In his three previous memoirs, Floyd Skloot grappled with the brain-ravaging virus that struck him at forty-one. He was, as the San Francisco Chronicle noted, “shaping the experience of crippling illness into dazzling literature.” How such alchemy is performed—where, in fact, the magic comes from—is the subject of Skloot’s new book, a memoir of the making of a writer.

 Sifting through memories and observations to discover how circumstance and nature conspired to make him the writer he is, Skloot enacts in this book the very process he describes, the shaping of a writer’s life. Among the influences of family and close friendship, experience and popular culture, he uncovers a unique and telling perspective on the forging of a writer’s individual sensibility. At the same time, his book explores fundamental questions about how life shapes the creative spirit—and how, in turn the writer makes sense of it all and gives life a new and meaningful shape in the form of literature.

"Skloot had been writing poetry for 20 years, short stories for 15, with three novels on the way, when he was struck with a brain disease that ravaged his memory. Fiction became impossible. Only memoir could help him reassemble his past; two he wrote in this phase, In the Shadow of Memory and A World of Light, have received great praise. This latest memoir moves away from the illness theme to explore what has made Skloot a writer, 'the sort of person who could only deal with what happened to him by writing about it.' He first explores what he calls 'external' influences forming him as a writer — the discovery that he could fulfill school writing assignments with his baseball mania, that his television heroes like Peter Gunn were cooler as observers than as doers, even that the rituals of cooking could bring comfort. Then he focuses on how his writerly sensibilities have shaped his life — from how he jogged listening 'to hear the hidden cadence' to the way he communicated with his aging, memory-impaired mother through song. Skloot is such a fine writer that he can — and does — write about eating 'baloney and eggs' and makes it seem fascinating. Writers at any stage of their careers will treasure this volume of clean, expressive prose that delights without ever showing off. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

(Sven Birkerts, Sep 18 2007 )

(Courtney Arnold, ForeWord Magazine, Sep 1 2008 )

Floyd Skloot is the author of four novels, most recently Patient 002; six collections of poetry, including The End of Dreams; a collection of essays; and three previous memoirs. He is the winner of three Pushcart Prizes, the most recent for his essay, “The Voice of the Past,” which appears in The Wink of the Zenith. His memoir In the Shadow of Memory (available in a Bison Books edition) was named a Best of 2003 nonfiction title by the Chicago Tribune and was a 2003 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award nonfiction finalist. His memoir A World of Light (Nebraska 2005) was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection for 2005.