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An American Memory
The narrator looks back on his childhood and his relationship with his family
227 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1988
39 people want to read
About the author
Eric Larsen
12 books6 followersBorn in Northfield, Minnesota, Eric Larsen graduated from CarletonCollege and in 1970 took his doctorate from the University of Iowa. For thirty-five years, he taught English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, retiring in 2006. His first novel, An American Memory (1988), won the Chicago Tribune’s inaugural Heartland Prize. That novel was followed by three others, joined now by The Book of Reading to complete a saga of family and nation. For fifty-four years, Larsen was married to the editor Anne Larsen, and the couple raised two daughters, Flynn and Gavin, both active and highly productive in the arts. Larsen lives in New York City and has also authored the non-fiction works A Nation Gone Blind, The Skull of Yorick, and Homer Whole: A Reading of the Iliad. Learn more at www.ericlarsen.info.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 26, 2022
a very ambitious and beautiful novel. Like the title suggests, the novel is a series of memories of an American family that settles in the midwest. The story instead of occupying the various nows of the past instead is situated within the artifacts left behind. The characters don’t so much as exist as are reflected upon by the photographs, journal entries, and belongings they leave behind.
The narrator Malcom reconstructs his family history by presenting their artifacts to us and his connects and personal memory around them. He even tells us, these people are dead, they no longer exist and did not exist (like his young parents courtship) while he was alive. Instead he has constructed a version of them for us to explore with him.
This approach takes great skill on the part of the author and is impressive. The narrative however is not a fixed reflection of evidence of the past (much like Jeffery Eugenedes “The Virgin Suicides” is constructed), instead the prose is pushed to the edges of open verse and bounces between narrators to form a dream like cornucopia of human memory bound to each other by blood and proximity.
An early chapter seamlessly moves between Malcom, and his father Harold’s memories of their respected fathers while maintaining one another’s now until the reader begins to question if “my father” is Harold or Harold’s father (Malcom’s grandfather).
There is an extended middle section from the perspective of Malcom’s sister Hannah (named after Harold’s aunt? not well explained as there are two hannah’s in the novel) about her adolescent romantic interest in her second cousin, uncle Charles. This is my favorite part of the novel as its set during a vacation to Lake Superior, a place I spent summers as a child and are expertly described I felt as though Larsen reached into my own childhood memory to describe the shore and water and cottages.
Ultimately the novel is about fathers and their children. It is clear by the end of the novel that Malcom is attempting to cope with his past by creating a cohesive narrative around it. But his own fractured memory about these people haunts him and we see his own parents faults reflecting back into his adult life with his wife and children.
The biggest shortcoming is the constant descriptions of Harold as a deeply cruel man, who slams doors, belittles his family, and kicks dogs without much drive or explanation as to why he really acts this way. His father’s religiosity? His lack of fulfillment? His leaving his nature as an artist and writer for his responsibility to his family? All could be inferred and are, but theres so little narrative to back it up it all chocks up to he’s cruel because i’m told he is and Malcom is tortured by him because i’m told he is.
Somewhat an obscure novel based on the small number of reviews.
Yes, read it!
Also funny because many years later a certain other Eric Larsen has found footing as a highly profitable writer in the non fiction world. Here is an Eric Larsen of fiction with an outstanding voice who, now in 2022, like his own novel’s characters, faded into the artifacts of his own life’s creations.
The narrator Malcom reconstructs his family history by presenting their artifacts to us and his connects and personal memory around them. He even tells us, these people are dead, they no longer exist and did not exist (like his young parents courtship) while he was alive. Instead he has constructed a version of them for us to explore with him.
This approach takes great skill on the part of the author and is impressive. The narrative however is not a fixed reflection of evidence of the past (much like Jeffery Eugenedes “The Virgin Suicides” is constructed), instead the prose is pushed to the edges of open verse and bounces between narrators to form a dream like cornucopia of human memory bound to each other by blood and proximity.
An early chapter seamlessly moves between Malcom, and his father Harold’s memories of their respected fathers while maintaining one another’s now until the reader begins to question if “my father” is Harold or Harold’s father (Malcom’s grandfather).
There is an extended middle section from the perspective of Malcom’s sister Hannah (named after Harold’s aunt? not well explained as there are two hannah’s in the novel) about her adolescent romantic interest in her second cousin, uncle Charles. This is my favorite part of the novel as its set during a vacation to Lake Superior, a place I spent summers as a child and are expertly described I felt as though Larsen reached into my own childhood memory to describe the shore and water and cottages.
Ultimately the novel is about fathers and their children. It is clear by the end of the novel that Malcom is attempting to cope with his past by creating a cohesive narrative around it. But his own fractured memory about these people haunts him and we see his own parents faults reflecting back into his adult life with his wife and children.
The biggest shortcoming is the constant descriptions of Harold as a deeply cruel man, who slams doors, belittles his family, and kicks dogs without much drive or explanation as to why he really acts this way. His father’s religiosity? His lack of fulfillment? His leaving his nature as an artist and writer for his responsibility to his family? All could be inferred and are, but theres so little narrative to back it up it all chocks up to he’s cruel because i’m told he is and Malcom is tortured by him because i’m told he is.
Somewhat an obscure novel based on the small number of reviews.
Yes, read it!
Also funny because many years later a certain other Eric Larsen has found footing as a highly profitable writer in the non fiction world. Here is an Eric Larsen of fiction with an outstanding voice who, now in 2022, like his own novel’s characters, faded into the artifacts of his own life’s creations.
August 23, 2018
Well written. Difficult at time because of turmoil and family dynamics.
April 6, 2019
A compelling story of generations of midwesterners. Silent, angry, solitary people who barely relate to each other. Sad story, yet somehow couldn’t stop reading it.
September 21, 2015
A good fall read.
Was a quick with some wonderfully lyrical language that is reminiscent of Fitzgerald. The story reminded me of East of Eden in its generational expansiveness (but not tragedy). Basically vignettes of a family from grandparents forward and the small everyday things that shape one persons understanding and memory of their family.
Was a quick with some wonderfully lyrical language that is reminiscent of Fitzgerald. The story reminded me of East of Eden in its generational expansiveness (but not tragedy). Basically vignettes of a family from grandparents forward and the small everyday things that shape one persons understanding and memory of their family.
April 30, 2017
"She is not perturbed or troubled by his speaking so frequently of travel, of plans, vague and insistent desires to be other and to be elsewhere that lead inevitably to nothing. She listens. She does not question. She does not scrutinize any element of his behavior or character, and she finds therefore in these contented years of luxury and sunlit ease no hint of the quietly coiled morbidity that lies within them - no more than she sees symbols of small deaths in the abandoned costumes that accumulate behind him like empty husks: his fishing gear tangled on cellar rafters, skis left warping in a corner by the furnace, hunting clothes mildewing in a wooden crate, golf clubs lying under dust on the attic floor, his shotgun uncased and slowly rusting at the back of the front hall closet."
An American Memory is life stripped down to its essence: love, hate, time, memory and death. Loneliness and failure dominate a father and his son. The son, from an early age, senses his father's disquiet. Like all children, he's trapped in his family and is also doomed to live with the effects. Later, fear creeps from his subconscious and he is lost. Life is periods of violence and chaos and then an uncertain calm but not peace, just waiting, anxiety, boredom, lies.
An American Memory is life stripped down to its essence: love, hate, time, memory and death. Loneliness and failure dominate a father and his son. The son, from an early age, senses his father's disquiet. Like all children, he's trapped in his family and is also doomed to live with the effects. Later, fear creeps from his subconscious and he is lost. Life is periods of violence and chaos and then an uncertain calm but not peace, just waiting, anxiety, boredom, lies.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews