On Rick Bragg's "All Over Byt the Shoutin'"

 

 During much of my reading, I take notes, especially when sentences and paragraphs relate to or remind me of situations in my own upbringing and experience.

 My essay, “On Reading ‘The Belle of Amherst’—a one-woman play by William Luce about Emily Dickinson”—was full of personal remembrances, and was accepted to effusive praise by the editor of a regional magazine.  “On Reading a P. D. James Novel: Notes, Underlinings and Comments,” appeared in the same publication a year later. “One Thing Leads to Another,” observations from Iris Murdock’s The Black Prince, was published by CALLIOPE, a small press journal based in Arizona.

   Now comes Rick Bragg with a memoir about his family. Describing his deathbed visit with his “mean and hateful, and hated father,” he says, “He never said he was sorry, he never said he wished things had turned out differently; he never acted like he did anything wrong.”

            My dad didn’t either. He even bragged to his sons, sons-in-law and his grandsons that he was smarter than the lot of them.

I picked up ideas for essays, articles and my own memoir from Bragg’s writing. What would it feel like to never own the roof over your head since you lit out from your old home place? I know, because from the time I married in 1960 until 1980, we rented someone else’s roof. And walls and floors.

   What would it be like to have never had a doll? What would it be like never to hold, open, or be able to read a book? That I can’t imagine.

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