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Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir
Stunning for her daring originality, the author of Negroland gives us what she calls "a temperamental autobiography," comprised of visceral, intimate fragments that fuse criticism and memoir.
Margo Jefferson constructs a nervous system with pieces of different lengths and tone, conjoining arts writing (poem, song, performance) with life writing (history, psychology). The book's structure is determined by signal moments of her life, those that trouble her as well as those that thrill and restore. In this nervous system:
- The sounds of a black spinning disc of a 1950's jazz LP as intimate and instructive as a parent's voice.
- The muscles and movements of a ballerina, spliced with those of an Olympic runner: template for what a female body could be.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy finds her way into the art of Kara Walker and the songs of C�cile McLorin Salvant.
- Bing Crosby and Ike Turner become alter egos.
- W.E.B. DuBois and George Eliot meet illicitly, as he appropriates lines from her story "The Hidden Veil" to write his famous "behind the veil" passages in The Souls of Black Folk.
- The words of multiple others (writers, singers, film characters, friends, family) act as prompts and as dialogue.
The fragments of this brilliant book, while not neglecting family, race, and class, are informed by a kind of aesthetic drive: longing, ecstasy, or even acute ambivalence. Constructing a nervous system is Jefferson's relentlessly galvanizing mis en scene for unconventional storytelling as well as a platform for unexpected dramatis personae.
Margo Jefferson constructs a nervous system with pieces of different lengths and tone, conjoining arts writing (poem, song, performance) with life writing (history, psychology). The book's structure is determined by signal moments of her life, those that trouble her as well as those that thrill and restore. In this nervous system:
- The sounds of a black spinning disc of a 1950's jazz LP as intimate and instructive as a parent's voice.
- The muscles and movements of a ballerina, spliced with those of an Olympic runner: template for what a female body could be.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy finds her way into the art of Kara Walker and the songs of C�cile McLorin Salvant.
- Bing Crosby and Ike Turner become alter egos.
- W.E.B. DuBois and George Eliot meet illicitly, as he appropriates lines from her story "The Hidden Veil" to write his famous "behind the veil" passages in The Souls of Black Folk.
- The words of multiple others (writers, singers, film characters, friends, family) act as prompts and as dialogue.
The fragments of this brilliant book, while not neglecting family, race, and class, are informed by a kind of aesthetic drive: longing, ecstasy, or even acute ambivalence. Constructing a nervous system is Jefferson's relentlessly galvanizing mis en scene for unconventional storytelling as well as a platform for unexpected dramatis personae.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published April 12, 2022
227 people are currently reading
8935 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 236 reviews
March 31, 2022
I am a fan of Margo Jefferson's cultural criticism which always reflects her sensibilities and unique voice. This is a lovely, unexpected book. It has a really interesting structure, one that feels like a nervous system, sprawling but tightly connected. It is part memoir, part cultural criticism, with very stylish writing and an impeccably lush vocabulary.
July 30, 2022
Audiobook….read by Karen Murray
…..5 hours and 1minute.
This was my first introduction to Margo Jefferson
For some reason, I had a mixed reaction to the book title and book cover.
The artwork of the two dancers on the cover were eloquently lovely, but the title “Constructing A Nervous System” feels cold to me.
Oh well…
It took me a few days of starting & stopping to find my groove.
Once I finally committed to it —I enjoyed what I learned…..
a little about movies, books music, art, artists, athletes, dance, ballet, childhood memories, identity, mothers, race, class, beauty, desires, education, Jefferson’s prominent medical physician father, her mother’s passion with fashion, other negro children, African-American mentors,
and
“black things that didn’t belong to the world of slavery”….
“Power and learning to imagine what won’t and can’t imagine you”.
Lots of tidbits about
Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, Josephine Baker,
Dr. Phil, George Bush, Ella Fitzgerald, classic authors, famous musicians and movie stars…..
…..and ultimately self identity and love.
I liked it — respect it — I’m inspired by who Margo Jefferson is— but as my own
‘yippy’ feelings — I’m not jumping up and down.
Admiration 5 stars
Enjoyment 3 stars
Overall — 4 star rating.
…..5 hours and 1minute.
This was my first introduction to Margo Jefferson
For some reason, I had a mixed reaction to the book title and book cover.
The artwork of the two dancers on the cover were eloquently lovely, but the title “Constructing A Nervous System” feels cold to me.
Oh well…
It took me a few days of starting & stopping to find my groove.
Once I finally committed to it —I enjoyed what I learned…..
a little about movies, books music, art, artists, athletes, dance, ballet, childhood memories, identity, mothers, race, class, beauty, desires, education, Jefferson’s prominent medical physician father, her mother’s passion with fashion, other negro children, African-American mentors,
and
“black things that didn’t belong to the world of slavery”….
“Power and learning to imagine what won’t and can’t imagine you”.
Lots of tidbits about
Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, Josephine Baker,
Dr. Phil, George Bush, Ella Fitzgerald, classic authors, famous musicians and movie stars…..
…..and ultimately self identity and love.
I liked it — respect it — I’m inspired by who Margo Jefferson is— but as my own
‘yippy’ feelings — I’m not jumping up and down.
Admiration 5 stars
Enjoyment 3 stars
Overall — 4 star rating.
April 11, 2022
This was beautiful. I really enjoyed it. Short and sweet. Relatable. All around a lovely read.
May 11, 2022
I took my time reading this, and I am glad to have done so. I may have read Maggie Nelson and Hanif Abdurraqib and Elizabeth Alexander and Ross Gay and Natalie Diaz and Natasha Trethewey before this, but they rest their work upon the stack of writing Margo Jefferson has been producing for decades.
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August 5, 2022A thought-provoking memoir with an unusual structure.
March 23, 2023
Although the subtitle is “A Memoir,” this experimental text does such novel things with the genre that it bears little resemblance to most memoirs I’ve read. For that reason alone, I can see why the judges shortlisted it. During a 5×15 online event I watched, Jefferson described her book as “an assemblage of ideas, memories, sensations, feelings, and other people’s words—not just my own.” It’s also a reckoning with culture – particularly jazz music and dance by African Americans, but also particular examples from the white literary canon.
Jefferson was a long-time theatre and book critic for Newsweek and The New York Times and won a Pulitzer Prize for her criticism in 1995; she now teaches writing at Columbia University. She has previously published another memoir, Negroland, and a biography of Michael Jackson. Here she blends her chosen genres of life writing and cultural criticism. Her aim, she said, was to craft “criticism with the intensities and intimacies of memoir” and “memoir with the range of criticism.”
Jefferson mentioned that the deaths of her mother and older sister (who was like her muse) left her an orphan and, strangely, “cleared the stage for me to step out and speak my lines.” Indeed, the book is loosely structured as a play, opening with the metaphor of an empty stage and ending with the direction “BLACKOUT.” In between there are many imagined dialogues with herself or between historical figures, such as the bizarre pairing of George Eliot and W.E.B. Du Bois. Some quotations and definitions appear in italics or bold face. Ella Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker play major roles, but there’s also a surprisingly long section devoted to Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark, which Jefferson loves and has often taught, yet finds problematic for how it enshrines whiteness (“Confederate Southern mythmaking”).
I don’t feel that I got much of a sense of the sweep of Jefferson’s life from the book, just a vague impression of an upper-middle-class Black upbringing. (Perhaps Negroland is a more straightforward memoir?) To be sure, she was keen to avoid “slogging through chronology,” as she explained, instead welcoming onto the page “a repertory company of myself as I encounter all the materials of my life—the factual and historical as well as the creative.” And so I do feel I have met her as an industrious mind, drawing connections between disparate aspects of experience and cultural consumption. This is a model of how a critic (like myself) might incorporate a body of work into a record of life. Yet when so many of her touchstones do not overlap with mine, I could only observe and admire from afar, not be truly drawn in.
Some lines I loved:
“Remember: Memoir is your present negotiating with versions of your past for a future you’re willing to show up in.”
“Older women’s tales— ‘Une femme d’un certain âge’ tales—are hard to pull off. They risk being arch.”
(of Ella Fitzgerald) “You turned the maw of black female labor into the wonderland of black female art.”
“Women’s anger needs to be honored—celebrated and protected—the way virginity used to be! … I’ve spent my adult years working on an assemblage of black feminist anger modes.”
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Jefferson was a long-time theatre and book critic for Newsweek and The New York Times and won a Pulitzer Prize for her criticism in 1995; she now teaches writing at Columbia University. She has previously published another memoir, Negroland, and a biography of Michael Jackson. Here she blends her chosen genres of life writing and cultural criticism. Her aim, she said, was to craft “criticism with the intensities and intimacies of memoir” and “memoir with the range of criticism.”
Jefferson mentioned that the deaths of her mother and older sister (who was like her muse) left her an orphan and, strangely, “cleared the stage for me to step out and speak my lines.” Indeed, the book is loosely structured as a play, opening with the metaphor of an empty stage and ending with the direction “BLACKOUT.” In between there are many imagined dialogues with herself or between historical figures, such as the bizarre pairing of George Eliot and W.E.B. Du Bois. Some quotations and definitions appear in italics or bold face. Ella Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker play major roles, but there’s also a surprisingly long section devoted to Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark, which Jefferson loves and has often taught, yet finds problematic for how it enshrines whiteness (“Confederate Southern mythmaking”).
I don’t feel that I got much of a sense of the sweep of Jefferson’s life from the book, just a vague impression of an upper-middle-class Black upbringing. (Perhaps Negroland is a more straightforward memoir?) To be sure, she was keen to avoid “slogging through chronology,” as she explained, instead welcoming onto the page “a repertory company of myself as I encounter all the materials of my life—the factual and historical as well as the creative.” And so I do feel I have met her as an industrious mind, drawing connections between disparate aspects of experience and cultural consumption. This is a model of how a critic (like myself) might incorporate a body of work into a record of life. Yet when so many of her touchstones do not overlap with mine, I could only observe and admire from afar, not be truly drawn in.
Some lines I loved:
“Remember: Memoir is your present negotiating with versions of your past for a future you’re willing to show up in.”
“Older women’s tales— ‘Une femme d’un certain âge’ tales—are hard to pull off. They risk being arch.”
(of Ella Fitzgerald) “You turned the maw of black female labor into the wonderland of black female art.”
“Women’s anger needs to be honored—celebrated and protected—the way virginity used to be! … I’ve spent my adult years working on an assemblage of black feminist anger modes.”
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
July 11, 2022
"Constructing a Nervous System" is an aptly named memoir from Margo Jefferson, a woman known for her cultural criticism of American literary and music scenes, especially in relation to race politics. The memoir is made up of fragmented essays on various topics that coalesce to form a nervous system that makes up a human (and this case, this book); they read like streams of consciousness that flow through one's mind as we shape and remold ourselves into a version we could live with.
It's interesting to read these essays, knowing that you're seeing what Jefferson wants you to see about herself or some of the aspects that make up her 'nervous system'. She flits from topic to topic with a jarring fluidity: from talking about the politics of sweat when you're in the limelight; to patriarchy and her relationship and struggle with it; to the inherent racism in the entertainment industry; to her musings on several infamous Black figures that colored the American landscape in the past few decades; to a study of her fellow writers and critics; and lastly voicing her opinion on the inherited burden from past generations and whether we've 'earned' such burdens or not. These random musings can seem scattered and incoherent, but they are always focused on how these narratives shaped her perspective as she tried to make sense of herself.
As Jefferson herself succinctly puts it: "Remember: Memoir is your present negotiating with versions of your past for a future you're willing to show up in".
This was the first writing I've read from Jefferson, and it was definitely an interesting read even though I've never been acquainted with her works prior to this. This memoir is perfect for those who are interested in the inner workings of a critic as well as for those who are looking for insights into the identity struggle we may all face in one form or another.
It's interesting to read these essays, knowing that you're seeing what Jefferson wants you to see about herself or some of the aspects that make up her 'nervous system'. She flits from topic to topic with a jarring fluidity: from talking about the politics of sweat when you're in the limelight; to patriarchy and her relationship and struggle with it; to the inherent racism in the entertainment industry; to her musings on several infamous Black figures that colored the American landscape in the past few decades; to a study of her fellow writers and critics; and lastly voicing her opinion on the inherited burden from past generations and whether we've 'earned' such burdens or not. These random musings can seem scattered and incoherent, but they are always focused on how these narratives shaped her perspective as she tried to make sense of herself.
As Jefferson herself succinctly puts it: "Remember: Memoir is your present negotiating with versions of your past for a future you're willing to show up in".
This was the first writing I've read from Jefferson, and it was definitely an interesting read even though I've never been acquainted with her works prior to this. This memoir is perfect for those who are interested in the inner workings of a critic as well as for those who are looking for insights into the identity struggle we may all face in one form or another.
April 22, 2023
Free-wheeling, improvisational construction of a self in a racist country using jazz musicians, singers, and performers like the famous Josephine Baker who constructed their selves (or struggled to do so) in a hostile world.
A fascinating work.
A fascinating work.
April 16, 2022
A beautiful book. Constructing a Nervous System is the impressionistic memoir of the critical life of Margo Jefferson. It is a study of identity composed of heredity, upbringing, race, gender, and culture. In this unfurling of the influences that made the critic Margo Jefferson who she is, we discover the experiences and unique genius that made her favorite (or most intriguing or influential) artists who they were, a wide-ranging array: Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, Billy Holiday, Willa Cather, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bud Powell, Ike Turner, and among the most memorable, Josephine Baker. In the process, she reveals, both headlong and obliquely, a little of who she is. This is never so true as in her internal dialogue about Ella Fitzgerald, a goddess and sometimes an embarrassment to women of her own race: her "sweat and size." An impeccable product of the Black bourgeoisie, Jefferson is haunted by the perfect standards her mother imposed on her and the low expectations imposed by a dominant white society. I found the book to be exquisite and joyous for what it says and sometimes painful for what it doesn't.
October 13, 2022
This memoir is oddly and refreshingly confessional in that the reader is told a lot more about the author’s opinions and what certain artists (particularly singers) have meant to her than about the usual aspects of confession, from love life to drug use. What one learns most about Jefferson, especially if one has read her first memoir, Negroland, is how well she has been able to let loose artistically. This is a much freer and more complex book, in which the author takes lots of chances, most of which work.
September 1, 2022
Love love love the gorgeous and unsparing attention to style and embodiment! Really smart stuff (the politics of sweating!?) The experimental and fragmentary bits didn’t really work for me; I think Jefferson works best when she really spends time digging into something closely rather than flitting around, but I also get how that stylistic gesture is related to the titular project.
April 16, 2022
This is my type of memoir. I loved it. Jefferson’s voice is so strong.
June 4, 2023
Reflections and lessons learned/the content of this book made me feel…
“…how to achieve - succeed as a symbol and as yourself. Remember, memoir is your present negotiating with versions of your past, for a future you’re willing to show up in”
I wasn’t familiar with Jefferson when I borrowed this book, although in hindsight now recognise the author of a book that I’ve looked at several times, Negroland. It was the absolute raw title that got me, expecting it to be a direct memoir, but it was much more a social commentary feeding into who she is.
Really interesting to hear in the unfortunate time after the death of Tina Turner, as certain narratives change in a time of mourning/fawning (although not by Jefferson as she’d already seen through others) - some of this I was already familiar with, but not with other parts of the history (which I didn’t feel needed any prior knowledge for context). We are all hopefully able to find role models and people to aspire to in life, and this is a really interesting take on retelling through the characters and the music
“…how to achieve - succeed as a symbol and as yourself. Remember, memoir is your present negotiating with versions of your past, for a future you’re willing to show up in”
I wasn’t familiar with Jefferson when I borrowed this book, although in hindsight now recognise the author of a book that I’ve looked at several times, Negroland. It was the absolute raw title that got me, expecting it to be a direct memoir, but it was much more a social commentary feeding into who she is.
Really interesting to hear in the unfortunate time after the death of Tina Turner, as certain narratives change in a time of mourning/fawning (although not by Jefferson as she’d already seen through others) - some of this I was already familiar with, but not with other parts of the history (which I didn’t feel needed any prior knowledge for context). We are all hopefully able to find role models and people to aspire to in life, and this is a really interesting take on retelling through the characters and the music
January 4, 2024
”Ricorda: il memoir è il tuo presente che negozia con le versioni del tuo passato in vista del futuro in cui vorrai metterti a nudo.”, e Margo Jefferson fa proprio questo lavoro; smonta, smantella e ri-costruisce: dà vita a nuovi circuiti neuronali attingendo alla vita e all’arte di grandi personaggi. Non semplici citazioni, ma uno scavo a fondo per trarre significati con lo strumento della critica che le è congeniale, a partire dai propri ricordi e dal proprio vissuto.
La lettura diventa immersiva e assecondare gli stimoli cercando i brani musicali o i video che costellano il testo, confrontare le biografie personali e artistiche, permette di cogliere appieno la complessità che sta dietro alla costruzione e rivendicazione di una pluri-identità che è allo stesso tempo di genere, di classe, di appartenenza.
Cinque stelle convinte, se non di più.
La lettura diventa immersiva e assecondare gli stimoli cercando i brani musicali o i video che costellano il testo, confrontare le biografie personali e artistiche, permette di cogliere appieno la complessità che sta dietro alla costruzione e rivendicazione di una pluri-identità che è allo stesso tempo di genere, di classe, di appartenenza.
Cinque stelle convinte, se non di più.
November 29, 2022
i'm glad I fought the urge to finish this! i suppose i went in thinking Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir would be a memoir in the traditional sense. i realized quickly this was not that. we often associate memoir as writing of events, memories, with a conclusion to potentially overcoming adversity. Jefferson contorts all those themes of memoir into something new, a performance, a scene.
Remember: Memoir is your present negotiating with versions of your past for a future you're willing to show up in
this was a work of the materials used to make identity, the materials that provided her to create a sense of self, the work of recreating, interrogation of oneself as well as the act of writing.
Jefferson is a prose stylist, this may not be for everyone (as i struggled with her approach and style throughout), but i found it to be a worthwhile, sharp, and honest display of work.
Remember: Memoir is your present negotiating with versions of your past for a future you're willing to show up in
this was a work of the materials used to make identity, the materials that provided her to create a sense of self, the work of recreating, interrogation of oneself as well as the act of writing.
Jefferson is a prose stylist, this may not be for everyone (as i struggled with her approach and style throughout), but i found it to be a worthwhile, sharp, and honest display of work.
December 15, 2022
For its rave reviews I found Constructing a Nervous System to be scattershot and difficult to follow. Its premise is grand: a memoir shot through with fragments of biography and critique. Juxtapositions abound - Jefferson and her heroines - on topics of race, style, artistry, agency, and legacy. I love jazz and I love novels, so her pieces on Bud Powell and Willa Cather were great reads (though, fair as it is, I knew she would go after Cather's racist undertones). The writing, by and large, was underwhelming, which perhaps is my own problem because I tend to have this trouble with memoir - the voice so singular in its direction that I can't seem to stay on track and over time just want to be finished with it. So, while I can understand its plaudits from some, I couldn't connect with its presentation. Usually I'm all for adventurous prose (see Claire Louise-Bennett's latest hybrid of memoir and fiction) but it has to resonate somewhere, and Jefferson's project did not do that for me.
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April 22, 2024Giuro, io non ho capito niente. Qualcuno di un po' più sveglio di me mi può aiutare?
Entro in una nota libreria di Venezia e spiego alla libraia cosa voglio. Mi mette in mano questo e dice 'capolavoro'. Mi siedo in campo, ordino uno spritz (al Select perché l'Aperol fa schifo) e comincio a leggere. Dopo venti pagine mi arrendo. Non ho capito niente. Mi dico che è meglio se lo riprendo in mano con calma a casa. Lo riprendo. Non ho capito niente.
Entro in una nota libreria di Venezia e spiego alla libraia cosa voglio. Mi mette in mano questo e dice 'capolavoro'. Mi siedo in campo, ordino uno spritz (al Select perché l'Aperol fa schifo) e comincio a leggere. Dopo venti pagine mi arrendo. Non ho capito niente. Mi dico che è meglio se lo riprendo in mano con calma a casa. Lo riprendo. Non ho capito niente.
March 10, 2024
Finished it and then started over again immediately.
May 28, 2024
unusual and interesting; admittedly a few references went over my head but a lot to take away in sentiment
Read
February 15, 2023I saw this had been listed for a couple of prizes (Rathbones Folio and Gordon Burn) so thought I’d give it a shot. It felt sort of sui generis - not quite memoir, not quite litcrit. Very readable and plenty of food for thought.
July 1, 2023
3 1/2 stars. I really admired this wide-ranging, fragmented book of cultural criticism and memoir, but it didn’t pull me in. I listened to the audiobook and found my attention straying regularly. If I had been in a clearer state of mind, I probably would have enjoyed it more.
January 19, 2023
I am a big fan of Margo Jefferson. Years ago, I read her memoir Negroland and felt her words transported me to her world. I think the same with Constructing a Nervous System. Margo Jefferson’s writing is lush and transportive. This short book introduces different topics such as the fetishization of Black men’s bodies, Black women’s otherness, preference for white skin, queerness, and subjects like Ella Fitzgerald, Ike Turner, Nina Simone, Odetta, Josephine Baker, and Willa Cather.
My favorite thing about memoirs is when it is in a literary tone that keeps them interesting. Margo Jefferson’s cultural commentary doesn’t feel like reading a textbook or a long list of complaints, it offers true criticism and wonders about how she will lay out her subjects. The way that she is able to turn real-life people into a sprawling cast of characters is admirable and interesting to read about. Her book really constructs a nervous system with the way each story interweaves between generations, eras, and topics.
While I am leaning toward the enjoyment side of this, I have some complaints about this book. I think there were times when it felt a little confusing to read. I felt as if I should know where she was going with the writing style but it was difficult to pick up on. There were some parts I wished were more straightforward and to the point. I appreciated what she had to say about her own biases and prejudices but I wish she went into a little more detail on how she overcame them. It also jumps around from different time periods which made me a little anxious.
All in all, a solid memoir that is interesting and pleasant to read despite its heavy subject matter. I recommend it to people who are big readers.
My favorite thing about memoirs is when it is in a literary tone that keeps them interesting. Margo Jefferson’s cultural commentary doesn’t feel like reading a textbook or a long list of complaints, it offers true criticism and wonders about how she will lay out her subjects. The way that she is able to turn real-life people into a sprawling cast of characters is admirable and interesting to read about. Her book really constructs a nervous system with the way each story interweaves between generations, eras, and topics.
While I am leaning toward the enjoyment side of this, I have some complaints about this book. I think there were times when it felt a little confusing to read. I felt as if I should know where she was going with the writing style but it was difficult to pick up on. There were some parts I wished were more straightforward and to the point. I appreciated what she had to say about her own biases and prejudices but I wish she went into a little more detail on how she overcame them. It also jumps around from different time periods which made me a little anxious.
All in all, a solid memoir that is interesting and pleasant to read despite its heavy subject matter. I recommend it to people who are big readers.
July 24, 2022
Experimental, brave, witty, raw. Honest. I loved how she refers to the negative voice we all have as “the monster” and the intertwining of the stories of many black artists + her own family members as part and parcel of her own.
March 6, 2022
The 👑 does not disappoint.
March 26, 2024
This book was compelling and left me wishing that I could spend a day inside Margo Jefferson's brain. It made me wish that I was smarter and could even begin to have the complexity of thought that is so apparent throughout "Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir". As the New York Times review says, "If Margo Jefferson had gone into another profession — cabinetmaking, let’s say — she’d be the type to draw and redraw plans for a cabinet, build and tinker with the cabinet, stand back to look at the cabinet from every angle, probe the purpose of woodworking, take a break to go examine 2,000 other cabinets, then disassemble her own product and start from scratch with alternative tools, creating an object that no longer resembled a cabinet but performed all the functions of one in startling ways.
Jefferson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, not a cabinetmaker (that I know of), but this is the spirit in which her second memoir, “Constructing a Nervous System,” proceeds. Her experiment is instantly effective."
and then this, "In “Negroland,” Jefferson asked: “What has made and maimed me?” Her new book begins by cross-examining what that “me” consists of, posing the question of how to author a memoir when you chafe against the concept of authority. Two solutions come to mind. One, go mad. Two, redraw the boundaries of the genre. Jefferson selects Option 2, and the book’s title is a sly description of the project, with “nervous system” referring not to anatomical fibers and cells but to the materials — “chosen, imposed, inherited, made up” — that jumble together into an identity. And that may, with skill, be coaxed into a narrative. A quick flip through the pages might set off alarm bells for those fearful of italics, bold type, capital letters, dictionary definitions and chunky quotations. But this is a book for deep submergence, not quick flipping. This is appointment reading. Clear the schedule and commit.
Issuing commands like the above is one of Jefferson’s techniques. “Read on,” she orders at one point. At another, discussing Bud Powell, she insists: “Don’t pity him.” She writes in the first and second person — and also, because why not, in the voice of Bing Crosby. She borrows the conceit of a forensic procedural to investigate Willa Cather’s work. There are letters, calls to action, song lyrics, aphorisms, annotations, unearthed journal entries, a theory of minstrelsy. There are excerpts from Charlotte Brontë, Katherine Mansfield, Ida B. Wells, Czeslaw Milosz; allusions to Beckett, Robert Louis Stevenson and Dante.
It takes a strong sensibility to make all of this jump-cutting not only coherent but hypnotic. Jefferson’s sensibility is one of exquisitely personal engagement with art. Yes, part of the book is a hypertextual rumination on the nature of memoir, and there is a dusting of traditional autobiography — she writes about her father’s depression, her teaching career, a love affair — but in the dance between autobiographer and critic, the critic is leading."
Jefferson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, not a cabinetmaker (that I know of), but this is the spirit in which her second memoir, “Constructing a Nervous System,” proceeds. Her experiment is instantly effective."
and then this, "In “Negroland,” Jefferson asked: “What has made and maimed me?” Her new book begins by cross-examining what that “me” consists of, posing the question of how to author a memoir when you chafe against the concept of authority. Two solutions come to mind. One, go mad. Two, redraw the boundaries of the genre. Jefferson selects Option 2, and the book’s title is a sly description of the project, with “nervous system” referring not to anatomical fibers and cells but to the materials — “chosen, imposed, inherited, made up” — that jumble together into an identity. And that may, with skill, be coaxed into a narrative. A quick flip through the pages might set off alarm bells for those fearful of italics, bold type, capital letters, dictionary definitions and chunky quotations. But this is a book for deep submergence, not quick flipping. This is appointment reading. Clear the schedule and commit.
Issuing commands like the above is one of Jefferson’s techniques. “Read on,” she orders at one point. At another, discussing Bud Powell, she insists: “Don’t pity him.” She writes in the first and second person — and also, because why not, in the voice of Bing Crosby. She borrows the conceit of a forensic procedural to investigate Willa Cather’s work. There are letters, calls to action, song lyrics, aphorisms, annotations, unearthed journal entries, a theory of minstrelsy. There are excerpts from Charlotte Brontë, Katherine Mansfield, Ida B. Wells, Czeslaw Milosz; allusions to Beckett, Robert Louis Stevenson and Dante.
It takes a strong sensibility to make all of this jump-cutting not only coherent but hypnotic. Jefferson’s sensibility is one of exquisitely personal engagement with art. Yes, part of the book is a hypertextual rumination on the nature of memoir, and there is a dusting of traditional autobiography — she writes about her father’s depression, her teaching career, a love affair — but in the dance between autobiographer and critic, the critic is leading."
September 19, 2025
I'm struggling to write a review here. Jefferson is clearly a talented and smart woman. I enjoyed a lot of her prose, but I just couldn't find any flow in this memoir. From a stylistic perspective, it wasn’t really my cup of tea. You should be warned that there are a lot of spoilers in this book as to the outcomes of a lot of literary classics. She discusses them in order to make some very astute points, but I didn't particularly appreciate that element.
At the end of the day, I am probably not smart enough to try to grasp all the concepts she wrote about and the ways in which she goes about trying to articulate those things. This felt more critique in essay form than memoir.
For the record, I am not suggesting that Jefferson wrote a two-star book. I am rating it two stars as a reflection of my own personal experience of reading it.
At the end of the day, I am probably not smart enough to try to grasp all the concepts she wrote about and the ways in which she goes about trying to articulate those things. This felt more critique in essay form than memoir.
For the record, I am not suggesting that Jefferson wrote a two-star book. I am rating it two stars as a reflection of my own personal experience of reading it.
August 9, 2022
On the cover of Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson's fascinating new memoir are what appear to be two dancers in balletic pose; stretching, reaching new heights, one fractured, her dress the image of a nervous system, the other in resplendent orange. The two as one but for a moment, facing off, attempting to find just the right alignment to coexist.
What happens when you're a viewer, spectator, reader who craves imaginative adventure and has no 'avatars' to conduct identity experiments with and on?
There's power in learning to imagine what hasn't, can't and won't imagine you.
There are history lessons contained therein, a cast including Josephine Baker and Willa Cather; reviews of Gone With The Wind through which she peers into not only its impact, the Mammy enigma included, but it is viewed through her relationship with her sister.
To see ourselves through others, Jefferson has created her own ruminating dialogue, adopting alter egos to include as disparate a pair as Bing Crosby and Ike Turner. Her immersion in the music and art; the family ties that shaped her - "You do not stop working to live up to your grandmothers."
"Reverence can make a nervous system experience numbness, episodes of memory loss and blurry vision."
More than an extension of her previous works, Negroland, and On Michael Jackson, Constructing a Nervous System is an inscrutably scathing examination of what it truly means to be an All-American girl.
... which is all Jefferson ever really wanted.
What happens when you're a viewer, spectator, reader who craves imaginative adventure and has no 'avatars' to conduct identity experiments with and on?
There's power in learning to imagine what hasn't, can't and won't imagine you.
There are history lessons contained therein, a cast including Josephine Baker and Willa Cather; reviews of Gone With The Wind through which she peers into not only its impact, the Mammy enigma included, but it is viewed through her relationship with her sister.
To see ourselves through others, Jefferson has created her own ruminating dialogue, adopting alter egos to include as disparate a pair as Bing Crosby and Ike Turner. Her immersion in the music and art; the family ties that shaped her - "You do not stop working to live up to your grandmothers."
"Reverence can make a nervous system experience numbness, episodes of memory loss and blurry vision."
More than an extension of her previous works, Negroland, and On Michael Jackson, Constructing a Nervous System is an inscrutably scathing examination of what it truly means to be an All-American girl.
... which is all Jefferson ever really wanted.
January 16, 2023
unique and ambitious approach to writing memoir—rather than telling her own life as a narrative, jefferson collects and critiques material that lent itself to her becoming. from willa cather to josephine baker to bing cosby and ella fitzgerald, she documents how the people and culture around us serve to create a “nervous system” of personally impactful media. this metaphor wasn’t as clearly fleshed out in the intro/conclusion as it could have been in my opinion, but still a fascinating and insightful way to tell your own story. something about this was motherly idk what. nicely done
December 31, 2023
A unique memoir that's beautifully crafted, wildly interesting, and feels like something only Jefferson could write.
On top of teaching me a ton of things I didn't know before opening it, this book unlocked something new in me about the form of memoir itself, and for that I'm doubly grateful to have read it this year of all years.
[Four-point-five stars for being clever and heady in all the right places.]
On top of teaching me a ton of things I didn't know before opening it, this book unlocked something new in me about the form of memoir itself, and for that I'm doubly grateful to have read it this year of all years.
[Four-point-five stars for being clever and heady in all the right places.]
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