A Common Pornography is the perfect title for a memoir that reminds us there is no such thing. Following his father’s death in 2008, Kevin Sampsell’s family began to speak more honestly about their history, its “disturbing threads,” and Sampsell was compelled to expand his sixty-page memory experiment of the same title into a collage of both his youth and the experiences of his family. The memoir, recently published by Harper Perennial, strings together vignettes, some only a paragraph, some five or six pages, to tell Kevin Sampsell’s story.

I’d rather not recount much plot. While spoilers don’t detract from Kevin’s writing, the collage’s effects are stronger if his story is experienced a section at a time. It’s a memoir of growing up, of experimenting in sex and love. It’s also the story of a young artist, wholeheartedly throwing himself at different fads and aesthetics. The book is as funny as it is heartbreaking.

Sampsell chooses a clear, straight-forward prose that ages with its narrator. As a fifth-grader he’s amused by the cool “twisted glass thing” one of his brothers uses to smoke pot, and as an adult and father he knows a crack pipe when he finds one. The precision increases. The reflections increase. But one of the great decisions Kevin makes is to not over-qualify the scenes and stories. He doesn’t justify or explain decisions away—what happened is left to stand on its own. The transparent prose compliments this candidness.

I know there is a debate among some of my essay-writing cohorts concerning “aboutness,” whether or not essays succeed or fail by examining ideas. To the book’s credit, Sampsell shirks psychological justification and ramification as well as discussing Sexuality or Fatherhood or any other capital letter concept.

Because of the collage structure, rarely does one vignette position itself as more important than the others and the relevance of some will strike each reader differently. Often the last lines have a double meaning or are wonderfully understated to echo over the next few pages. There is also space between the vignettes, break-ups and arguments not shown. The unspoken events can be more haunting than the illustrated.

While some of the events in A Common Pornography can be described as “catastrophic” or “horrific,” they’re also easily identified with—that’s the trick of the title, well-executed by Sampsell: a story incredibly unique told so it feels common.

There’s a great interview with the author over at Powells.com, (filled with plenty of plot details), and the book has an entertaining P.S. section, filled with pictures of Kevin’s family and a timeline of Future Tense Books, his press.

Tags: Kevin Sampsell

books, reading

6 Responses to “Bark Review: A Common Pornography”

1. Asa Maria says:

   February 18, 2010 at 12:02 pm

   Awesome review TJ. I want to read this.

   Reply
2. Shira Richman says:

   February 18, 2010 at 3:02 pm

   I love your opening sentence! And I am also interested in checking out this book–mostly because the structure intrigues me.

   Reply
3. Kurt Eisenlohr says:

   February 18, 2010 at 11:57 pm

   Read this book. It’s beautiful, masterfully written. You’ll love it!

   Reply
4. tanya debuff says:

   February 19, 2010 at 7:03 pm

   This book sounds great. I often find myself drawn to essays and books that shun the Aboutness, or that at least challenge the idea of Aboutness. I think Aboutness is as much made up by the reader as intended by the author. This, I think, is the beauty in all writing.

   Reply
5. Sam Edmonds says:

   April 29, 2010 at 10:51 am

   Well said, my dude. I want to reread it already! This is definitely going on my thesis list. Aboutness can eat a bag of dicks, or at least hide behind stellar prose and bleed when it needs to.

   Reply
6. Sam Ligon says:

   April 29, 2010 at 11:14 am

   I love how this book is structured–the fragmentation like a reflection of how memory works.

   Reply