A Memoir of No One in Particular: In Which Our Author Indulges in Naïve Indiscretions, a Self-Aggrandizing Solipsism, and an Off-Putting Infatuation with His Own Bodily Functions

Rating:
Summary: Sit-down comedy and much, much more
Review: Daniel Harris is a clear thinker, a hilarious raconteur, a Ph. D. dropout (and therefore consigned to "the Gulag of the intelligentsia"), a gay man in his forties, a cultural critic, a student of sex and semiotics, literature and media and all things pop. He's his own best source of jokes and - in his latest effort - a thoroughly engaging and an intensely thoughtful autobiographer. The title, the subtitle, the flyleaf and the introduction ("Beginning") posture a disdain for the craft of memoir. Don't you believe it. Harris is great at the art of remembering, of retelling rivetingly well, and - best of all - of making some sense of his life up 'til now. His story as he tells it is by turns sad and serious, wonderfully sensitive, harsh (toward himself) in places and sweetly sympathetic in others. It's also hilarious. It's likely that you'll laugh uncontrollably in places. I tried to read this while eating and nearly choked on my food.

In a dozen intensely personal and readable chapters - among them "Writing," "Dressing," "Laughing," "Speaking and Listening," "Cleaning and Decorating," "Lying," "Reading," and others on sex and sexual preferences and practices, Harris generously hosts a tour - of his past, his present, and himself. He doesn't stint on self-criticism, either. In fact, he pathologizes his often quite harmless behaviors sometimes. Does he not know that hardly any men throw out old T-shirts? He has not talked to wives, for he seems to think there's something abnormal about his masculine habit of saving his worn-out clothes, calling it "my irrational tendency to hoard superannuated garments." You will laugh.

Harris grew up in "a liberal, middle class family," his father an accomplished Jewish academic and then a psychotherapist and his mother " a disaffected Southern Baptist, a country girl." He's appalled at some of his family tree - specifically, the Southern Baptist branch that lynched a black man. When he told his dad he was gay, his father thought it might be curable, and offered his son a home version of electro convulsive therapy. Harris smartly refused.

Sometimes it seems that he is his own worst enemy - but he's also his own best friend. He loves to shop, he can't afford expensive stuff, and his reportage is hilarious. He wants to be alone (needs to - in order to read and to write), and also longs for contact and communion. Life can be hard, and he tells you why. His lifelong best friend, a man named Philip, was killed tragically in Lebanon. He is "obsessed with straight men," and envies what he imagines is their easier lives, free of the fetishes and compulsions that Harris assumes are the ken of gay men. He loves conversation, and he's doubtless very good at it - but it distresses and disappoints him, because it is so inferior to his written words. But talk he must, and he deconstructs his conversational style ("I pour on the plain American accent so unconvincingly that at times my voice cracks like a prepubescent boy's, the mellifluousness of the elegant gay man giving way to the abrupt, hard-boiled delivery of a character out of a Raymond Chandler novel.") - along with dozens of other parts of his life. He writes about sex and his own proclivities, and traverses the complicated terrain of his own desires in intensely personal ways.

These are great autobiographical essays that are history, confession, and successful self-examination. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Harris is a brave and trusting man. In this self-deprecatingly titled book he's trusted his readers with his life. It's an act of faith, and of love. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Rating:
Summary: Sit-down comedy and much, much more
Review: Daniel Harris is a clear thinker, a hilarious raconteur, a Ph. D. dropout (and therefore consigned to "the Gulag of the intelligentsia"), a gay man in his forties, a cultural critic, a student of sex and semiotics, literature and media and all things pop. He's his own best source of jokes and - in his latest effort - a thoroughly engaging and an intensely thoughtful autobiographer. The title, the subtitle, the flyleaf and the introduction ("Beginning") posture a disdain for the craft of memoir. Don't you believe it. Harris is great at the art of remembering, of retelling rivetingly well, and - best of all - of making some sense of his life up 'til now. His story as he tells it is by turns sad and serious, wonderfully sensitive, harsh (toward himself) in places and sweetly sympathetic in others. It's also hilarious. It's likely that you'll laugh uncontrollably in places. I tried to read this while eating and nearly choked on my food.

In a dozen intensely personal and readable chapters - among them "Writing," "Dressing," "Laughing," "Speaking and Listening," "Cleaning and Decorating," "Lying," "Reading," and others on sex and sexual preferences and practices, Harris generously hosts a tour - of his past, his present, and himself. He doesn't stint on self-criticism, either. In fact, he pathologizes his often quite harmless behaviors sometimes. Does he not know that hardly any men throw out old T-shirts? He has not talked to wives, for he seems to think there's something abnormal about his masculine habit of saving his worn-out clothes, calling it "my irrational tendency to hoard superannuated garments." You will laugh.

Harris grew up in "a liberal, middle class family," his father an accomplished Jewish academic and then a psychotherapist and his mother " a disaffected Southern Baptist, a country girl." He's appalled at some of his family tree - specifically, the Southern Baptist branch that lynched a black man. When he told his dad he was gay, his father thought it might be curable, and offered his son a home version of electro convulsive therapy. Harris smartly refused.

Sometimes it seems that he is his own worst enemy - but he's also his own best friend. He loves to shop, he can't afford expensive stuff, and his reportage is hilarious. He wants to be alone (needs to - in order to read and to write), and also longs for contact and communion. Life can be hard, and he tells you why. His lifelong best friend, a man named Philip, was killed tragically in Lebanon. He is "obsessed with straight men," and envies what he imagines is their easier lives, free of the fetishes and compulsions that Harris assumes are the ken of gay men. He loves conversation, and he's doubtless very good at it - but it distresses and disappoints him, because it is so inferior to his written words. But talk he must, and he deconstructs his conversational style ("I pour on the plain American accent so unconvincingly that at times my voice cracks like a prepubescent boy's, the mellifluousness of the elegant gay man giving way to the abrupt, hard-boiled delivery of a character out of a Raymond Chandler novel.") - along with dozens of other parts of his life. He writes about sex and his own proclivities, and traverses the complicated terrain of his own desires in intensely personal ways.

These are great autobiographical essays that are history, confession, and successful self-examination. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Harris is a brave and trusting man. In this self-deprecatingly titled book he's trusted his readers with his life. It's an act of faith, and of love. I enjoyed it thoroughly.