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Title: My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time by Sven Birkerts ISBN: 0-670-03109-7 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 22 August, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Conformist Memoir
Comment: A few themes run through these memoir-essays: rebellion against the father, books as an escape from life. Ok just two themes. The fifties and sixties (Birkerts was born in 1951) are what might be the most documented decades in the history of man. Its very difficult to write a memoir about this time that doesn't sound cliched.
Birkerts parents were from Latvia and spoke Latvian in the Michigan family home. Ok thats new. But Sven who insisted on being called Peter was a rebel with a cause as a young man: he wanted to conform and be American. As he got older he traded in the desire to conform for a desire to be different and so he became a hippie and he did all the things hippies do: drug experiences, sex, travel, Woodstock. Though well written this kind of book is routine. Birkerts is strongest when he is talking about his grandparents but he is at his weakest when he is talking about the counterculture and his various girlfriends. Birkerts' first love is not women but books. When he is discussing a book all the lights come on in his head but when he is talking about a woman the room remains dim.
Memoirs are reckonings and the person the writer is really attempting to reckon with is themselves. I get the feeling however that Birkerts has not quite gotten there yet. In this self-portrait the artist hides behind a series of 1950's and 1960's cliches; the experiences Birkert's describes just seem too generic. It is as if his mind is clouded with the popular view of 1950's-60's and he cannot see beyond that to form his own view of the times. Also there just isn't enough of his inner life in this book; no sense of intellectual evolution, no great awakenings to the world except in the most cliched kind of way, and no sense of love for his craft. In fact he doesn't really talk about his craft much. I was expecting some irony or some literary comment on the sameness of childhood and teen years. But no irony, no originality, just a generic MEMOIR.
A few observations are precisely worded though the thoughts themselves do not sound particularly authentic. Birkerts is a careful reader and his essays are often thoroughly researched and he is excellent at giving an overview of an author's career but I don't thnk he has a particularly unique vision of life to offer. To offer something unique he needs to dig deeper into his experience than he chose to do here.
Rating: 5
Summary: Curses and Blessings of the Immigrant Experience...
Comment: Having grown up in much the same time period and with much the same ethnic background (my family, too, came to the United States from Latvia during WW2), even in the same approximate area (lower Michigan), I picked up Birkerts' book (and, as chance would have it, I found it in the bookstore in Ann Arbor he describes as his place of employment) with immense curiosity. Just how similar would his experience be to mine? Initially, it was rather exhilirating to read this memoir that spoke of so much that I, too, knew so well, down to the ethnic bone. As I read of his discomforts and anxieties about learning a new language other than the one spoken in his home, his sense of being something of a misfit in both the Latvian and the American communities, I identified in most every detail. Ah, yes, this too I felt on my adolescent thin hide... Mine, I felt simultaneously as blessing and curse, as perhaps, in conclusion, did Birkerts.
In later years, of course, Birkerts' experiences forked away very much from my own... but no matter. I didn't need to look into a mirror to sustain my interest. Indeed, that is the whole appeal of this book - it is not only for the multicultural reader. The writing is excellent, and my exhiliration at sharing in a similar experience soon veered to an exhiliration simply in reading a book so well written. Perhaps that is one of the blessings of being bilingual, this ability to approach a second language with greater awareness. Birkerts' use of language is vibrant and lush and frequently stunning. His insights and perspective on his work, his relationships, the inner workings of his developing self.... all are richly portrayed. No matter from what backgrounds we come, we all question ourselves and our life choices, we all struggle with similar demons at one time or another. Family dynamics are not so different, I'm sure, no matter what the ethnic background.
Birkerts' 'My Sky Blue Trades' is a valuable portrayal of the immigrant experience for more than one generation, but is also of value simply as a well written book.
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Title: The Gutenberg Elegies : The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by SVEN BIRKERTS ISBN: 0449910091 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 10 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Writing Well (9th Edition) by Donald Hall, Sven Birkerts ISBN: 0321012062 Publisher: Pearson Education Pub. Date: 16 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $58.00 |
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Title: Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley, Sven Birkerts ISBN: 1564782425 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Spinning Man by George Harrar ISBN: 0425193748 Publisher: Blue Hen Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Collected Poems: Edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter; Introduction by Frank Bidart by Robert Lowell, Frank Bidart, David Gewanter ISBN: 0374126178 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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