Memoirs

The Boy Detective, A New York Childhood by Roger Rosenblatt ’58. This memoir breaks the usual memoir mold; it takes us on a meditative walking tour of Gramercy Park and its environs, where we get to witness the narrator’s mind as it ruminates, remembers and imagines. The narrator has just taught a class on memoir writing at a Manhattan campus and decides to revisit the haunts of his childhood. As he wanders the streets on this winter night, his mind is drawn back to his boyhood, to what he knows of the history of the neighborhood – the authors (so many! James, Wharton, Twain, Nathaniel West and more) who once resided there – and he meditates on the parallels between his boyhood days, when he fancied himself a stealthy private eye, and his career as a writer. His mind goes back and forth and where it will, seemingly fre…

Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas ’59. This work is a memoir composed of prose poems and discrete vignettes; together they show a woman creating a sense of self as she grows up with her kids. Still a teen, she becomes a wife and mother. She spends her twenties caring for her three children, watching her marriage dissolve, and eventually finding a second husband. They have another child, but their marriage does not work out as a marriage. Rather, after she marries a third time, it evolves into an affectionate, complicated friendship. Safekeeping is ostensibly about her second husband, but more fundamentally is about how to fix fleeting moments so that they can be held up, examined, and enhanced by reflection. Her opening epigram is from Hey Jude – “Take a sad song and make it better.” By crystalizing experience, she transforms it into art, always a step up from sad.

The…

French Milk by Lucy Knisley circa 2000 is a graphic memoir about her month-long trip to Paris with her mother. While they were there, Lucy turned 22. She sees this moment as an official entry into adulthood. I was twenty when I spent a year in Paris, and for me, it was an experience that changed my life (literally) since I became a French teacher. I loved reliving with Lucy the excitement of discovering the sites and tastes of Paris. We seem to be with Lucy as she draws what she sees through her unique filter. There is plenty of humor – I loved her rendition of St Denis, who picks up his decapitated head and nonchalantly walks off with it. I was hungry throughout the whole book – Lucy lets us in on her meals from pain aux raisins breakfast to her mother's homemade oyster chowder to duck …

Not That Kind of a Girl, A young woman tells you what she has “learned” by Lena Dunham, attended lower school. I really enjoyed Lena Dunham’s seriesGirls, and was intrigued to hear that she had attended Friends. So, she’s “not that kind of girl.” In my day that was what we said to put off unwanted amorous advances. What could it mean after the sexual revolution? In Lena’s case I can’t imagine, but I’m not sure she’s any kind of a girl; to me, her original voice is sui generis.

At first I thought she had taken on the pose of a fausse naïve, who faked the surprise of a newborn as she faced all of life’s little adventures. After reading this book, I see her more as a curious and troubled spirit who is generous enough to put into words her experiences, stripped of any prepackaged filmy overlay. …