Roger Rosenblatt

A memoir that straddles the author’s childhood in NYC, roaming the streets pretending to be a detective, and his ‘current,’ adulthood walking of the same streets, now as a writing professor after his evening class has finished.

I know Rosenblatt gets All The Praise for his “memoirs that read like poetry,” but I just…don’t see it. It feels like he’s trying too hard to be lyrical and clever, so much so that it distracts from the narrative he’s trying so hard to make seem effortless. And the narrative itself is scattered all over the place; he hops from one left-field reference to the next without much connection. If you’re looking for a naturally effortless, lyrical memoir, try Stephen Fry, and if you crave an impressive amount of trivia that seems hodgepodge but is seamlessly woven together, try Bill Bryson. As for me, I found neither here.… (mehr)

I think the biggest driver of how I felt about The Boy Detective is that it's billed as being the autobiographical story of a man who was an (imaginary) detective as a kid, and I wanted to read the heck out of that book. Bad news: After I read The Boy Detective, I still want to read the heck out of that book, but this isn't it.

Instead, The Boy Detective is the meandering musings of Roger Rosenblatt as he reflects back on his life. It's not really about anything, per se, and previous reviews that have referred to it as a series of essays are erroneous: it is more snippets of thoughts, half-poems, and imaginary situations. The idea is that Rosenblatt is literally going on a walk and allowing his mind to wander, as it does. At times, this is kind of fun -- at his best, Rosenblatt has a lot of interesting and insightful things to say about the interiority of the self, the persistence of the childhood self (for him, exemplified by the Detective), how perception of self changes with age and autobiographical writing. He has some less interesting thoughts about his family and New York City in general. Some of the vignettes are simultaneously beyond bizarre and droll such as a hypothetical conversation with Hitler. Overall, because of the choppy and disjointed organization, I found reading the book to be more of a chore than anything else. Some of the paragraphs harken back to earlier passages, so its best enjoyed in longer sittings. Had I not read it on vacation, I'm not sure I would have found it readable. The saving grace is that even in the boring parts, Rosenblatt is a master of language and I found his English so lyrical that it compensates for the content.

I still really want to read that other, nonexistent book, though.… (mehr)

El autor de esta formidable memoria describe cómo a través de la rutina consiguió superar la muerte repentina de su hija a los 38 años. Él y su mujer decidieron recuperar su rol de padres e irse a vivir con sus tres nietos ?Jessica, de siete años, Sammy, de cinco, y Bubbies, de veinte meses? y su yerno Harris. Admirado por la fortaleza de este, y por la tenacidad y habilidad de su mujer, Ginny, Roger cumple con su principal tarea: convertir el desayuno con sus nietos en el momento más íntimo e instructivo del día.El día en que murió Amy, Harris les dijo a Ginny y Roger: «Es imposible». El relato de Roger explica lo que hace una familia para convertir en posible lo imposible.… (mehr)