The violence of indifference sears every page of in Damaged People: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons by Joe McGinniss, Jr. Each generation suffers in its own way and then passes down a different form of suffering, sometimes despite good intentions. This is a brutal book, rendered much more powerfully because there are no fistfights, no strange bruises, none of the obvious depictions of trauma.
Damaged People involves a complicated family tree of repetitive names. Therefore, a cast of characters is useful here:
- Joseph Aloysius McGinniss (born 1915) was an orphan and possibly somewhere on the autism spectrum, a condition that had not yet been realized by psychiatrists. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and built a career as an architect before losing everything in a failed bid to launch a travel agency. He also suffered from alcoholism and sired – intentional word choice because you can’t really say he “raised” since it was more “ignored”…
- Joe McGinniss (born in 1942), is the bestselling author of The Selling of the President 1968, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, and The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. He was most well-known for his true crime books Fatal Vision, Blind Faith, and Cruel Doubt. In the 1980s, this particular McGinniss was one of the highest-paid writers on the planet. He also taught at Bennington College and influenced a cadre of writers, including Bret Easton Ellis, Donna Tartt, Jonathan Lethem, and Jill Eisenstadt. Diagnosed with depression and struggling with alcohol and drug addictions, his first son is…
- Joe McGinniss, Jr. (born in 1970), the author of Damaged People. Educated at Swarthmore College, he now lives in Washington, D.C.. He also wrote the wonderful novels The Delivery Man (which made the PopMatters Best Books of 2008 list) and Carousel Court. He is the father to…
- Jayson McGinniss (born 2007), a sensitive, sweet person and talented basketball player who grows into a young adult over the course of Damaged People.
- Go back to the elder Joe McGinniss, because he also has two sons from a later marriage named Mason (born approximately 1983) and Gavin (born 1987).
For the sake of clarity, we use “Senior” when referencing the elder true crime writer and “McGinniss, Jr.” when referencing the author of this memoir.
The Sins of the Father
The first word in Damaged People is “welp”. Merriam Webster defines the term as an interjection “used informally like well (as to introduce a remark expressing resignation or disappointment.”
“’Welp,’ my father said, his first word to me in months,” McGinniss, Jr. writes.
It’s intriguing that the word, pronounced exactly the same but with an H added to the spelling, is defined as “any of the young of various carnivorous mammals and especially of the dog; a young boy or girl.” Lineage and pedigree are ominously ever-present in Damaged People.
Senior is held in a Massachusetts psychiatric ward after being arrested the night before. He has multiple suicide attempts on his record, and there are no shoelaces in the sneakers issued to him. McGinniss, Jr. has driven nine hours and gone through multiple locked doors to confront his father. A father who was loving and caring and provided many heartwarming memories. Also, a father who was “unchecked ego and passion.”
Senior was a newspaperman who was given full access to the Richard Nixon presidential campaign. His book The Selling of the President 1968 dominated The New York Times bestseller list for 31 weeks. Senior was “the youngest person since Anne Frank to have a book top the list.”
Senior’s success opened doors. He appeared on The Tonight Show, got hammered with Norman Mailer, did publicity tours in London, and picked up an adulterous relationship with a young publishing professional.
He also walked out on his family.
Senior moved far enough away that no one could expect him to pick the kids up from school or drive anyone to the orthodontist. During the rare visits, he was caring and loving. For limited segments of time.
“He was going where he wanted, to live how and with whom he chose,” McGinniss writes. “I was part of that, but barely. I was a fraction of his month, two full days, and a week here and there. He had that kind of power. He could slide and dice me into pieces of this whole person I was meant to be.”
After three failed books, Senior wrote Fatal Vision about the murder trial and conviction of Jeffrey MacDonald, a doctor and former Green Beret. MacDonald initially blamed three intruders – he was hopped up on acid and Charles Manson fever dreams – for murdering his wife, his five-year-old daughter, and his two-year-old daughter.
Initially, MacDonald rode a wave of public interest in the tragedy to appearances on talk shows and a minor form of celebrity. His claims fell apart, and he was eventually convicted.
Fatal Vision was made into an NBC miniseries starring Karl Malden and Andy Griffith. It was nominated for five Emmy Awards, and Malden received the statue for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Special. Critics at The Los Angeles Times named it the highest-rated miniseries of 1984-1985.
Irrisistible True Crime
While “true crime” was hardly a fledgling genre, it’s safe to say that Fatal Vision represented one of the earliest manifestations of how we currently engage with the medium. The public was obsessed with the MacDonald family in a manner similar to how we are familiar with cases such as those of Casey Anthony, Alex Murdaugh, or Scott Peterson. There was a deluge of articles, TV coverage, books, and movies about the McDonalds.
Senior’s follow-up was Blind Faith about a businessman convicted of taking out a contract for his wife’s murder. Then came Cruel Doubt about a man killed by his stepson. Following the formula, TV versions came out after the books.
“After Fatal Vision, his next two true crime books were less about the actual brutality of murder, but the emotional journey of those directly affected,” McGinniss, Jr. writes. “As grisly as the material was, Dad could identify a human story, a character whose journey would redeem the horror endured by victims and observed by readers. And with the commercial success of Fatal Vision, his true crime formula was wildly lucrative. While he swam in these polluted waters of his grisly subject matter, he did so by clinging to the life rafts that were the heroes within the tragedy.”
Senior also protected himself by ignoring anything that he didn’t want to do, including caring for his children, and by doing any drug or drinking any alcohol that he did want to do. He was also later accused of betraying a subject’s confidence, which, combined with a PR campaign from the Kennedy family for a book that didn’t attract as much attention, led to Senior experiencing what one might call “being cancelled” in today’s parlance.
The Son’s Absolution
While Senior avoided his children, McGinniss, Jr. devoted himself to basketball as a form of solace, while his sisters coped in their own way. Step-brothers Mason and Gavin struggle in their own ways due to Senior’s parenting limitations.
McGinniss, Jr.’s determination to be a better father to Jayson is the root of that generation’s conflict. The young, aspiring novelist wants to be present and involved in his son’s life. The opposite of his own upbringing. McGinniss, Jr. looks at a picture of his son, which “brings it all back and reminds me just what I’m here for. Not to write, like my father. But to be a father who writes.”
Despite his admirable intentions, the intergenerational trauma of the McGinniss men leads to behavior that is just as damaging to Jayson as it was to the memoir’s author. Shortly after the child was born, McGinniss, Jr. was diagnosed with depression and prescribed medication. Whereas Senior abandoned his kids for work or pleasure, McGinniss, Jr., declines professional opportunities. He describes the love of his son as an “uncut narcotic” and writes that “The joy of Jayson was essential. It fed and sustained and lifted me.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the teenager hit a wall familiar to many. Jayson bravely and admirably tells his parents that he’s struggling.
“We’re failing our child,” McGinniss, Jr. says to his wife. “There’s two of us and one of him and somehow we’re losing.”
McGinniss, Jr.’s struggles with Jayson reflect the challenges with his father, just in different ways. A casual observer would say that Senior is an asshole and McGinniss, Jr. is a loving dad. With generations of pain involved, however, it’s not that simple.
That’s the biggest strength of Damaged People. Things aren’t simple. There’s hope, redemption, and cause for cautious optimism. Yet there’s no Hollywood Movie of the Week sappy happy ending.
Along the way, the reader learns about writing, true crime, and has brushes with literary lions like George Plimpton, political operatives like Roger Ailes, superheroes like Christopher Reeve, and monsters like OJ Simpson. In that sense, it’s an engaging read, and those passages help lighten the mood.
With Damaged People, Joe McGinniss, Jr. takes his admirable writing career to a new level of achievement. It’s an important book that illustrates pain, healing, familial curses, and blessings.