The Remembering: Reflections on Love, Art, Faith, Heroes, Grief and Baseball

by Jason Warburg

In the span of 20 months, Jason Warburg lost his mother, his father, and his job of more than a decade. The day after he collected the last family mementos from his father’s house, the world shut down in a once-a-century pandemic. As he observes in the pointed tones of a veteran ironist and stubborn optimist, “Writers refer to a series of events like this as ‘material’.” The Remembering collects the raw, reflective, and revealing essays that were born during this intense period along with their precedents, examining with clear eyes and open heart the essential touchstones of one writer’s love, art, faith, heroes, grief and baseball. From its origins as an essay collection, The Remembering blossoms into something unexpected—a deeply personal memoir exploring the joys, pains, losses and gains that fuel and shape our growth as both artists and human beings.

Praise for The Remembering :

The individual pieces in The Remembering are consistently entertaining, but it's the way they fit together to tell a larger story that gives the book its power. It's an addictive read, filled with images and themes that linger.

– Peter McDade, author of The Weight of Sound

In The Remembering , the keen perception and insight prevalent in Jason Warburg’s writing about music is turned inwards. The Remembering was written with a musician’s ear, from the cadence of the prose to the way the themes build and resonate.

-- Jean-Paul Vest, songwriter

190 pages, Paperback

Published November 23, 2021

About the author

The son of a writer and an architect, Jason Warburg was building worlds in his imagination before he learned to ride a bike. His new novel Home Was a Dream is the third in the Tim Green series, as the perpetually curious Green digs deep into his music-writer father’s past and uncovers a hidden legacy: his grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. Jason’s lifelong obsession with music and a nine-year adventure in politics fueled his debut novel Believe in Me, in which young political operative Tim Green trips and falls headlong into the orbit of a globe-trotting rock and roll band. The sequel Never Break the Chain expands Tim’s universe as he tracks his wayward mother through LA’s rock clubs toward a cathartic confrontation. Jason has also released two volumes of non-fiction—My Heart Sings the Harmony, a collection of 20 years of writing about music, and his essay collection / memoir The Remembering: Reflections on Love, Art, Faith, Heroes, Grief and Baseball.

Reviews

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jason Warburg's The Remembering is beautifully written, insightful, and deeply honest. Jason has a remarkable ability to quickly dig into a subject of personal or global importance, weave his thoughts and arguments into fascinating patterns, and arrive at conclusions that are both surprising and life-affirming. As a musician, writer, and avid baseball fan, I repeatedly discovered kernels of truth in his essays about the essence of music, the art and craft of writing, and the timeless beauty of baseball that spoke to my life and illuminated memories of my own. His observations on grief alone were worth the price of admission. I'm glad I picked up this book.

[Mike Trippiedi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of essays by Jason Warburg is a relatable glimpse inside the mind of an observer. Sharing his experiences that range from losing his job, to the early days of COVID, along with everything else life can throw, these writings paint a passionate picture of a writer, a son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, lover of music, and a philosopher on baseball's connection to life. And while these essays all range from good to inspiring, it's the final section on grief that makes "The Remembering" a phenomenal read.