Goat: A Memoir » (Reprint)

Brad Land studied creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he received his M.F.A., and Western Michigan University, where he served as nonfiction editor of Third Coast. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and now lives in South Carolina.

Reeling from a terrifying assault that has left him physically injured and psychologically shattered, nineteen-year-old Brad Land must also contend with unsympathetic local police, parents who can barely discuss “the incident” (as they call it), a brother riddled with guilt but unable to slow down enough for Brad to keep up, and the feeling that he’ll never be normal again. When Brad’s brother enrolls at Clemson University and pledges a fraternity, Brad believes he’s being left behind once and for all. Desperate to belong, he follows. What happens there—in the name of “brotherhood,” and with the supposed goal of forging a scholar and a gentleman from the raw materials of boyhood—involves torturous late-night hazing, heartbreaking estrangement from his brother, and, finally, the death of a fellow pledge. Ultimately, Brad must weigh total alienation from his newfound community against accepting a form of brutality he already knows too well.

A searing memoir of masculinity, violence, and brotherhood, Goat provides an unprecedented window into the emotional landscape of young men and introduces a writer of uncommon grace and power.

The New York Times

Perhaps Land should be applauded for refusing to fall into jostling step with male memoirists like Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors), a bawdy raconteur who turns personal humiliation into a great occasion to entertain, or James Frey, whose A Million Little Pieces is a staccato, tough-guy recounting of his physical (not psychological) feats of endurance as a recovering Olympian substance abuser. Land is more focused on his psychological weakness, and this is daring; it risks his appearing unsympathetic or even pathetic. Considering the book's maudlin temperament, and the way the interior landscape of an unstable mind overpowers external events, Goat actually has more in common with an autobiographical novel by a dead female poet -- namely, The Bell Jar. — Heidi Julavits