"A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom" is a modern, jazzy take on the bildungsroman that uses everything from personal memoir, a fugue-like structure, poetry, images, lyrics, and diaries to paint a vivid, eloquent portrait of gay, black, Jessie Vincent Grandier and the striving African American middle class that spawned him in the late 1950s. Born to a high-yellow, upper-crust New Orleans Creole mother and a lowborn, Louisiana bayou-bred, military father, Jessie steadfastly battles to reconcile his existence with ...
Read More
"A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom" is a modern, jazzy take on the bildungsroman that uses everything from personal memoir, a fugue-like structure, poetry, images, lyrics, and diaries to paint a vivid, eloquent portrait of gay, black, Jessie Vincent Grandier and the striving African American middle class that spawned him in the late 1950s. Born to a high-yellow, upper-crust New Orleans Creole mother and a lowborn, Louisiana bayou-bred, military father, Jessie steadfastly battles to reconcile his existence with expectations and preconceptions of those around him -- black and white. He shoulders the weight of his black bourgeois family's hopes through the '60s and '70s, his mother's death, and the resulting familial melodrama that tears him and his family apart. If not broken, then seemingly irreparably bent, he wends his way through Harvard in the '70s and drinks his way through the Reagan '80s in gay bars from the LA barrio to Beverly Hills. When Jessie's grandiose ambitions have abandoned him - when he's almost beaten, and when it's a breath away from too late, he looks back, regards the jagged shards of his life and pieces them into a remarkable whole. The post-modern writing careens from pure ribaldry, to brutal honesty, to deeply tender, to "gonzoesque," but at the intelligent heart of the novel is the internal struggle of dislocation, and the deconstruction of an African-American family. It is a completely unique look at race, sex, and finding redemption the hard way.
Read Less
Add this copy of A Memory of Fictions (Or) Just Tiddy-Boom to cart. $17.02, new condition, Sold by Books2anywhere rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Fairford, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2024 by Legba Books.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
Add this copy of A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom to cart. $21.87, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2024 by Legba Books.
Add this copy of A Memory of Fictions (Or) Just Tiddy-Boom to cart. $10.74, very good condition, Sold by HPB-Emerald rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2024 by Legba Books.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
If Ernest Hemingway was black, gay, and writing about growing up in the 1950s, he would have written something like Leonce Gaiterââ?¬â?¢s ââ?¬Å"A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom.ââ?¬Â?
ââ?¬Å"A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boomââ?¬Â? is presented as a bildungsroman and the description is apt. We follow the protagonist Jessie Vincent Grandier from birth as a military brat to his burgeoning adulthood as a Harvard graduate and a failed LA screenwriter. The book is a therapeutic journey of self-awareness as we learn with Jessie how you find your identity in a world that places you in boxes, how you can let your past speak without defining you, and why it all matters in the first place.
Jessie wasnââ?¬â?¢t supposed to be born. He says that his mother Lulene wasnââ?¬â?¢t supposed to have any more children after his two older sisters were born, however, she was determined to bear her husband a son. Jessie is named after his father Jessie Vincent Grandier, Sr. and from that moment on, Jessie acts out a terrible dance. As the only son in a family of women, he is marked to perpetually exist under the shadow of his abusive and negligent father. Part of his identity will always be connected to his father who he calls, ââ?¬Å"the Colonel.ââ?¬Â? He never meets the expectations his father set for a ââ?¬Å"boy to have.ââ?¬Â?
It�s not just his father. Lulene raised him to be tough because she knew she couldn�t always protect him. She dies when Jessie is only eleven and his last chance of self-expressive identity dies with her. Gaiter uses the image of Jessie�s lack of tears from here to the end of the book to show Jessie�s emotional constipation. He must discover who he is amid a minefield of expectations and assumptions.
Harvard makes assumptions about his identity based on the color of his skin. His college roommates make assumptions because of his educational ambitions. His friends make assumptions based on the persona he displays. Boyfriends make assumptions based on their needs. It is only when Jessie can confront all these expectations and the ghost of his mother that he can finally embrace who he is.
There is a Hemingway-Faulkneresque stream of consciousness that makes the book both engaging and a little off-putting. Although the whole book is written in the third person, that is easy to forget since the book is so personal that Jessie and his struggles are your own.
