My Meteorite

January 1, 2020
A memoir from the acclaimed writer and visual artist. Guggenheim fellow Dodge is a well-known artist whose work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among other venues around the world. For literary sorts, however, he may be best known as the singular presence in his partner Maggie Nelson's inventive memoir The Argonauts, which described the relationship between two incredible artistic creators. Dodge's memoir is in no way linear, which may make it difficult to work through for some readers, and there's little context to the material. The book, he writes, "was drafted, in large part, using unaugmented recollection as a primary source; some of the resulting inaccuracies have been purposefully left uncorrected." Throughout, the author discusses Nelson and her book and provides affectionate passages about their children. The narrative, presented in clipped entries that don't always cohere, jumps decades among the late 1970s and the present. One of the main themes is death, as Dodge considers the passing of his parents ("the place where my mom died was a nightmare. It was industrial dying, industrial death"), but there's also plenty of existential trivia, with long, considered opinions on movies like Blade Runner, Arrival, and arcane films from the past. Dodge displays a wildly creative voice, opining on the remarkability of coincidence, the nature of individual intelligence, and the titular meteorite at the center of the narrative, which the author seems alternatively obsessed with and horrified by, depending on the moment. Ultimately, the text reads like a diary, compelling yet fragmentary confessions that might concern children at one moment and graphic, anonymous sex in another. Readers who like the voice will find plenty of intriguing bits about movies, books, and a somewhat psychedelic visit to Six Flags, but strangers will be wandering into unknown territory. Enlightening insight into a creative mind that may stifle some readers but that adds further mystique to a unique persona.

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February 24, 2020
In this astute debut memoir, told in a series of nonlinear vignettes, visual artist Dodge questions the seeming randomness of life. Dodge taps into philosophy, literary theory, film, language, and quantum theory, using his knowledge in these subjects as a prism through which to explore events from his life: the illness and death of his father, the discovery of his birth mother who placed him for adoption, life with his wife (Argonauts author Maggie Nelson) and children in Los Angeles, and preparing for an exhibition of his work. Dodge references science writer George Musser and explores what Musser calls “remote connectedness”—a “sort of alchemy” that Dodge feels “manifests in the form of coincidences, correspondences, or simultaneities.” For Dodge, it makes a sort of cosmic sense that decades after a high school trip to San Francisco, where he imagined meeting his birth mother in a bar called the Lost and Found, he finds out that she had indeed been a regular there. In a similar vein, a piece of a meteorite he ordered on eBay becomes a talisman to help him try to understand everything from environmental change to his father’s Alzheimer’s onset. Dodge’s memoir of “yearning to reenchant the world” entertains and enlightens.

March 1, 2020
Famed visual artist and filmmaker Dodge grapples with chance and existentialism in his transcendent memoir. In unpredictably arranged vignettes that traverse several decades of his life and include personal anecdotes, philosophy, and obsessive research, Dodge addresses everything from parenthood to poetics to popular culture. Pondering the frightening implications of artificial intelligence, he breaks down Westworld and the film Her. Marveling over the power and frailty of language, he reflects on Nabokov's sly novel Pale Fire. Finally, he addresses the discomfiture of being the subject of a book, both his own and The Argonauts (2015), an intimate memoir by his partner, Maggie Nelson. The titular meteorite reminds him that life is a delicate product of coincidences. After purchasing the space rock online, Dodge cherishes it as he does one of his children, even as he fears its mysterious allure. Regardless, he credits it for a confluence of events, including reuniting with his biological mother, who abandoned him after his birth. Dodge's challenging book provides no explanation for existence, but it does celebrate it, offering affable observations on family, death, and consciousness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)