memoir
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Notes On Fredrik Sjoberg’s “The Fly Trap”
“Know that then everything flies, absolutely everything. A thousand commentaries. An entire apparatus of footnotes.” – Fredrik Sjoberg Fredrik Sjoberg’s delightful The Fly Trap is two books in one: a story of the author’s experiences catching flies–specifically, hoverflies–on a remote island in Sweden, and a life history of the expeditions and writings of entomologist, naturalist, Continue reading
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Literary Distillation: Notes On Bruce Weber’s “Life Is A Wheel”
Among the many lessons offered in Bruce Weber’s Life Is A Wheel, a flowing and meditative memoir about bicycling across the United States, are two delightful insights about the nature of thinking and progress. Riding all those miles each day, Weber has lots of time and space to think his thoughts (and then write Continue reading
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On Ken Dryden’s “The Game”
When my brother and I were kids, we spent a lot of time playing ball hockey in the driveway, taking shots at one another with a fluorescent orange “sting” ball that really did sting when it was frozen from the cold and hitting you in the face. One of our always followed conventions of the Continue reading
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On David Esterly’s “The Lost Carving”
“On go the hands.” – David Esterly In his book The Lost Carving, David Esterly describes in luminous detail his experiences in the art of decorative wood carving. In the mid-1980s, Esterly, a self-taught carver, worked on a year-long restoration project at Hampton Court Palace, a royal estate in England, to repair and re-carve some Continue reading
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On Leanne Shapton’s “Swimming Studies”
“Swimming is my disembodied youth, yet I am rapidly becoming the embodied present.” — Swimming Studies, (187) Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton is one of the more poetically precise and evocative non-fiction books I’ve read in a while. It’s a meditative memoir consisting of a series of autobiographical vignettes, illustrations, and photographs that explore the author’s experience Continue reading
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