Seeing Through Places - Reflections On Geography And Identity

by Mary Gordon

Mary Gordon, bestselling author of Spending and The Shadow Man, investigates the role that place plays in the formation of identity -- the connections between how we experience place and how we become ourselves. From her grandmother's house, which stood at the center of her childhood life, to a rented house on Cape Cod, where she began to mature as a writer, Mary Gordon navigates the reader through these spaces and worlds with subtlety and style. Wise, humorous, and intelligent, Seeing Through Places illuminates the relationship between the physical, emotional, and intellectual architectures of our lives, showing us the far-reaching power that places ultimately have in influencing a life.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Mary Catherine Gordon is an American writer from Queens and Valley Stream, New York. She is the McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College. She is best known for her novels, memoirs and literary criticism. In 2008, she was named Official State Author of New York.

Reviews

[Carol Storm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Up from Queens -- and to hell with the old neighborhood.

Mary Gordon writes like Archie Bunker in Jane Austen drag -- that is to say, she's profoundly embarrassed by her working-class roots and desperately anxious to assure you that she's really, really not at all like the people from "the neighborhood" even though she manifestly shares many of their more unhealthy attitudes towards non-whites, minorities, social change, sex on TV, etc. etc.

It's like watching Archie Bunker try to ingratiate himself with Jane Fonda by putting on a dress and talking up Jane Austen!

The trouble starts early, as Mary recalls the "foul-mouthed, impossibly disgusting" neighborhood boys engaged in "a barbaric pastime known as stickball." With great relish, she goes on to describe how "this one ended up overdosing on drugs" and "that one got his legs blown off in Vietnam" as if somehow the crime of stickball led them to a sorry fate. And of course she wraps up with the ultimate put-down, "none of them had time for books -- that was for girls like me." Yeah. And girls like you give books a bad name, and have ever since Margaret Mitchell was writing love letters to the Ku Klux Klan.

Moving on to Barnard College, the tone changes abruptly from sneering disdain to drooling servility, as our down-home girl swiftly learns the chatter-patter of the campus cowboys and the giddy delights of revolutionary posturing. Yay for the Sixties! "Back in Queens you had to pretend to respect the flag -- here in Manhattan you could burn it and feel good about watching it burn. How I loved watching Old Glory go up in flames, for to me the hateful flag had always represented an intolerable affront -- who were those mean old Protestant men to say I was equal to them? I want to be a lady, sure, and I'll kill anyone who gets in my way." Give peace a chance, indeed!

This book sucks. Mary Gordon is a foul mold on the bottom shelf of the Irish-American subconscious, a residue left over from generations of violence and self-pity. Her entire life's work is an insult to the Irish veterans of the Civil War, and the Irish firefighters of 9/11.

But she does know her Jane Austen.

[Lynn Buschhoff · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, so I picked this book up in the buiding book-exchange, so I shouldn't complain, right?

Half way through this book I remarked to myself that the reason I hadn't written a book was that I was afraid it would be a book like this. I mean, who wants to read a book that is all about me? I don't even want to read a book all about me. I do love to write, but until I have something to say, I think I will stick to writings whose publication get no farther than an occasional Facebook quip.
Gordon has a lovely writing style, and, for some , style might be enough . Reading this book is a bit like eating an entree of a large scallop on some sort of gastriqe with a curly-cue of carrot on top. If that thrills you- read this book.

I need to bite down on a chile or a coriander seed, or better yet, stop and try to analyze why a meal is wonderful. This book is not that kind of meal.

[Geri Degruy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seeing Through Places reads like a novel but is the telling of Mary Gordon's life by way of the places in which she finds herself - literally and figuratively. She is about my age and grew up near where I did so I found myself tumbling into my own memories of places where I was trying to find who I was.

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would give this 2.5 stars if I could. I liked the idea of this book, and I enjoyed the chapters about her childhood. But later in the book, her ideas began to lose shape for me. I mean, I understand that they were always attached to the places that shaped her, but it felt as if was just reading someone's diary.

[Stacy · Rating 1 out of 5]

For me, this book has been a laborious read! I think you have to have a strong background in Catholicism to appreciate it on a more personal level. I felt like someone who didn't get the punchline because they didn't understand the joke.

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I thought as much about my life and the people in it as much Mary Gordon appears to think about her life and the people who were in it then I’d be continually exhausted, close to a mental breakdown, and so “thought out” that it’d be hard for me to actually write anything. As a matter of fact I’m somewhat exhausted from having read Seeing Through Places. Thankfully it’s not a bad exhausted. More like as in a job well done, or making it through a hard situation and afterwards being grateful for your life, just as it is.

[Rhonda Rae Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful prose in the memoir...I loved it and feel that somewhere Mary and me have much in common!

Will be reading this again, there are many different places she describes and all take you to another world as well as a world that we share with humanity.

My favorite was "The Room in the World" as it moved me to tears. I identified with the emotions she expressed and her reflective thoughts reverberated within my own heart and soul.

This is one that all will find something within of themselves!

[Karen Scarpelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I greatly enjoy Mary Gordon's early autobiographical fiction and her memoirs. I come from a similar background and am only a few years younger than she is, so it's probably nostalgia more than anything. Nobody else can evoke the cloistered world of pre-Vatican II American Catholicism like her. Most other "I grew up Catholic" stories are jokey, ironic, or otherwise pass judgment in hindsight. I don't like her later fiction. To me it just doesn't have the same emotional immediacy.

[Elizabeth Schurman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could not resist this, being focused on place. I'm not sure what else there is to bind writing, actually, except for place. Fun to see her view of New York as an outsider, though she grew up in, offically, the city. How she went from outsider to insider. And her view of priests and their world, very different from mine, but I'm always interested in other people's religious ideas, particularly when they were kids.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book. These essays on important places in Gordon's life are full of lovely language and thoughtful detail. By using place as a way to explore childhood and family, Gordon breathes new life into memoir writing.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity by Mary Gordon – This is one of the craft books I read in college while I was working on novels, and I really benefitted from thinking through my setting details! Happy Reading!

[Alden · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.bookpage.com/0001bp/mary_g...

[Vera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories of childhood and the places that shaped the author's view of the world. An interesting child's perspective on the 1950s in the beginning.

[Monique · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting group of short stories - a memoir of sorts - sometimes told through the eyes of a child.

[Hollis Fishelson-holstine]

I usually like Mary Gordon, but these (a memoir) seemed just too dark and depressing to me

[MJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Cape Cod chapter makes it all worth it.