Gathering Noise from My Life: A Camouflaged Memoir
“Donald Anderson’s wonderful memoirGathering Noise from My Lifecomes to us like memory itself, in bits and fragments, a scramble of time and geography. Slowly, the anecdotes and images, the quotations and news stories, accumulate in our minds, and Butte (Montana), Vietnam, and America itself in the 50s, 60s, and 70s re-emerge fresh and vivid. If memoir is where a life and history merge, where memory becomes art and art feeds memory, then this is fine memoir indeed.”—Elliott Gorn, author,Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year That Made America’s Public Enemy Number One “Donald Anderson’sGathering Noise from My Lifeis a masterful exploration of the personal set within the wider landscape of history. Hard-hitting, tender, humorous, erudite, and lyrical all at once, it brilliantly extends the possibilities of the modern memoir. It refuses to pull its punches or to fall victim to the anesthesia of nostalgia. That said, it is a generous book, one that invites the reader to participate in constructing the human frame from the disparate fragments and disrupted narratives otherwise left to ruin within the warehouse of memory. Highly recommended.”—Brian Turner, author,Here, Bullet “Donald Anderson’sGathering Noise from My Lifefunctions as a brilliant kaleidoscope, the author’s life refracted and reflected through the mirrors of his memory. Composed of vivid moments from Anderson’s life, as well as snapshots of American history and incisive quotes from literature, the book is an innovative memoir that continually asks the reader the question: ‘Is memory what happened or how you felt about what happened?’”—Siobhan Fallon, author, You Know When the Men Are Gone