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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
There is something enchanting when reading into another time and place, romantically experiencing an elsewhere, and Tosh Berman captures moments of this in slight chapters; each focused on a particular person, event, or happening. Telling the story of one's life, specifically their upbringing when compounded by the relationship to an artist-parent seminally famous (see what I did there?), cannot be an easy project. Tosh allows for this in the structure he employs, smartly, letting the child's memories bloom as they mature and comprehend more. It is in the final chapters however, the teen years, where the sharing of favorite cassette tapes, rock bands he would rather dismiss, and sexual positions enjoyed in his bedroom-garage that we lose touch with the sepia-colored, dusty, and precious world we first wandered around in at the start of this book, and in turn wonder about Wallace and consider what we haven't been told. There is a real history here that Tosh experienced first hand, and this enables greater appreciation for the making of an art not only for its precedent, but as situationally important. One wishes Topanga Canyon still held the same magic and mess it once did, and in turn breathe the air of those incredible people who ventured and created within its remoteness.
Although I enjoyed this book, it is not a memoir or biography of Wallace Berman. He is on the periphery and that is alright, he is a complicated person to parse out. What irked me the most was when the book was only a memoir of Tosh and not the art world or times. When he would speak of sexuality as a teenager and yadda yadda yadda. He had a rich interior for "love" but isn't great in school and has a legendary father. At times I thought it deeply insightful and at times it was name dropping and mediocre prose.
I swear this only took so long for me to finish because there was about a week there (maybe more?) where my personal life was in unexpected chaos, and then on top of that I also got sick. It's accessible, charming, intriguing, surprising (even for those of us lucky enough to know Tosh personally, because who out there really knows ALL of Tosh?), amusing, and lovely. I love the non-linear format, and the shorter, stream-of-consciousness-like chapters, which make it both easier to get into from any angle, and make me feel a lot more confident about my own memoir writing style (but seriously, folks). It captures a special space in time, a fascinating group of extraordinary and ordinary people floating in and out of his life, and a special writer all at the center of it.