Book #129: Hooligan

Title: Hooligan: A Mormon Boyhood
Author: Douglas Thayer

Instead of looking up my professors on Rate My Professors, since I started my MFA, I've taken to reading their books. Starting this week I'll be taking a fiction writing seminar from Douglas Thayer, so I wanted to read some of his work to familiarize myself with his style and what I might expect from the class.  Although Thayer has written several novels (including The Tree House, which is also on my to-read list), this particular book is the memoir of his childhood.

Hooligan charmed me. I loved reading about what Provo was like during the 1930s and 1940s, and made my husband take me to Kuhni's and the fish hatchery in Springville, places I'd driven by for years without noticing. I had just finished the book when the Provo Tabernacle burned down, and Thayer's descriptions of the building made me ache even more for the loss. I have a son who is about the age that Thayer was during the action of the memoir, and it's a little shocking to see how much more constrained 10-year-old boys are today than they were 70 years ago, when Thayer and his friends had free rein to travel all over Provo and the mountains and canyons around town. One of the most surprising things about Hooligan is the way that it's organized-- although it follows a very roughly chronological order, it doesn't focus around a central story-- it's mainly the ramblings of Thayer and his friends. And although he talks about his family a little bit, it's far less a family story than I might expect in a memoir about a childhood. It makes me wonder what my kids will remember about their own childhoods half a century from now. Will it be the family or the Sonic games?