About the author: Kevin Sampsell is the publisher of Future Tense Books, works at Portland, Oregon’s Powell’s Books, and has written a few collections of short stories called Creamy Bullets, Beautiful Blemish, and How to Lose Your MInd with the Lights On. He was the editor of Portland Noir and The Insomniac Reader. When I was the editor for a college literary magazine I invited him to speak at one of my events about independent publishing, so I have met with him and listened to his lecture. This is one reason I chose to read his recently published memoir.
Grade: B-
When I was in college, I took a memoir writing class and received a piece of advice from my professor I completely agree with and keep in mind when I read memoir. Her advice was not to write a woe-is-me whinefest focusing soley on the bad things in your life.
Unfortunately Sampsell never had this professor. The memoir is made up mostly of bad memories about his childhood and specifically his father, interlaced with his experiences with sex and pornography. The result is a memoir that never breaks from gritty, dirty, and depressing.
The few portions about having fun with his friends playing basketball or dancing at a club aren’t enough to break through the grim storyline.
I chose this book partly because I have met Kevin Sampsell, but mostly because it is a memoir written in short vignettes. Ever since reading The House on Mango Street in high school I have been enthralled with a novel told in vignette form. I have yet to read one done as beautifully as The House on Mango Street, but I am not giving up yet.
As many of the vignettes in this book were previosuly published as short stories, there are often times when it feels more like a collection of short stories than a collection of vingettes with a connecting story arc. Indeed, there isn’t much of a story arc except that it flows from his childhood to present day life.
This is the kind of collection that will inevitably spark memories from the readers. And probably not happy memories, so be prepared for a haze of gloom to appear above your head while reading this.
It was a very quick, interesting read, and Sampsell uses great details to illustrate his stories, but I am gravely disappointed in its darkness. I had expected some startling and saddening tales of childhood woe, but I had also expected some dark humour and happy highlights as well. It just didn’t feel balanced to me.
He also doesn’t describe his characters very well. His mother and siblings are mere ghosts, and his father is the only one he really tries to go into but fails there as well. We are left with Sampsell’s feelings, his views, but on characters barely developed.
His relationships with women are repetitious (his stories are mostly the same of each one, and they are not developed much either) and he never seems to grow as a person or to really love any of them, rather they are merely sexual objects to him. Perhaps that was his point, but it leaves me wondering why bother devoting stories to them? He could have just listed them and moved on to something else.
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