Memoirous

Readers of this blog know I appreciate Aleksandar Hemon’s writing. I re-read his novels and loved The Book of My Lives —so much so that I recall passages from it at random moments (especially since I live in Uptown where he based some of his observations). He has the peculiar ability to offer a surprising word in a sentence. I owe this to the fact that English is his second language. He uses it to its fullest. His newest volume is non-fiction comprised of flash memoir pieces. The book is divided between memories of his parents, perhaps their memories, and his own thoughts back on his life—including preambles on mortality, writing, and other philosophical meanderings. Early on he riffs on Robert Shields who recorded his life in 5-minute segments, accumulating eventually more than 94 cartons of diaries. It is like always being “on.” It also begs the question: Who cares? This work reflects a kind of Bosnian nostalgia=meaning there is no Yugoslavia. It is a pragmatic look back...

This weekend I began reading The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen.  It is literally the story of a sympathetic narrator. In this day and age of what sometimes feels like a civil war to read a novel from the point of view of a character living in a partitioned country and can yet understand life on both sides is truly refreshing. He puts himself into the head of a cast of characters—even the ones he has to compromise and kill in order to advance ideology. It’s complicated. Viet Thanh Nguyen recently wrote an article: "Trump Is a Great Storyteller. We Need to Be Better." 11 December 2016. This is an articulate essay written by an immigrant about the importance of words. When we allow leaders to subvert language and use rhetoric to alienate and hurt their own populations, then we have to stand up—call a lie a lie. It’s interesting that since his election, several great authors have spoken up about their fears. Aleksandar Hemon has written several pieces around...

Meta is an odd word; it is all about me. Self-referential. And, we do it in the subtlest of ways. Right when I’m enjoying a work of fiction I get a glimmer, a suggestion, that this book is all about the author. It is likely their story. At this blog I’ve reviewed Aleksandar Hemon’s short stories, Love and Obstacles and Lily Tuck’s Liliane —all supposedly fiction, but both hovering on the edge of autobiography. With Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf and The History of Great Things by Elizabeth (Betsy!) Crane we are easily clued in. The author actually references themselves. In Our Souls at Night the main characters talk over the morning newspaper while at breakfast and mention that that one writer, his latest novel is being made into a play. She’d enjoyed the last production the playhouse did of his work and now it looks like they are launching another. “He could write a book about us. How would you like that?”—she asks. Louis replies to her,   “I don’t ...

Dear Readers (thanks both of you) as you know I am a fan of Aleksandar Hemon the famous author from the former Yugoslavia, from Sarajevo, Bosnia who now lives in Chicago , used to live in Uptown—all this to say he is a Nowhere Man . Reading his “memoir” T he Book of My Lives I can see how easy it is to subvert memories. He comes from a country with a long history—where memory is just as long. I love how Hemon has always interjected into his fiction autobiography, while at the same time his non-fiction reads like a story. The past is a tricky thing—depending upon where one stands in a room, the angle changes. Genre with Hemon is just as fluid. I got the sense when reading The Book of My Lives that so much of his life he has had to re-think. War has a tendency to do that. And, not just any war, but a soul-tearing, ethnic cleansing war. Not just a civil war but a holocaust and tsunami put together. How does one rebuild memories or reconcile their perceptions to this new ...