One of the most frightening images in modern cinema is that of a smiling Robert de Niro in a Boy Scout’s uniform next to a teenage Leonardo diCaprio in the 1993 film This Boy’s Life. It’s based on a memoir by Tobias Wolff about his nomadic upbringing with his mother (Ellen Barkin in the film) and abusive relationship with his stepfather (De Niro). The book published in 1989 is a modern classic and in 2014 Wolff received a Medal of Arts from President Obama.

I was surprised to discover recently that ten years before This Boy’s Life, Tobias’s older brother Geoffrey Wolff wrote a memoir about his equally unconventional childhood called The Duke of Deception. It was highly-lauded in its day and was runner up for a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 but now it is almost completely forgotten. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page – though confusingly there is a DC comic of the same name. 

Geoffrey learns that almost everything he thought he knew about his father was a lie

Tobias grew up with his mother, Rosemary, his real father is a shadowy figure in his memoir. Geoffrey, however, lived his teenage years with their father, Arthur Stanley Wolff. Or at least that is what the father claimed his name was. His real name was Arthur Samuel Wolff but he changed his middle name to make it sound less Jewish. Later he styled himself Arthur Saunders Wolff III but everyone called him Duke.

The Wolff family were German Jews who had come to America via Britain in the mid nineteenth century but all his life Duke would deny that he was Jewish and was often disparaging about other Jews. He claimed to have been educated at Yale, Balioll (sic) college, Oxford and the Sorbonne in “Paris, France.” In fact he was thrown out of various prestigious prep schools, a military academy and briefly attended the University of Miami. Geoffrey learns that almost everything he thought he knew about his father was a lie. So the book is an attempt to get to know his slippery father. He approaches the story with a journalist’s eye, interviewing family and friends and acquaintances of Duke. 

Duke had an indulged upbringing in Hartford, Connecticut son of a doctor: “Duke was beyond imagination spoiled” one family member said. His wayward behaviour was noted from an early age. A report from one of Duke’s schools commented on his: ”instability of character.” There’s something perpetually adolescent about him: “my father’s vocabulary was a schoolboy’s vocabulary” as Geoffrey puts it. After school Duke becomes leader of a group of “affluent drifters” and ran up huge bills at gentleman’s outfitters which his mother pays. That is when he met Rosemary Loftus who became the boy’s mother. Later she admits to Geoffrey that she never loved Duke and married him to escape her abusive father, a naval officer.

When Duke’s father dies, the expected inheritance never appears. The esteemed doctor was also living a lie, he’d spent all the family money and their house was mortgaged up to the hilt. “He (Duke) finally understood that he had no net beneath the wire he was walking.” And yet Duke doesn’t modify his behaviour. He took an English aristocrat’s view on paying tradesmen’s bills ie. never. The nickname Duke came from “his noble airs”. 

War was coming and unconventional men were in demand

It’s amazing how much he got away with. Shopkeepers would would note “Duke’s fine clothes and confident bearing” and extend him credit. People thought that as he looked like a gentleman, he would behave like one. But also “salesman like to sell; Duke understood this, perfectly.” To avoid irate creditors, the family kept moving. Geoffrey tells of leaving hotels and rented accommodation in the middle of the night, and cars and boats being repossessed. 

Duke not only cons shopkeepers but also potential employers. With his dodgy CV he lands a job at North American Aviation. Remarkably despite having no engineering qualifications, Duke proves invaluable: “he was a useful bridge between thinkers and doers.” War was coming and unconventional men were in demand. One of Duke’s brainwaves was to hire dwarfs to do some of the fiddly work in building aircraft, a story that sounds fictional but actually checks out. 

Geoffrey is born in 1937 and for a time the family prosper. Duke is still living beyond his means and keeps losing jobs because of his extravagance but “jobs were easy then. . . . if you were sane, American and exempt from military service, they were just fine.” When asked why they don’t fire him one employer, John McCone later Director of the CIA, said “because he’s a genius.” For me this is the central tragedy of the book. We think of most conmen, and by the end of his life Duke was definitely a professional conman, as talentless drifters but Duke proved a brilliant engineer.

Tobias known as Toby is born 1945 but Rosemary and Duke separate a few years later. Duke goes off to work at Boeing in Seattle leaving his family at the mercy of creditors in Florida. Geoffrey eventually persuades his father to take him and Geoffrey travels across country to be reunited with his father. But Duke is away with his mistress and doesn’t come back for two weeks. Geoffrey, nevertheless, trusts his father:  “it never occurred to me. .. that he would not find me soon.” 

Duke remarries a millionaire called Alice who Geoffrey despises. For a time there is real money. He races powerboats and his first car is a Porsche. He goes to Choate, alma mater of JFK, and then gets into Princeton. In This Boy’s Life Toby is living with his abusive stepfather in a town called Concrete near Seattle and he longs to be with his brother and father whose life must have looked so prosperous and stable. Geoffrey rarely sees his brother or mother: “between the ages of twelve and fifteen I saw my mother three times. Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-six I never saw her.” 

Despite the estrangement, Toby has “my father’s gestures and facial tics, and certain maneuvers with his hands.” And not just physically that Toby resembles their father, on a rare occasion when Geoffrey meets up with his brother and father, Toby tells them “all the way down the Pacific I bullshitted everyone on the bus. . . I told them I was a Princeton man. . “ Toby later forges his credentials to obtain a scholarship to a top prep school. Geoffrey too is a chip off the old block. He tells outrageous lies and runs up credit when he is at Princeton, but he lacks his father’s charm. He’s particularly unpleasant to girls who he is attracted to.

Duke, despite or maybe because of his own failings, tried to bring Geoffrey up as proper gentleman and he is appalled by his son’s behaviour. Perhaps it is Geoffrey’s very charmlessness that saves him from following in his father’s footsteps. Eventually Geoffrey grows up and pays off his debts, though with money from his father obtained by stealing Alice’s silverware. There’s a scene where the father and son have one last blow out in a hotel, thanks to the purloined silver, and then they says goodbye and rarely see each other again. It reminded me of the end of Withnail & I with one character moving on and one unable to. 

It is a peculiarly American tragedy

“Finally it got out of hand. It had nowhere to go but out of hand” Geoffrey writes. By now divorced from Alice and penniless, Duke’s crimes finally catch up with him and he is arrested and sent to prison and later a mental home. When he dies at the age of 66, Geoffrey is relieved more than anything else. He has grown to despise his father. Duke has a squalid end surrounded by empty drink and pill bottles, utterly alone; “in his tiny flat at the edge of the Pacific they found no address book, no batch of letters. . .  no photograph. Not a thing to suggest that he had ever known another human being.” Duke wore a ring with nulla vestigium retrorsit (sic) which is Dog Latin for “not a trace left behind” (though Duke always claimed it meant “don’t look back”.)

It is a peculiarly American tragedy. There’s something of the Jay Gatsby about Duke. Like Gatsby, Duke loves the trappings of success, cars, watches and fine clothes. And of course both were Jews trying to be old money Americans. Geoffrey writes: “my father loved The Great Gatsby (he identified with Nick Carraway!)” Later when Geoffrey is at Cambridge, his tutor George Steiner clocks him as Jewish right away. He is now a practising Jew whilst his brother is a Catholic. 

For me Tobias Wolff is the better writer. This Boy’s Life flows like a novel whereas The Duke of Deception is sometimes a little clunky. It feels as if it was a struggle to write. But it’s a great piece of detective work and there’s hard-won wisdom here. Geoffrey is often painfully honest especially about himself and the book is suffused with love and forgiveness. Oddly for all their failings, Duke and Rosemary were much better parents than their parents. The boys didn’t turn out so bad and are now close. Both became successful writers, had families and are loving fathers. And don’t forget that Duke and Rosemary gave their children the greatest gift that a parent can give a writer, an interesting childhood.