Blind-Spots

In writing reviews, the manner of a work's execution is usually the most responsible thing a reviewer can look at. Reactions to the story itself, no matter how much we kid ourselves, are almost entirely subjective. Anyone who's taken (or taught) a lit class understands this: no one can convince an eighteen-year-old who wants to be updating his Facebook page that an eight hundred page novel about two guys wandering Dublin and thinking about life is an interesting story. Some students might like it; some will think, "This is boring and has nothing to do with me." You can't sell people on content.

But by ignoring the story and looking at the structural innovations in Ulysses (1922), we move beyond the "story"; we move into the critical sphere. It's no longer about the student's engagement with the story; it's about the way the story's been told.

In contemporary fiction, there are plenty of authors whose formal execution is a discussion at least as worthy as how "engaging" their stories are. John Barth. Lucy Corin. Lydia Davis. David Foster Wallace. The list is much longer. But in nonfiction, specifically memoir, it's still content, content, content. "How 'interesting' is the story?" we ask, rather than, "How has it been formally crafted?" Memoir that foregrounds form is rare—David Shields and Ander Monson are current exceptions—and so reviewers, rather than rolling up their sleeves and considering an author's execution, are stuck summarizing the basic storylines and themes before arriving at a very intricate, very intellectual, "I liked it" or "I didn't."

Most contemporary memoirists aren't asking to be critically considered.

This isn't a dodge to get out of reviewing two recent works of nonfiction.

It's a caveat. And, too, a complaint.

James P. White's memoir, Observations Without Daddy: Vivid Evocations of Growing Up in Texas, arrives decontextualized. (White directs the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.) The book reveals little about White—a few blurbs from older books—and the slender volume is printed on plain white paper. The margins aren't justified. Typos aren't uncommon. And the subject matter is small in scope: a childhood in Texas. Just by opening the book, you feel a small sense of hope. A little slender nothing—what if it's great? How fantastic, to discover a small gem in such modest form.

The execution is straightforward, as is the prose: White writes a chronological account of his first eighteen years, set in West Texas in the 1930s and 40s. His style is flat and to strong effect: he writes almost entirely in declarative sentences that are often startling in detail or meaning (White begins by announcing he remembers his birth). There are limited reflections, as White doesn't overly explain the meaning of this moment or that. He just evokes it and stands to the side so the reader can enjoy.

When a character dies early on, White writes, "She was stricken, crying, 'Oh! Oh! Oh!' as if someone stuck her with a knife."

Describing his grandmother in her garden: "Before noon she would stand on the front porch and shoot caterpillars off of her morning glory vines with a bee bee gun."

Talking about a local heartthrob: "The girls in the town swooned over her boy. One girl left a sealed fruit jar with a tongue inside on the doorstep for him."

Strange details like these are one of the memoir's strongest points: the precise and unique descriptions have an immediacy and impact found in the best prose. They linger.

The rarity of reflections also serves the memoir well. The first comes when White observes, "There are moments in our lives when our hearts are so badly broken that life itself intervenes and gives us healing…. There is something so singular about the periods, because...