Review of Oh the Glory by John Freeman in the Houston Chronicle:

Like Dave Eggers' memoir, which it resembles without being derivative, Oh the Glory of It All is a triumph of tone over tribulation. Other young men have perhaps suffered more, but what this book does—and does brilliantly—is give us the illusion of being inside Wilsey's head as he experiences this family turmoil. His prose is headlong and rich without betraying the age he is supposed to be at the time.... More.

Surely one of the SF papers, who are covering every toenail of this story, has been here before, but I couldn't resist: a Wilsey cameo on the website of the late California interior decorator Michael Taylor, "Media" section. Taylor's signature touches, according to Papercity, included:

* Boldly overscaled furniture with plump, geometric cushions
* Rusticity played against glamour
* Concrete, wicker, timber, geodes—all used indoors
* Large, sculptural plants
* Mirrors everywhere
* Slate floors, twig scultpures, river rocks
* Juxtaposition: an 18th-century French chair played against a table made from the stone mill wheel

And that's just the guest bathroom! It's logical that Dede Wilsey might, given all accounts, be attracted to such overscaled juxtapositions. From a 1991 feature on Taylor in House & Garden by Dorothea Walker:

More than two decades later Michael was still working in traditional styles as well as his own—and often combining the two with refreshing results, as in the house he decorated for Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Wilsey in San Francisco. At her first meeting with Michael, Dede Wilsey told him, "I want to work with you, but I don't want a typical Michael Taylor house." Michael's back immediately went up. "And what exactly," he demanded, "is a typical Michael Taylor house?" "Oh, you know," explained Dede Wilsey. "White on white, wicker everywhere, huge over-stuffed chairs. My feet wouldn't touch the floor. I'd feel like a pygmy." Fortunately, Michael thought that was very funny, and he and his clients became great friends. And he gave her beautiful rooms, all in Dede Wilsey's favorite colors. He was disconcerted to hear that she wanted a pink living room, but he followed her lead, draping the room's three sets of French doors and two windows in striped pink taffeta. To keep it from looking too sweet, he added two stone cocktail tables shaped like elephants. A sofa from a Syrie Maugham design was covered in green hand-cut velvet.

At a party in the Wilsey's garden room, which Michael had decorated in his characteristic palette of whites, another of his clients spotted a terrazzo table and rushed up to him, almost weeping. "That's my table," she said. "Exactly the same as mine. How could you do this to me?" Michael always laughed when he told this story. "These ladies think nothing of wearing the same dress to a party, and they have their pictures taken in it for Women's Wear Daily. The dress looks different on each of them. Why wouldn't this table look different in different rooms?"

Now you've got to see the room; click on the House & Garden story. I'm actually starting to love this style. If only Taylor were here to join the fray!

Categories: Wilsey