are lessons here, as Wilsey says he intended, about bringing up kids and education on the whole, but they’re lessons worthwhile only for those parents without interest in actually raising their kids. If you still think your teenager hasn’t smoked dope, for example, you should read this book.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com

Sean Wilsey reads | SPACE, in Portland | Friday, July 22 | 207.828.5600