Review: Living a life crippled by routine and ritual
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 23, 2011
Tim Gunn presents himself as a son brutalized emotionally by an overbearing father whose life was given order and ultimately overtaken by an increasingly bizarre need for routines and rituals. What could be more terrifying for the son, then, to come to the realization that day by day he was becoming more and more like the father.That is Gunn's story in this Kindle Single, a memoir of growing up in the 1950s in a family dominated by his father George William "Bill" Gunn, a tall, handsome, athletic man who could step right out of a "Mad Men" episode.  Gunn the Elder was a G-Man who worked in the inner circles of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI where he was Hoover's ghostwriter and confidant.Gunn's father was successful, polished and a person of habits - excessively, obsessively so. "His life was an amalgam of routines, or perhaps `rituals' is a more appropriate word. The way in which he ordered his life went beyond establishing a rhythm and cadence; it was what we would now almost certainly diagnose as obsessive-compulsive."He was a person who was always right, and always things were done his way and on his schedule. When he got lost on his way to a restaurant and his wife correctly suggested turning right instead of left, Gunn's father insisted that the restaurant had moved since their last visit.  Instead of a leaky roof causing upstairs water damage, Gunn's father pronounced that the spots on the ceiling were caused by squirrels in the attic, peeing. End of discussion.In the memoir Gunn describes a series of increasing peculiar instances of his father's obsessive behavior which over time followed a trajectory that led from strange to deranged to demented. Eventually his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and confined to a nursing home.Telling his father's story, Gunn describes becoming deeply troubled as he sees himself being caught up in a series of routines and habits of his own. He will do anything to not go out in the evening. He felt compelled to make his bed before getting dressed. He is uncomfortable taking on obligations and for that reason, he says, he has chosen to not become involved in a relationship or raise a family.At 57 he says he's vigilant about his mental health and finds a great deal of satisfaction in breaking a habit. It means for him that he's not like his father. Gunn's story is a cautionary tale told in a way that's memorable but most of all compelling.