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A review by jonscott9
Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
4.0
“We were just a couple of fallen angels, rolling the dice of our lives. We’d heard all the horror stories of early marriages and fast divorces and broken hearts. But we knew none of them would happen to us, because as Dexy’s Midnight Runners sang to Eileen, we were far too young and clever. What if we just decide not to fall apart?"
I was first taken by the rock critic Rob Sheffield's style and tone in his Rolling Stone reviews. Whether or not I agree, I just like the way he writes. So I decided to pick up this little jam of a memoir built on the solid rock of real romance that perched above the shifting sands in his life that are popular music.
Rob and Renée, his wife of five years or so, had a beautiful, easy chemistry. Neither knew that one would become a widower in such a short time. It hardly spoils anything to tell that Renée suffered a pulmonary embolism that had her gone in a minute, and Sheffield constructs his chapters around the mix tapes that they made together and for each other during their courtship and married life.
So many spots appear in the book where Sheffield could have gone sentimental or gushy, but he maintains the tone of a grieving, realistic man almost without fail. He's also nothing if not self-aware about the powers of music: "[Personics] was just another temporary technological mutation designed to do the same thing music always does, which is allow emotionally warped people to communicate by bombarding each other with pitiful cultural artifacts that in a saner world would be forgotten before they even happened.”
Along the way Sheffield of course ruminates about certain songs and artists, often to hilarious effect (see the section where he and Renée thought up names for their would-be synth-pop duo). These digressions always find their way back, as do his spot-on song and film references.
Sheffield remarks that no wisdoms or revelations come to the one grieving the loss of a lover, but he provides some thoughts just short of astute himself, and via the subtly funny and tragic vehicles of Jacqueline Kennedy ("the most famous widow of all, our Elvis, our Muhammad Ali") and his elders ("Aunt Peggy refused to allow indoor plumbing right up to her dying day, which was in 1987. Whenever anybody suggested indoor plumbing, she always said, ‘Sure, we’ll be drowned in our beds!’").
You emerge on the other side of this read with a genuine desire to know and befriend the dear Renée. You feel the loss right along with the author. Nothing more can be asked of the reader, so he doesn't. What Sheffield does do is pull no punches in this sad but sober retelling of "life and loss, one song at a time."
I was first taken by the rock critic Rob Sheffield's style and tone in his Rolling Stone reviews. Whether or not I agree, I just like the way he writes. So I decided to pick up this little jam of a memoir built on the solid rock of real romance that perched above the shifting sands in his life that are popular music.
Rob and Renée, his wife of five years or so, had a beautiful, easy chemistry. Neither knew that one would become a widower in such a short time. It hardly spoils anything to tell that Renée suffered a pulmonary embolism that had her gone in a minute, and Sheffield constructs his chapters around the mix tapes that they made together and for each other during their courtship and married life.
So many spots appear in the book where Sheffield could have gone sentimental or gushy, but he maintains the tone of a grieving, realistic man almost without fail. He's also nothing if not self-aware about the powers of music: "[Personics] was just another temporary technological mutation designed to do the same thing music always does, which is allow emotionally warped people to communicate by bombarding each other with pitiful cultural artifacts that in a saner world would be forgotten before they even happened.”
Along the way Sheffield of course ruminates about certain songs and artists, often to hilarious effect (see the section where he and Renée thought up names for their would-be synth-pop duo). These digressions always find their way back, as do his spot-on song and film references.
Sheffield remarks that no wisdoms or revelations come to the one grieving the loss of a lover, but he provides some thoughts just short of astute himself, and via the subtly funny and tragic vehicles of Jacqueline Kennedy ("the most famous widow of all, our Elvis, our Muhammad Ali") and his elders ("Aunt Peggy refused to allow indoor plumbing right up to her dying day, which was in 1987. Whenever anybody suggested indoor plumbing, she always said, ‘Sure, we’ll be drowned in our beds!’").
You emerge on the other side of this read with a genuine desire to know and befriend the dear Renée. You feel the loss right along with the author. Nothing more can be asked of the reader, so he doesn't. What Sheffield does do is pull no punches in this sad but sober retelling of "life and loss, one song at a time."