Recollections of My Nonexistence

Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir
Rebecca Solnit
Viking (March 10, 2020), 252 pages
Kindle edition $13.99, Amazon hardcover $21.93

I had seen multiple references to this book in various places before reading the review in the New York Times Book Review. Based on that discussion of the book I knew that Recollections of My Nonexistence was something that I needed to read.

Solnit had me hooked in the first chapter. As one who has crossed the Golden Gate Bridge many times, I was captivated by her description of the bay.

On the most beautiful days, there are no words for the colors of San Francisco Bay and the sky above it. Sometimes the water reflects a heaven that is both gray and gold, and the water is blue, is green, is silver, is a mirror of that gray and gold, catching the warmth and cold of colors in its ripples, is all and none of them, is something more subtle than the language we have.

She also writes about an apartment she rented early in her adult life: “In that little apartment I found a home in which to metamorphose, a place to stay while I changed and made a place in the world beyond.” That evoked memories of a tiny one-bedroom cottage behind a single-family house that I rented for a year after the sudden, unexpected death of my first wife. “A home in which to metamorphose, a place to stay while I changed” it was indeed.

Finally, she describes a writing desk given her by a friend fleeing an abusive relationship, a desk on which she still composes her work today. I own a desk that I obtained (I was not exactly given it, but that is a story in its own right) from a friend in my post-graduation mid-1970’s Claremont days. She was fleeing a failed relationship, and that desk that even today is at the center of my home office environment.

And that was just the first chapter.

Solnit writes about the physical danger women often experience, about her political activism, about the condescension men often display towards women, and about working to impart the importance of feminism to a younger generation of women. She wrote an essay entitled “Men Explain Things to Me,” which later became the title essay of a book. It was a that essay which inspired a reader to coin the term “mansplaining.”

If that word was the only thing Solnit ever contributed to our society and culture (and it is far from the only thing) it would be enough to earn her a place in the pantheon of progressive thinkers who have made a difference in our world.

Mile Marker Zero

Mile Marker Zero: The Moveable Feast of Key West
William McKeen
Crown Books (October 4, 2011), 320 pages
Kindle edition $9.99, Amazon paperback $14.99

Much has been written about the Lost Generation of Paris in the twenties, where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and that gang found refuge. Mile Marker Zero is William McKeen’s attempt to document a similar environment for writers and other artists in the 1970’s: Key West Florida.

McKeen begins well before the 1970’s when the island was entirely off the beaten track and primarily known as a military base. Ernest Hemingway discovered the island and bought the largest house there. By the time the bulk of the narrative in the book takes place Hemingway had not only long abandoned the island but was long dead.

In the seventies Key West was a vacation home to the likes of Tennessee Williams, Hunter Thompson, Jimmy Buffett, and Jim Croce. The book also contains a lot about the locals and the island’s place in the marijuana trade, which was more lucrative to shrimpers than the trade of shrimping.

There were times I questioned McKeen’s credibility. He refers to Thomas McGuane, as “the most revered writer of his generation.” Say what? Who? I was in the book business from 1975 until the early eighties, first working at and then managing B. Dalton Bookseller stores, and I never heard of the guy until I read this book.

That aside, Mile Marker Zero was entertaining with some fascinating tidbits about people and places.

Gateway to the Moon: A Novel

Gateway to the Moon: A Novel
Mary Morris
Anchor (April 10, 2018), 345 pages
Kindle edition $11.99, Amazon paperback $12.99
purchased during a BookBub sale for $2.99

I was looking for my next book to read when I saw Gateway to the Moon discounted to $2.99 in a BookBub email. It looked like intriguing reading so I snatched it up.

The primary character in the story is a teenager named Miguel who loves astronomy and looking at the stars. He has even made his own telescope. However, he is restless and bored in his tiny New Mexico village. He takes a job as a sitter for a well-off woman, the wife of a surgeon, taking care of her two boys.

Miguel identifies as Latino and was raised as such. He doesn’t know that his ancestry is Jewish. His story is interwoven with the story of several generations of Spanish Jews beginning in 1492. Yes, one of them sailed out with Columbus. These were people who nominally converted to Christianity during times of persecution, but who secretly kept their Jewish identity. The book portrays them both in Spain and in the New World, always pursued by their Christian persecutors.

That part of the novel was often hard to read, but the narrative of Miguel, his mother, his father (separated from his mother, but always there for him), his employer, and the man who ran the general store in town made for good reading. With an interesting twist at the end (that one might have seen coming), Gateway to the Moon offers an entertaining family drama.

The feeling of the book stayed with me for some days after I finished it. I suppose that’s a sign of a well-written novel.

Parisian Lives

Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir
by Deirdre Bair
Nan A. Talese (November 12, 2019), 341 pages
Kindle edition $14.99, Amazon hardcover $21.99

Deirdre Bair has written several biographies, but two of her best known and most highly regarded works were her studies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir. What they had in common was that both individuals lived in Paris, and she made frequent trips there to work on both books.

Beckett was interesting because he told Bair that he would “neither help nor hinder” her efforts, yet he seemed to track her every move as she interviewed friends, relatives, and associates. Beauvoir was fully cooperative but could be difficult to work with at times. While Bair’s relationship with Beckett remained strictly professional her work with de Beauvoir was complicated by Bair’s admiration for de Beauvoir’s feminist philosophy.

Throughout all this Bair describes managing the projects in the midst of her personal life: getting a PhD, finding an academic position, the politics of getting tenure, and giving proper attention to her husband and children. Her life was busy, complicated, and at times downright frustrating.

Bair’s writing style is engaging and the book at times reads like a novel. She is honest about her personal life and candid about her relationships with Beckett and de Beauvoir. If you enjoy reading about things literary consider this book.