Brad Listi

I never know exactly how to judge autofiction. Is it more successful if it rings so true that I have to remind myself it is actually true-ish or does that make it less successful? Does the reason for choosing to write autofiction matter? When I am reading Jo Ann Beard, for instance, it always feels like the fictional elements are like a fake beauty mark or a dot of red on a black and white canvas. there to heighten the truth, to train the eye to fall where artist wants it to fall. Alexander Chee seems like he brings in fiction to add light he did not experience while in darkness. Ocean Vuong I think uses fictional elements to shape events to better tell the story of his interior life. Claire Vaye Watkins I suspect adds fictional elements to amplify her justifications for self-loathing. Of course I could be wrong about all of this, but that is what my mind does when it comes up against autofiction, it tries to explain it. Why is this not a memoir? Why is this not a novel with elements of the author's life contained therein (as is true of most great novels/authors.) Weirdly, in Be Brief and Tell Them Everything my mind did not do that at all. I think I started out reading it as memoir, got slightly jolted out of that (not sure what the trigger was) and got to wondering for a few minutes. And then, miraculously, I just did not care what was truth and what was fiction. This is just a beautiful book about life, its mundanity, ugliness, sadness, disappointments, surprises, and beauty. I guess it is really about love, of family, friends, place because, and not in spite of, their imperfections. And if those sentences worry you (as they would me) I assure you this book is not remotely sentimental or smug or preachy or self-helpy. Listi, like many of us, has faced heartbreak and wrestled with the fact that despite our best efforts life does not proceed as expected. And Listi, like most of us, feels confusion, guilt and despair over this life. He works toward gratefulness and equanimity, and he finds moments of both with the help of his family and friends. Near the end of the book he is talking to his daughter about God (like me Listi is a person who may not believe in scripture, but who has experienced many things that are inexplicable without acknowledgment of a divine.) He tells his daughter (she is 5 I believe) that God is in everything. Like every child that age she starts listing things, and like every child that age eventually she asks if God is in poop and Listi answers in the affirmative. She asks why God is in something so smelly and he says that without smelly things flowers can't grow. That moment, as much as any, is the point of this book. Find beauty in the broken (or smelly) be grateful for every drop of love that surrounds you, experience all you can of the world, take care of your people, and accept that we who actually think about anything are still sad and confused a lot of the time but that does not diminish the wonder of life. I struggle with how hallmark-y this review sounds, which is a grave disservice to the book. There is absolutely nothing trite about the book. It is absorbing and brutally honest, it made me think, it made me fall in love with this family, and it even made me see things about LA that charmed me, and I really do not like LA. A great book if you want to explore life's big questions brought down to earth. Struggled with the star rating here, and this might move to a 5 but I think a 4 for now.… (more)

Twenty three year old Wayne Fencer narrates events of the last year (2000) following the news that his former girl friend Amanda committed suicide, a year in which he struggles to come to terms with the tragedy and his conscience. It is an ordeal made all the more difficult as he learns from Amada’s friends that she was pregnant by him. Wayne embarks on an odyssey that will occupy him for that next year which take him to Mexico, Cuba and a marathon trek along the Appalachians; somehow he hopes to find some answers.

This is well a written novel which follows an interesting format in which the narrative is frequently interspersed with factual snippets and relevant word definitions; a device which at times I felt interrupted the flow of the story unnecessarily. Sometimes the facts spill over into the narrative when real people or events are woven into the story.

However I was left wondering for some time where this story was going, and if I had not consulted the blurb on the back cover would probably have been wondering even longer, for initially it seems to lack any positive direction. It was not a story which gripped me, and I think the frequent digressions into the realms of fact did not help. Wayne is a likeable enough character, caring and unassuming; but the whole story hangs on him, other characters do not play significant roles, or if they do there are only there briefly.

Film buffs may well enjoy it for the frequent references to the world of the cinema; Wayne is a graduate of The University of Colorado where he attended film school. However while it proved to be a pleasant enough read it is not a book I would go out of my way for.… (more)

I've always been fascinated by American bildungsroman for one reason - despite a lifelong fascination with American culture I've never really 'got' them. I can understand the why and how but I've never connected with them, perhaps because I've grown up in the superficially similar but actually drastically different UK culture - maybe it's just that I never enjoyed Catcher in the Rye and that put me off completely. Maybe it's that I suspect most of them of being thinly veiled autobiography or wish fulfilment. Or maybe it's that I usually find these narrators as solipsistic at the start as they were at the end, defeating the point really. Similarly, I've never been particularly enamoured of road novels in general - again, a big part of American culture but something that doesn't play as significant a role in a relatively small country.

This book's essentially a tale of the year in a life of Wayne Fencer following the suicide of an ex-girlfriend. Her suicide and the revelation she aborted his child shakes him up and causes him to re-evaluate his life over the course of a year, doing the modern equivalent of dropping out. It's the story of how he comes to terms with her death and the existential aimlessness of those who come out of the top end of the educational system without a clear idea of where to go next. In keeping with the narrator's state of mind, it's often fragmented and disjointed, searching for meaning. To enhance that point it starts with a series of often contradictary quotes and often resorts to dictionary definitions relating to situations in the text, demonstrating that they don't always demonstrate the full meaning of any situation. The point of the novel seemed to be that we can only understand the world or make it mean anything from our own perspective - only we can answer the eternal question of what life means, since meaning is different for everyone. Trouble is that isn't really a satisfying conclusion to a novel, but then the point really lies in the journey, and that goes ever on meaning that the ending seems slightly arbitrary with the initial situation not truly resolved (although it's clear he's made progress on this).

Grappling with a fairly heavyweight question might make it sound like hard going; it isn't. Listi's adopted style is eminently readable and the short chapters, while emphasising the narrator's magpie state of mind, make it a quick read even for those with the titular mental condition.

I couldn't escape that same feeling I've always had with the American bildungsroman though, it's almost a modern native ritual that was never particularly relevant to me culturally. It's an interesting insight into that culture but never really went beyond interesting into gripping. It's a fine debut from Listi, albeit one that covers well worn ground, and now his mandatory rites of passage novel is out of the way I'm interested to see where he goes next.… (more)