Thomas McGuane has mellowed with age but remains controversial, poised between contradictions and motivated by an understanding that life can never measure up to one's expectations. His work shifts between confrontation and withdrawal, the work ethic and social drift, responsibility and freedom. In the 1970s McGuane seemed to be on the path to self-destruction, easing his way with sex and drugs. But this activity was only an exaggerated form of the rebelliousness that he showed in his writing from the beginning, which apparently arose from an unresolved adversarial relationship with his father.

Thomas Francis McGuane III was born in Wyandotte, Michigan, on 11 December 1939 to Thomas Francis McGuane II and Alice Torphy McGuane; he grew up in Grosse Ile. His father was belatedly successful in the car-parts industry; McGuane apparently inherited something of his father's business acumen, though he has expressed some feelings of guilt for not measuring up...