A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom

I love finding members like this and learning about the life of people. Gaiter tells such an impactful story with a style of writing that is unique and powerful. I love the way the words flowed in the book and the way the story was told. It was an amazing read and but what really blew me away was the writing style and the personality that was seen because of it

If a human being were a jigsaw puzzle we’d be made up of a handful of large pieces and a million tiny ones. A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom shows us the collection of those pieces in the life of Jessie Grandier, Jr. from whose point of view the story is told. We meet Jessie mid-career, his age maybe late 30s, sharing the story of his life with interspersing chapters of his childhood. His story wraps up with Jessie in the present day, now in his late 50s or 60s. Jessie is a regular guy. This isn’t a larger-than-life person; his is a collection of memories, some large, making a forceful impact, and many small but collectively, equally impactful. An immensely readable and enjoyable book here from Leonce Gaiter.

Jessie’s narrator voice is almost but not quite detached from the story he is telling and almost but not quite actively reflective. It’s engaging because the reader quickly understands that that’s Jessie’s authentic voice - a person who tries to dispassionately analyze and observe his life even as he’s living it and who, like all of us, has blind spots when it comes to his own needs and motivations as well as those of other people. He’s not actively searching for the why’s and wherefor’s of who he is in his memories. He’s not telling the reader “oh my dad did such and such and therefore I’m now such and such”. He doesn't outright make causal links between childhood and the man he is. But yet, the reader sees those links, sees how his life experiences contribute to the person he is.

So what is Jessie’s life? He grew up a military brat, the son of an officer, youngest child in a family of three children. Born in the early 60s I surmise but the book doesn’t specify. Jessie and his family are Black and one of the earlier generation of middle class Black families which makes Jessie stand out amongst both his white and black contemporaries.

I found a lot of personal enjoyment in this book just for the walk down memory lane. Much of Jessie’s life overlapped with mine - child of an army officer, living much of my childhood in the southern U.S. Many of the friendships and songs and worldviews of the younger Jessie felt familiar. Like Jessie, I’m gay and like Jessie, I didn’t torment myself with my difference and instead threw myself into school and a circle of friends rather than the boy-girl dating world of high school and college. I’m white, though, and didn’t grow up with that white gaze on me, didn’t stand out as the only person of my race in my social circle or with parents concerned about how I appeared to my peers. Well, my parents were concerned about that but their concern didn’t stem from being a racial minority.

But none of Jessie’s story is about any one identity, it’s about Jessie as a person. It’s about the wholly assembled jigsaw puzzle and the never-ending addition of pieces being added to that puzzle that makes up a person. A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom is a sort of Bildungsroman without end because in Jessie the reader sees that no matter what age we are, we are always “coming of age.”

My thanks to the author, Netgalley, and Legba Books for the free download.