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On Duke of Deception

by lrnathan on February 16, 2007

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Since I knew Geoffrey Wolff’s Duke of Deception was a memoir of the author’s father, I expected the prologue to concern the elder Wolff’s death. But something peculiar happened as I read the opening pages: I began to think that I was mistaken, that the prologue was about the narrator losing a son. Had Wolff lost both of his sons, to whom I had noticed that the book was dedicated before I began reading? After the prologue’s final sentences made clear that my initial prediction was correct, I — as someone struggling to create tension in her writing — wondered where this suspense came from: how does Wolff dupe his readers into thinking the unexpected? On the surface, of course, it’s simple: Wolff shows us exactly what went on in his head on the evening he learned of his father’s death. He offers no extra details — no thoughts about his father or his own childhood, nothing about the characters you would expect to play a key role in the larger memoir. By stripping the story of its complexities andnot allowing retrospection to taint this particular memory, Wolff conveys the recollection in its rawest form. Because we haven’t yet been introduced to Duke’s character, Wolff makes it difficult for the reader to feel smarter than the narrator—or rather, the person the narrator was as this scene unfolded. Instead we, like so many others, are deceived in our first introduction to Duke. As the memoir progresses, of course, we come to understand that the keys to this craft strategy — confidence and the omission (or embellishment) of a few details — are also the tools of trickery.

The air of mystery surrounding the prologue also lends it power: I waited and waited for the narrator to reflect on why he reacted to his father’s death with “Thank God.” Was this his gut reaction to a lifelong troubled relationship? Did he think he had not actually heard that his father was dead, that he only heard that his children were not? As I read on, I figured this must be the case, though not because Wolff is a heartless narrator. For the first several years of his life, in fact, we see a strong bond between son and father, an child’s adoration and preference for his father that seems, at times, quizzical. But about the time Wolff discovers that Duke has purchased things on his credit, we see a change in the narrator’s character. He is tired of his father’s antics, tired of the deception and the unfulfilled promises. In the closing chapters, we see a detached Wolff, who has become distant from Duke and for this reason has painted an unsentimental portrait of his father. And so we think — or at least I thought — Wolff’s reaction to his father in the prologue had been explained: Over time, the deceptions, lies, and false promises had added up such that Wolff couldn’t possibly be anything but cold, almost unfazed, upon learning of his father’s death. Even in his postscript, when Wolff brings us back to that night when he learned his father’s dead, it seems things are just as we expected: “I wanted to explain … why I had thanked God that my father was dead … my words were not an atheist’s unfelt exclamation, and … they did not only display relief that my children were alive. They also meant what they seemed to mean, that I thanked someone that my father had been delivered from the world, and I had been delivered from him.” But then, on the book’s final page, we — and perhaps Wolff himself — discover that we have been duped again. As the narrator says, “I had forgotten I loved him, mostly, and mostly now I missed him. I miss him.”

If Wolff’s first and last pages master the art of deception, the rest of the book is a showcase for analysis, reflection, and speculation. As Wolff sorts through stories about understand things, people, and times with which he was not acquainted, Wolff adds another layer to his narrative. At the book’s weakest moments, it becomes evident that Wolff is a journalist. He fills much of the book’s first part (and by extension, the puzzle of his family history and his father’s life) with quotations that, at times, read like and are organized in such a way that it can seem as if you are reading a newspaper article. But most of the time, Wolff appears more skilled at integrating other people’s perspectives into the narrative. One of the memoir’s most memorable passages is when he writes, “As my mother began her story of disappointment, humiliation, and want, infrequently relieved by affection and satisfaction, I didn’t feel that way at all. I sat across from her, cheering my father on, cheering her on, marveling at the chance conjunction that joined me, made my brother, made me, shaped us all.” Not only does this excerpt show the narrator as a character — one distinct from the Geoff Wolff in the memories he has documented in Duke of Deception — it is a frank depiction of the writer’s relationship to the narrative he has penned. He doesn’t pretend that the memoir writes itself or that it is entirely accurate. Instead, he portrays himself as an actor in its construction and acknowledges the story’s shortcomings. For instance, when saying he never remembers “having seen my mother weep,” he concedes, “This must be a failure of memory.” In moments like these, Wolff simultaneously complicates the narrative and makes himself a trustworthy narrator.

Retrospection and analysis are peculiarly absent, however, with regard to the spelling of the narrator’s name. Why, I wondered as I read Duke of Deception, does the narrator’s character spell his own name “Jeff” instead of “Geoff” in scenes with characters who are not members of his family. The one time Wolff mentions his name’s misspelling is when the Headmaster corrects an English teacher’s spelling of the boy’s name, pointing out that it is spelled Geoff, not Geof. But even here, even when it’s only a question of an f, not a g and an o, the narrator remains mum on his name’s spelling. Initially, I figured this conundrum belonged in another story, perhaps a memoir of Wolff’s childhood. But the more his name’s spelling varied without comment, the more curious it seemed: is this, like Duke’s pretense of not being Jewish, a reflection of Wolff’s self-hatred and self-denial? As readers of This Boy’s Life know, Wolff’s brother Toby unofficially changed his name to Jack as a child in hopes of charging himself with “some of the strength and competence inherent” in his idea of Jack London. Likewise, in Duke of Deception, Wolff describes both his name and Toby’s as “absurd” and calls “Geoffrey (with its awful monosyllabic abbreviation) an olde moniker to seal the Duke’s connection with that scepter’d isle, blessed plot, other Eden, homeland of Purdey, Garrard, Horrod’s and The Connaught.” Did Wolff try to distance himself from these associations by going by Jeff? Did he just not correct other people’s misspellings, and if so, why? Was he embarrassed? Did he just want to blend in? Did he resent his father for giving him this name?

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