Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather

Dubbed—some would say drubbed—the “godfather behind creative nonfiction” by Vanity Fair, Lee Gutkind takes the occasion of these essays, and the rich material of his own life, to define, defend, and further expand the genre he has done so much to shape. The result is an explosive and hilarious memoir of Gutkind’s colorful life as a motorcyclist, a medical insider, a sailor, a college professor, an overaged insecure father, and a literary whipping boy.

In Forever Fat Gutkind battles his weight, his ex-wives, his father, his rabbi, his psychiatrist, and his critics in a lifelong cross-country, cross-cultural search for stability and identity. And from Gutkind’s battles, it is the reader who emerges a winner, treated to an engrossing story of the simultaneous awakening of a man and his mission, and of the constant struggle, in literature and in life, to sort out memory and imagination. Here is the universal, symbolic truth that no matter how far you travel, no matter how many years pass, you will never completely shed the weighty baggage of adolescence. Yet, as Gutkind proves again and again, he has learned to describe his burden with an ever-lightening brilliance.

Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine and the author or editor of nearly two dozen books, including his follow-up memoir (with Sam Gutkind) Truckin’ with Sam: A Father and Son, The Mick and The Dyl, Rockin’ and Rollin’, On the Road, and Almost Human: Making Robots Think. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes and a professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.