Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father (1979) is a good example of a contemporary coming of age memoir in which the theme of fathers and sons plays a major role. Wolff begins his memoir by letting the reader know that his father was, in Wolff's words, "a bullshit artist" (Wolff 7). Of course, in hindsight Wolff understands that his father was a liar, but as a child he had no idea. Duke, as his father was known, took advantage of any store that would offer him credit, and anyone who would loan

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... him a buck. Wolff goes with his father at the age of twelve once the parents divorce, his brother with their mother, and Duke was not only his role model, but his hero as well. He did not immediately go with him, though, only after he began seeing his mother with other men. He made the decision and she did not argue. Wolff didn't know at the time that his father had not accomplished all of the great things that he claimed to have, or gone to the great schools that he boasted of attending, and young Wolff believed Duke to be the greatest man in the world. The older he gets though, the more the picture begins to come into focus that his father was a liar. "By now I knew my dad was a phony," he writes. "I wasn't dead sure about Yale, but I was sure he was a phony" (Wolff 175). This is the time period that I am presenting in my first two chapters, "Learning to Pay the Price" and "Something Missing." The first chapter is about a single football season when I was 8 years old. I was that little boy who idolized his father. I wanted him all to myself. He had been my older brother's coach all through junior football and I counted the days until it was my turn. I focus on the events of that season, and the bond that was forged between the two of us at that time. I only got him for that one season, and the hurt and anger from that carried long lasting effects. Events that happened at his