In the Dark Room: a Journey in Memory

by Brian Dillon

Boldly combining the highly personal with the brilliantly scholarly, In the Dark Room explores the question of how memory works emotionally and culturally. It is narrated through the prism of the author's experience of losing both his parents, his mother when he was sixteen, his father when he was on the cusp of adulthood and of trying, after a breakdown some years later, to piece things together. Drawing on the lessons of centuries of literature, philosophy and visual art, Dillon interprets the relics of his parents and of his childhood in a singularly original and arresting piece of writing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Ireland, 21st Century, Irish Literature, Philosophy

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

BRIAN DILLON was born in Dublin in 1969. His books include Objects in This Mirror: Essays (Sternberg Press, 2014), Sanctuary (Sternberg Press, 2011), Ruins (MIT Press/Whitechapel Gallery, 2011), Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (Penguin, 2009) and In the Dark Room (Penguin 2005).

His writing appears regularly in the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, Artforum and frieze. Dillon is reader in critical writing at the Royal College of Art, and UK editor of Cabinet magazine. He is working on a book about the Great Explosion at Faversham in 1916.

Reviews

[Elena Sala · Rating 5 out of 5]

IN THE DARK ROOM (first published in 2005) is the first part of a sort of trilogy. Brian Dillon muses about memory and its relationship to physical space. He looks back on the death of his parents when he and his brothers were quite young. His mother died from a long and debilitating illness that affected every part of her body; his father, from a sudden heart attack.

The sale of his childhood home prompts his reminiscences as he walks around the house while he is packing up. His focus is on the memory that is held in objects, in photographs, in rooms. Grief, buried feelings seem to be always lurking in the background.

IN THE DARK ROOM is a very personal though scholarly work. Intertextual references abound: Sebald, Barthes, Bachelard, Proust, Eliot, Dickens and other authors grace the observational and meticulous prose of this moving and meditative memoir.

[Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is an unforgettable piece of melancholy writing, guys. It’s relevant, very well written and moving; its contents, somehow, made even more heart wrenching by a total absence of sentimentality.

Whether in terms of structure, or of courage and honesty, I don’t think I’ve ever read a memoir as powerful as this one. It’s not every day that we see people lowering their defences, and let their deepest inner feelings materialise onto a piece of paper for the whole world to see.

Actually, I believe that such honesty, as I saw here can, more often than not, make people uncomfortable. Loneliness, depression, death and grief don’t tend to be people’s favourite topics, right? Actually, as far as I’m concerned, these are all matters that people tend to hide and run away from.

In theory, this is a book of essays on the intricacies of memory that, at times, leaned a bit to the academic side. I didn’t mind the (few) instances where it did so, because, even then, its heart never stopped beating.

[Vartika · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the Dark Room is a memoir in essays, a meditation on memory set against the ever-darkening backdrop of loss. In many ways, all memory is a function of loss as much as it is of time, for in all time past and our memories thereof is a recognition of how thinly the present can and does wane. Dillon's exploration of memory—his own—however, is shaped more by the lasting ache of bereavement; it is his orphaning at ages 16 and 23 that serves here as a marker of memory and how it marks the world around him and the house, things, photographs, bodies, and places it comes to settle on like fine, persistent dust.

Like all good essayists, Dillon weaves along with his own thoughts an awareness of the works—both artistic and philosophical—of others, including St. Augustine, Borges, Rachel Whiteread, Bergson, Donne, Nabokov, Sebald, Proust, and, ofcourse, Walter Benjamin. Like all good memoirists, he entrusts the reader with confessions of guilt and shame just as easily as with his more 'consequential' reflections. However, despite the skillful prose, there are moments where this book slips from brilliant to what can very crudely be called boring. Add to that the fact that its contents make it heavier than it weighs, and you may see why it took me nearly two weeks to get to the end.

What I enjoyed about this book was its examination of personal memory through tangible items. This is appended by a final section appropriately titled "Coda," which looks at the way in which the author's relationship with music; the way its intangible forces reach out to touch him; has been altered by his loss and the memories thereof.

In the Dark Room did not disappoint, and as far as making meaning out of all that makes one desolate goes, it is rather admirable. I may not pick this book up many more times, but I'm glad to have read it.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fitzcarraldo Editions has just released this republishing of In the Dark Room that was first published in 2005 by Penguin Ireland. It is a passionate meditation on the memory and loss of the author's parents during his formative years, using a controlled framework of sections dealing with House, Things, Photographs, Bodies, Places, and Coda. Brian Dillon artfully weaves in the melancholic thoughts and writings of other great writers' such as Marcel Proust, St. Augustine, W.G. Sebald, and Walter Benjamin, as he seeks to understand how memory is formed and attaches itself to the external environment, and how these attachments generate emotional remembrances.

Dillon discusses growing up with his two younger brothers and his parents, his mother passing away from a long, debilitating illness when he was 16, and shortly thereafter, losing his father at 23.

[Matthew White · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the Dark Room is essentially a stylised diary entry of mixed effect. Using a backdrop of bereavement, Dillon carves his thoughts into several ideas (house, things, photographs, bodies, places) which are then expounded upon in relation to the memories that each of these evoke. As any pursuer of art and literature will be aware, life’s wretchednesses and callouses are a prime catalyst for creation - the piece being an evocation and an exorcism of a person’s natural bleeding response to crisis. This is, then, not a light read in any sense other than in respect of the happier sides to the lifespans which are inevitably reflected throughout the array of photographs which ultimately drive the narrative.

Credit is due to the author for his calling of various artistic sources to ricochet his own thoughts and ideas - many of these referred auteurs being clear choices in respect of melancholy, others intellectual spokespeople without an obvious foray into the same dark place. Dillon writes with skill and some flair, but the outcome of his sad tome is in any event inessential, unless the reader has a particular interest in familial relations, historical recordings and the impact of tangible items on the same, biological effect on the individual’s response to loss, or a combination of the above.

[Henry Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and deeply sad exploration of memory and grief. At its best it enlivens the things that make up our memories: dwellings, objects, and places. But as with collectors of precious things, there are times when I felt like Dillon was constructing a melancholic cabinet of curiosities.

[Bert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A journey into memory. It is walking through continuous rooms. In a house that will never be fully your home again. Too sacred. Too far. And always this urge to erase. To remove and put things into other, further, rooms. Memories, the good ones, the sad and dreadful ones, are always too close. The journey never leaves home.

While reading Dillon I had to think about some earlier reads - Roland Barthes, Cees Nooteboom, W.G. Sebald, Patrick McGuinness ...

https://woordjes.wordpress.com/2015/0...

https://woordjes.wordpress.com/2015/0...

[Garrett Peace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense in both style and content and heavy stuff, emotionally—there’s a general accumulation of despair over the course of the book that’s likely to turn off most readers—making this uniquely well-suited to a slow reading. As you can see here, it took me almost two months to finish it; I read the first half in 30-40 pages chunks every couple of weekends or something. Dillon’s a skillful writer, and I think his prose style here adds something vital to the atmosphere of the book—I’m curious if his writing in the two essay collections he’s published is like this—but certain passages can come off as unnecessarily overwrought. And I imagine you could say the same thing about the whole book if you weren’t in the right mood. But his materialistic focus + the prose here really felt like it rewired my brain, to the point where his extended musing on, say, a bedroom door and the way the light came in around the edges prompted similar recollections that I hadn’t thought about in years. Reading this made me reconsider my own family history and prompted realizations about events that weren’t spoken about in detail at all—certain conclusions left implicit, if not outright unsaid. For that, I owe thanks.

[Joep Rutgers · Rating 2 out of 5]

By intellectually and poetically describing his grief, Dillon fails its subjective experience by coming off sociopathic. In stead of exploring his emotions in a compelling way, his cognitive processes are the in focus. Mainly, they comprise of the realization that his parents are people too, and the realization -in some all knowing narrator's like hindsight- that he has been mentally ill for most of his life. Strange that in such a dramatic family affair, no second thought or description is spared for his brothers with whom he shares the entire experience. Let alone close friends and other family. In stead of persons, he focusses of lifeless objects and concepts and plainly copies other works into his works. Some chapters were interesting, most were boring.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting blend of memoir and academic reflection, as Dillon provides a framework for his memories of the deaths of his parents that shifts between different focus points: house, objects, etc. He quotes liberally from other sources and this distances him and us from a more intimate style of memoir. I think on the whole it works.

[Dante · Rating 4 out of 5]

macabre but necessary! Dillon's means of inquiry are often unsettling, but it's well-written and admirably direct.

(Glad to have found Dillon's writing through a recent post on the new left review's Sidecar blog)

[Alya AlShaibani · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a walk down memory lane with the loss of memory. I couldn't put the book down.

[Michelle Orrelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible important read.

[Lindsey King · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I found Dillon’s ornate style cloying and tiresome. Sometimes I found it nice.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clinically and heartbreakingly precise musings about some utterly personal universals: time, space, memory, recrimination. Several instances of mist—and tears at the end.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Jonathan Groen]

Heel erg mooi

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

“This is the time. And this is the record of the time.”

“The way I keep in touch with the world is very gingerly, because the world touches too hard.”

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book on so many levels. On one level it's a book about memory so it has that distance from its subject matter which is death of his parents. But when he writes about his mom's illness as well as his dad's unexpected death it really hits home.

This book serves many purposes. It's an excellent document on the nature of one's awareness of death and his it affects one but also the author has the intelligence to write about literature an how that ties in with ones personal ordeal, especially in family manners.

No doubt this book is very personal but by no means a downer. What it is in a nutshell is a writer analyzing despair and turning it into gold for the reader.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were quite a lot of negative reviews about this but I'm glad I ignored them. I think the problem is that many people expect it to be a typical misery memoir - which I didn't want or expect - so therefore I wasn't disappointed. I loved the way Dillon talked us through the process of examining his parents lives - the close scrutiny to objects, photos, places and of course within each, memory. A fascinating process, ripe with lessons to learn for anyone seeking to explore their own memory more, as well as a moving insight into a single family.

[Elie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dillon's exploration of memory is disappointingly restricted to an exploration of his memory, focused narrowly on the Dublin house of his childhood and on his parents' deaths. There is nothing original about the way Dillon approaches memory-as-photograph, nor are his musings on excerpts from other writers -- Bachelard and Proust, among others -- at all new or thought-provoking. I felt tricked into reading this rather poor memoir and almost wished I'd reread 'Angela's Ashes' instead.

[Oisín · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good, though slightly bloodless and too much intellectualising at points. Overall quite moving.

[Reem Rafei]

"Music became a way of perpetuating and obscuring the silence"