Procure Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search For My Twelve-Year-Old Bully Fabricated By Allen Kurzweil Rendered As File

author goes on a search for the boy who bullied him as a child, “We all have our own Cesar,” say multiple people who help him, and thats true, There are certainly individuals from my childhood that Id like to find, How much of this search was cathartic, how much was a desire for vengeance, and how much was an opportunity for healing How would I enter into my own searches, and what would I hope for in an outcome While the concept of this book was interesting, and the search stumbled onto a goldmine of con stories, the point of the quest remained murky and the meticulous detail of the search was too much.
This was an outstanding read, The author, wanting to work through his Swissboardingschoolbully issues, sets out to find the roommate who made him so miserable inand.
Like every book I attempt to read that supposedly has nothing to do with crime, this one turned into an epic of truecrime investigative journalism but this one was touched with a strange magic.
No matter where this guy went and how unwelcome he was when he got there, he discovered that all doors opened for him as soon as he told them his reason for being there.
"I had a bully, too," they all said, handing over the information he wanted, Written in a light, tongueincheek way that made the book speed by, Full of remarkable coincidences that make the story seem almost fated to happen this way, Good book Author ends up learning almost as much about himself as he does his bully, Very enjoyable read. Enjoyed this one. Part memoir, part true crime, Readable, often affecting, even moving, Holy Golden Wheel of Karma! What goes around does come around! An engaging read, A compelling story that wears thin after awhile, particularly where sympathy with the author is concerned, The tale of the scam, while outrageous, seems less horrific in light of more recent Wall Street news, It's not always the case that a bully is motivated by anything other than nastiness, but it's a question that requires at least some exploration.
And while I don't doubt Cesar was a bully and a criminal who employed the pity play in full force in his court testimony, Kurzweill's failure to examine racial discrimination as a potential motivatorCesar was a nonwhite kid at a Swiss boarding school in the earlys is made more questionable with lines like this: "When I ask Cesar's mother about her son's nationality, I'm told that he's half Venezuelan, half Asian, half Latino, and half Filipino American.
Which in a way kind of makes sense, because nothing about Cesar adds up, "
We all have a bully or two who haunts us through childhood, but Kurzweill's stalking of Cesar, his secret gloating over his misattribution of quotes and sunken economic status almost made me root for the guy.
Formative experiences in childhood shape who we are as adults, and for many of us, some of the most intense experiences involved bullies.


In this unique book, a middleaged writer tracks down the person who once bullied him mercilessly in boarding school in thesand discovers some very surprising things about both his former nemesis and himself.


I'm not going to lie, some of the stuff about the loan scams the adult bully engaged in was way too technical and boring for me.
However, I think the book also had some decent insight about people and incidents taking up unwanted residence in our heads and our propensity to let things that happened when we were children exert undue influence on the rest of our lives.
Loved the idea, well put together, You ever wonder what happened to those Little Caesar's you went to school with I was exhausted just reading this book.
It's the true account of one boys lifelong search for his boardingschool bully, The actual part of the bullying is quite short, The rest of the book is some extraordinary detailed account of at first, the possible bully and his entourage of scam artists.
I mean DETAILED. The whole book is then derailed by the actual scam, who was in on it, the people in the Justice system that were involved, and eventually the author's meeting face to face with his "tormentor".
I have no doubt that Allen's victimization at the hands of his bully was traumatic, I did expect however some kind of account of Allen's inner thoughts about the bullying and how they impacted him throughout his life.
That he got all involved and felt the need to write about the scam and all the different characters of the scam was not only boring, but really hard to comprehend that this was a book about searching for Cesear.
Reading the publishing accolades about this book about it being a "literary thriller", "a memoir that reads like a thriller", now that I've finished it, makes he nothing but annoyed.
Whipping Boy chronicles Allen Kurzweils search for his twelveyearold nemesis, a bully named Cesar Augustus, The obsessive inquiry, which spans some forty years, takes Kurzweil all over the world, from a Swiss boarding school where he endures horrifying cruelty to the slums of Manila, from the Park Avenue boardroom of the worlds largest law firm to a federal prison camp in Southern California.


I'm trying to not judge Kurzweil but it felt like he wasted so much precious time and resources that he could have been spending with his wife and child trying to find his childhood nemesis and seeking retribution for what he did but then again, I guess it speaks of the life changing and lasting effects of bullying in general.

./STARS

They say success is the best form of vengeance, and this book offers good evidence of that.
I wasn't really bullied at my high school, but I was an easy target for mild antagonism and was actively ignored by many classmates.
My high school's list of famous alumni consists of probaseball players, a couple NFL players, and one comedian who was canceled a few years ago for being a bigoted piece of shit.
I'd long had a fantasy of being the one nonsports related Notable Alum, being the honored guest at myyear reunion which would've been inif COVID hadn't happened, and using my clout as a famous author to air all my grievances to them.
This obviously never happened.

And anyway, social media kind of ruined the whole mystique of finding out where all your enemies are for us millennials.
I know where myyearold bully is he's living a successful, happy life in New Orleans, NOT in federal prison where I always assumed he would end up.
I can hold grudges like anyone else, but there's a special kind of festering resentment that comes from trauma.
Allen Kurzweil just had the fortune of being an outlier with a bully who ended up becoming an infamous sociopath.


I liked this book, It was written with a lighthearted, funny voice, and having so much photographic evidence made it a much more engaging read.
My only real issue is structural in nature, where it's clear that Kurzweil doesn't have a background in memoir writing.
Fiction often benefits from chronological narrative progression, and journalism has its own set of rigid structural rules, But a book like this would be best told as a braided essay, one that jumps back and forth in time throughout, being tied together

by logical flashback/flashforward points of which there are many, to keep the relevance of the "bully" theme at large.
Instead, most of the book is devoted to the Badische scam without recognition of how that ties back to the childhood Cesar until the end.


Still, a solid, entertaining book overall, and proof that often, truth is in fact stranger than fiction.
Wow I recommend. A little slow at first the story builds, Kurzweil presents his childhood experience of being the victim of a bully and the later search to understand the same bully and con man with painstaking detail.
Read in his own voice he does a great job at showing a man himself trying to understand his tormentor a cruel lying disassociated fantasy based con man and scam artist.
Anyone who has tried to understand the why of abusers and longed for the big confrontation will be satisfied by Kurzweil's story.
He proves that revenge is not only living and loving well it's also telling the truth and naming names.
I liked Whipping Boy, but it is a difficult book to categorize in several ways, There is no way I can predict how the book will be for you, gentle reader, at all, since personal predilections will come into play in a truly big way, I think.
Because of several content oddities, readers may be irritated or bored after reading a hundred pages, and end up skimming or returning the book to the library as a dnf.
The publishing company's marketing department has done a bit of descriptive bait'nswitch,

'Whipping Boy is marketed as a nonfiction story combining the library classifications of memoir and true crime, which are partially true.
The author, Allen Kurzweil, relates his life story and his research into a fraud case which went to trial and resulted in convictions.
My library classified the book as a biography, which it partially is, as it tells the life story, briefly and incomplete, of the bully, Cesar Augustus, who was involved in the fraud case.
Other libraries classify the book simply as an autobiography, In my opinion, half of the book could be classified and placed where libraries file books about financial scandals such as those about Enron, Lehman Brothers, UBS, HSBC and LIBOR, and frauds by members of the Big Five accounting firms.
Libraries usually sort such Whipping Boy's under Social Sciences in the Dewey Decimal System, This book contains a lot of detail about a similar type of financial fraud, including author interviews with some of the cases principals and investigators.


The subject matter is interesting if readers enjoy reading trauma autobiographies and business histories and books about whitecollar crime, which usually are in separate books but not always, as in this book.


The material of the book includes an autobiographical firstperson narration of Allen Kurzweils life, as I previously mentioned a history of the decadeslong search by the author, using Google and personal contacts, to find the whereabouts of the bully, Cesar, who haunts Kurzweils mind and his entire life and research by the author leading to a indepth description of a whitecollar bank fraud committed by a company called Badische Trust.


The story is excellently organized as far as the timeline of events, although some general readers may hate the stitching together of genre types.
The tone of the book veers wildly between journalistic, even sometimes academic, competence, and trembling juvenile uncertainty,

Adding to the mixing up of emotional tone in the book, the people who were behind the fraudulent Badisch Trust presented themselves in the manner of vaudevillian actors.
They inhabited the roles of aristocrat gentlemen as if they were intentionally performing as obvious stereotypes from central casting, so a feeling of amazement that they succeeded in tricking smart people is definitely appropriate.


Every true story begins with a person remembering what happened, and then talking about it, The longer a person speaks, the more indirect information a listener hears and sees verbal ticks, facial expressions, tone of voice, habitual tells all that stuff between the lines which communicates so much visually to observers.
Harder to figure out and put in context are the more general or opaque expressions and body movements, many of which are open to a number of interpretations, which is why knowing a person helps.
Betweenthelines communication clues also occur with memoirs and autobiographies, except that indirect information is transmitted by word choices and what incidents and emotions are emphasized or diminished, what pictures and documents are included, and if there was a ghost writer or a translator.


The reproducible research, memories which are verified by other witnesses, and documented events a book includes, the length of time covered in a book, the credentials of involved interview subjects, what the book describes that Google searches find elsewhere that back up described scenes, facts and incidents all can be very important to many autobiographies of course, some autobiographies are completely unverifiable and must be taken on trust.
A good grasp of potential human behavior, developed through experience, helps,

Despite the marketing of the book advertising it as being about a search for a childhood bully, which it is, it seemed to me the bully incident, while maybe affecting the authors mentality for the rest of his life, is sort of a mcguffin in final analysis of the books material.


Kurzweil is a writer of children's books and science articles, He has received much academic recognition and rewards in grants, Frankly, he speaks in conversations using a dialogue approach as if he were still a young boy of ten given the impression I have reached from this book, but nonetheless he is a fantastic detective and a productive journalist when he is on the job.
Somehow. Plus he is married with a son, E and his family all are highly educated,

I really think the book is a threestar and a half rating in considering his personal style of composing speech, if the way he selfreveals in the book is accurate, but the book is fivestar as far as rating his research and perseverance, sporadic as it is.
He paints his tenacity as occurring because of his anxiety and panic issues, Omg, does his anxiety really show, and man, it really grates and annoys in the reading of his memoir sections.
I can see why he might prefer to stick to children's books,

Although it is nonfiction, lengthy dialogue is included, most of which reminded me of the speaking manner of the childish and ignorant criminals in Elmore Leonard novels.
Although the books conversations are between the author and family, contacts, and professionals, the impression I got of the author is one of an insecure juvenility.
For me, this was very annoying, It may not be true, but that is how it seemed to me, and I was very irritated,

I actually checked out both the audiobook and the hardcover of Whipping Boy by accident, For fun, I listened AND read along, As it happened, the audiobook is narrated by the author, He has a speech cadence of talking in three words, syllables, phrases with a pause between each set of three, regardless of the sentence.
This added to the impression of juvenility because it was done in such a nervous anxious manner! Kurzweil admits to having an anxiety disorder, as well as probably being obsessive.
This book would not have been written, I think, if those two things about the author were not true, but yikes!

What made me feel the author himself was an annoying human being was the authors tone of dancing around in a hot skillet when discussing his reaction to his personal history before, during and after the whipping incident.
He appears to be someone uncomfortable with owning his feelings and emotions as they say in publicityspeak,

I know we GR reviewers are supposed to be circumspect in discussing living authors, So. Allen Kurzwell comes off as an odd duck, He may be an overly anxious person, He may be obsessive, too, He might try too hard socially as well, He might have hobbies that he obsesses over, the obsession of which deeply embarrasses him, similar to a collector of silver spoons who is embarrassed he is obsessive and collects silver spoons.
He might be none of these things in real life, but it is how he appears when writing of himself.
It is annoying on the page whenever the subject is his reaction to events, It seems SO painfully awkward and wrongfooted, it is like dealing with a teenage nerd in middle school to read these parts of his book.


In the end, I am not surprised he was ultimately picked on by his roommates in a boarding school if my impression from his memoir portion is correct.
That said, I do NOT accept bullying in any shape or form, especially that involving torture, However, I kept wanting to reach into the pages and swat the author upside his head,

ahem

There is a graphic scene of boy wolfpack violence early in the book, and pictures of the people the author profiles not of the violence, which happened behind closed doors when the author was a tenyearold student.
A lengthy section of Acknowledgements make clear the author went to many experts and principals involved in the fraud and at the Swiss boarding school he attended.
.