Missing Persons: A Life of Unexpected Influences

Piasecki (Doing More with Less), head of a management consulting firm, looks back at his eventful life in a fragmented, energetic memoir occasionally resembling the cut-up techniques of Burroughs and the stylistic methods of the New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s. Piasecki started this book 17 years ago when his daughter, Colette, was born, recalling his hardscrabble childhood on Long Island and his journey to becoming a promising three-letter high school athlete, a Cornell University scholar, and a successful businessman. The key influences of his life include his rebellious Uncle Ziggy; his foster children, Edwin Torres and Suie Ying Chang; artist Frida Kahlo; writer Jay Parini; and his confidante Darlene, whom he loves as much as his mother, wife, and daughter. Piasecki's compulsively addictive memoir, combining rich cinematic touches and psychological elements of memory and dreams with dispassionate third-person narration, celebrates family life, marriage, reading, writing, and business achievement. B&w photos. (Feb.)