A Common Pornography

January 4, 2010
A memoir in collage form, this frank but fragmented narrative chronicles the author's early life in the Pacific Northwest. Told in a series of small pieces, some less than a quarter of a page long, Sampsell follows a stream-of-consciousness series of memories centering loosely around a collection of family secrets unearthed after his father's funeral. Replicating the effects of memory, Sampsell's chronicle begins piecemeal and becomes more detailed as it goes, emphasizing the unfiltered honesty of the story and his efforts to tell it. Though it can be frustrating waiting for the pieces to add up, there's enough bathos, dysfunctional family antics and coming-of-age adventures-naked photoshoots, psychiatric hospitalizations, late-night donut shops and the tri-city New Wave scene-to keep readers turning pages. Sampsell's eye for detail and deadpan delivery envliven a dark personal history with bathos and a powerful desire for understanding.

November 1, 2009
A pop-culture–infused, sexually charged memoir of growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s.

Sampsell (Creamy Bullets, 2008, etc.) structures the narrative as a series of brief vignettes, retroactively assembling the jagged pieces of a family history splintered by abuse, abortion, incest, addiction and institutionalization. The author effectively combines swift, lyrical prose and provocative subject matter, including childhood and adolescent exploits in suburban environs, fluctuating interpersonal relationships, sexual experimentation, popular music, pornography addiction, Catholicism and racial tension. The author presents his work as a"memory experiment" spurred by the death of his father and the resulting revisitation of old places; the fragmentation of the narrative reflects the piecemeal nature of memory. In the introduction, Sampsell focuses tightly on his father, presenting him as a wrathful phantasm. The author then moves on to his adolescence, during which he remained ignorant of his complex and troubled father's greatest transgressions. He chronicles his growing interest in radio broadcasting, relationships and sex. Eventually he had a son of his own, prompting an oath to be a better father than his had been, but we see little of that father/son relationship, other than an occasional mention. It's an odd reticence, considering the candor with which Sampsell describes the loss of his virginity to an impassive prostitute, or his participation in mutual masturbation in a sex-shop video booth.

Crisp, punchy reminiscences that mostly resonate but occasionally ring hollow.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2010
Many coming-of-age memoirs depict a journey through hellish abuse. Sampsells verbal snapshots capture the more peripheral scene of a kid along for the ride, under the watchful eye of a distant, resentful fathera humorless, God-fearing bore. For many who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, the details of this American life will be familiar: the music, the sports teams, the Jaws-inspired aquaphobia, the release of the hostages from Iran, the mannerist rebellion of New Wave. Other aspects will resonate with males, from the naive cruelty of boys to elaborate strategies built around the acquisition and secretion of dirty magazines, to a candid account of obsession with girls and/or sex that recalls Jeffrey Browns tell-all graphic novels. McSweeneys readers may recall some of these pieces reworked and fleshed out from an earlier chapbook, and while some newer passages (such as those about the abuse and institutionalization of Sampsells half-sister) feel arbitrarily chopped into vignettes, mostly the material perfectly fits the form, shards of memory fused into a compelling concretion of moments. A worthy addition to the work of such contemporary memoirists as Nick Flynn, Augusten Burroughs, Dave Eggers, and Stephen Elliott.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)