A Midrash Memoir: A review of Robert Clark’s “Bayham Street: Essays in Longing”
“In vain have you acquired knowledge if you do not impart it to others.” Deutronomy Rabba Midrash
Perhaps, because I write in the genre of creative non-fiction I have little patience for most contemporary memoir. However, I have just finished reading Robert Clark’s “Bayham Street” for the second time and recommend his book without reservation. These are essays elegantly crafted, a writing that is deceptively simple in appearance but contain a myriad of quiet layers. Clark’s (he is no relation) stylish and intelligent prose comes as no surprise; he is the author of multiple non-fiction and fiction books. His previous efforts often employ quirky or non-standard paths to tell stories but are always inscribed with a careful and precise language. As I read these essays, often about episodes recounted in previous work (particularly his memoir “My Grandfather’s House”), I sensed I was being taken deeper, past familiar places and into a more confusing yet richer territory, as if I were looking at a Rembrandt painting’s background, brushed expanses whose multiple paint applications allow the patient observer to see a near infinite number of hue differences in what might, at first blush, appear to be a monolithic dark tone.
Clark writes about issues that have engaged his interest for the majority of his adult life. As a member of Clark’s generation, his essays concerning growing up with Dave Garroway, divorce, J. Fred Muggs, “West Side Story,” and coming to adulthood in the Age of Aquarius richly engaged my memories. However, to others this subject matter might superficially suggest yet another baby boomer cultural indulgence, but this would be too thin a reading. Writing lyrically into these well-known cultural markers, Clark explores what he remembers, what he thought, and what he now thinks about photography, religious belief, sentimentality, vocation, F. Scott Fitzgerald, relationships, historical synergy, and the writing enterprise.
As a writer, reading Bayham Street in some places left me with a sense of deja vu, ideas about writing craft and writers that had been dropped into my manuscripts by readers, editors, or teachers as small digestible snippets of wisdom. Of course, from previous reading many of the events that form rallying points for Clark’s explorations were not new but considered as elements in the “Bayham Street essay collage” seem examined with a wide-angle lens or from multiple vantage points. This is the “slanted” or “collaged” or “lyric” approach to essay championed by many contemporary writers including David Shields–Shields is one of three to whom Clark dedicates this volume. This more modern essay approach is far harder to implement but is successfully used here. The author subtly imparts to the reader a far greater “understanding” at the end of the collection than the sum of the parts.
I especially appreciated Clark’s courage to reassess previous judgements. Indeed, I heard a mature voice, a comfortable voice, a voice that was remarkable thoughtful but without cant or agenda. Rather than writing in a binary or changed syllogism style (“I believed this absolutely but because of new data I now think this.”), the prose has the reasoned pliability and paradox of rabbinical Midrash. That is, a writing containing a constant respect for history, an honoring of previous experience and interpretation. Yet, Clark has applied an imaginative lens to the present–what new insights or meanings or understandings can I discover for my current life’s experience in light of my previous interpretation?
Philip Lopate, in describing Bayham Street, had difficulty precisely placing Clark’s “Bayham Street” into a category suggesting it was neither, “. . . a memoir nor a collection of personal essays.” I quite agree and why I consider this collection of essays best as a Midrash Memoir. Like the practice of midrash on sacred texts, understanding Clark’s essays cannot be accomplished by a kind of “drive by reading. His are not essays meant to be the grist for the next HBO special. Rather, these are thoughtful and considered words that once read need to be re-read, mulled, wondered about in light of the past, and only then carefully and provisionally interpreted for the present.