Confessions of a Left-Handed Man: An Artist’s Memoir

Peter Selgin was cursed/blessed with an unusual childhood. The son of Italian immigrants–his father an electronics inventor and a mother so good looking UPS drivers swerved off their routes to see her–Selgin spent his formative years scrambling among the hat factory ruins of a small Connecticut town, visiting doting–and dotty–relatives in the old world, watching mental giants clash at Mensa gatherings, enduring Pavlovian training sessions with a grandmother bent on curing his left-handedness, and competing savagely with his right-handed twin.

It’s no surprise, then, that Selgin went on from these peculiar beginnings to do … well, nearly everything. Confessions of a Left-Handed Man is a bold, unblushing journey down roads less traveled. Whether recounting his work driving a furniture delivery truck, his years as a caricaturist, his obsession with the Titanic that compelled him to complete seventy-five paintings of the ship(in sinking and nonsinking poses), or his daily life as a writer, from start to finish readers are treated to a vividly detailed, sometimes hilarious, often moving, but always memorable life. In this modern-day picaresque, Selgin narrates an artist’s journey from unconventional roots through gritty experience to artistic achievement. With an elegant narrative voice that is, by turns, frank, witty, and acid-tongued, Selgin confronts his past while coming to terms with approaching middle age, reaching self-understanding tempered by reflection, regret, and a sharply self-deprecating sense of humor.