Rosanne Cash

If I've learned anything from blogging, it's how deceptively difficult it is to write in a clear, casual, voice without falling into being chatty or dry. It's hard work, finding the right tone, and it takes a light touch. Rosanne Cash does a nice job, managing to stay interesting and accessible on topics like family, loss, growing up, the artistic process -- things that can either glaze your eyes over permanently or engage you.

A few days ago I had lunch with a friend who saw the book cover show more and said, "Oh, she's one of us." And I think that's Cash's great achievement here -- she's a very simpatico character, familiar despite any privilege or pedigree to anyone who's worked hard to take charge of their creative spark and grow into some kind of accountability. It works as a biography not so much because of what she's done as because who she is -- there's an honesty and friendliness to this book that I liked. And I appreciated the care she took in finding that tone. I have no patience for the spoiled, and Cash manages to come across as honestly down-to-earth and pleasant. I don't need to feel like I could sit down to coffee with the subject of every memoir I read, but once in a while it's nice. show less

A very fine collection of short pieces (fiction, although a couple of them have more of a personal essay feel to them) about life from a distinctly womanly perspective. Rosanne Cash's creativity, originality and intelligence are brilliantly displayed here, effectively overcoming my usual reluctance to read so-called "women's fiction". This is neither chick-lit nor feminist manifesto; it's simply good writing about the female experience, and despite the fact that I have never really show more subscribed to the idea that there is such a thing as "The Female Experience", I enjoyed these stories very much. Most of them involve a woman who has left a man behind, temporarily or permanently, sometimes with children for company, yet there is no male-bashing, and rarely an explanation of why. There is introspection and soul-searching, but all in aid of facing the future with hope and reason. In "Part Girl", a woman determined to reinvent herself drags a heavy suitcase (loaded with her favorite shoes) off the train in Paris: "It was the summer that would begin the second half of her life; she had seen it coming as early as a year ago. There was nothing to do but get away from all things familiar, and look at a lot of art while she was giving birth to her middle-aged self. And take along a lot of choices in footwear, given the unpredictability of the new path." This is the only one of the stories not told in the first person, and it ends on a deliciously optimistic note. At the tomb of Ste. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, Elsa offers "not a prayer but a declaration..."I am a woman, which is to say, part girl and part suffering. The first half of my life has been utterly absorbed by other people and by my own demons. The second half I will spend laughing." In "Shelly's Voices" we meet a woman who experiences visions and seemingly prophetic dreams in which the Deity is a five-year-old girl with an infinite capacity for pain...and for joy. Shelly tells us "I have always heard voices. I have always answered them, in whispers and sighs...I do not court insanity, but I flirt outrageously..." She has psychokinetic experiences, but she tells no one about them. "I know what is acceptable...the world is my asylum...I am the priestess and the committee, the prison and the garden, and the patients are all me." The structure of this particular story is so amazing it's hard to imagine that the author had not been devoting herself to the study and practice of Form over a long writing career. Perhaps Cash's songwriting counts, and there is music theory underlying this composition as well; as little as I know about that subject, I am not equipped to recognize it. As far as I can tell, this is the only fiction Rosanne Cash has published. I wish there were more. show less

I ripped through this fascinating little memoir in just a couple of sitting. Often when I read a memoir I really enjoy, I'll finish it wishing there were more. Not this one. I think Rosanne Cash's COMPOSED is just about perfect just as it is. This is a woman who is not just a singer/songwriter. She is a Writer with a capital 'W.'

I'll admit I have been a fan of Cash's music for over thirty years, at least since "Seven-Year Ache." And her music - and songwriting skills - has just gotten better show more over the years. And now we have the stories behind so many of those songs and albums. And for fans of her famous father (and yeah, I'm one of those too), there is plenty here about her dad, and her not-famous mom, who, thankfully, did find happiness after that volatile divorce. Their daughter, who experienced a failed marriage herself, has learned to appreciate what her parents went through. She's got plenty to say about the price of fame, particularly in her father's case, but her own fame too. She feels empathy now for her parents, who dove "headlong into parenthood when they were barely out of adolescence, but devoted and hopeful ..."

I can't believe Rosanne Cash has been making music for over 35 years now. Where'd da time go, eh? And her dad's been gone for ten years already. I can still remember rocking and singing as kid to his very first pop hit, "Ballad of a Teenage Queen." And now his little girl is closing in on sixty.

Many of her revelations about her family and her life will make you want to weep. Being born into a famous family does not, of course, bring happiness, and Rosanne Cash has had plenty of bumps along the way - drugs, affairs, that failed marriage, some downturns in her musical career, brain surgery. But the parts that will choke you up are about the losses - a baby, her parents and many friends and extended family. She puts it succinctly: "Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong." Her accounts of those losses will break your heart.

A dozen years or more ago I read Rosanne Cash's short story collection, BODIES OF WATER, a book which didn't make much of a splash, but I thought it excellent. Those writing skills are still working for her. I wonder if there might be a novel in her yet. I hope so. But for now, COMPOSED is a memoir that should stick around for a long time. The closing line give me hope: "More to come." I will recommend this book highly. show less

I have a strange sort of (one-way) relationship with the musical Cash family. The first album I ever bought with my own money was Johnny Cash's Thing Called Love when I was 10 years old. The first concert I ever attended was a free concert in 1974 by Johnny Cash and the Carter Family, at the baseball stadium in Davenport, Iowa. The first album I ever checked out at the library was Rosanne Cash's Seven Year Ache in 1981. The first concert I ever reviewed professionally was Johnny Cash again, show more this time in 1987 at the Masonic Temple in Davenport. Four years later, the Man in Black was one of the first celebrities I ever interviewed in person.

So what I'm saying is that I'm a big fan of both Johnny and his supremely talented daughter. For that reason, I was eager to read Rosanne's memoir, Composed. I knew from listening to her songs that she is an intelligent, thoughtful writer, perhaps not the stereotype most people have of a country singer-songwriter. In that sense, Composed did not disappoint. Cash is candid without being indiscreet; you won't read any dirt about her first husband, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell, or get the nitty-gritty on the collapse of their marriage. But while she is respectful of other people's privacy, she does not hesitate to share her own actions and reactions. In particular, the chapter where she chronicles all of the losses she experienced over the course of a year — her mother, her stepsister, her stepmother June Carter Cash, and of course her father — is a harrowing portrait of grief.

It's not surprising that a writer like Rosanne Cash would write such an emotionally open memoir, but Composed is also a first-rate look at her musical career and the stories behind each of her albums, and some of her most well-known songs. The combination added up to a fascinating portrait of an artist throughout her life. show less