Enough about You: Adventures in Autobiography

Self Abuse

Alarmed, I just reread the first pages of David Shields's 1989 novel, Dead Languages. It has always been one of my favorites, but after finishing his newest, the memoir-ish collection of ephemera, Enough About You: Adventures in Autobiography, I wondered if my memory was playing tricks. No, I found, relieved. Dead Languages is still good, even great, its sentences still supple and full of music.

So what happened? The funny, affecting collage of linked short stories A Handbook for Drowning followed Dead Languages, and then came Remote, an amusing, if occasionally shallow, foray into memoir. Though I didn't know it at the time, this was no diversion; Shields had given up fiction. 1999's Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season was a diary of mid-life crisis masquerading as a sports book. And now we have this, a rough assembly of essays that feel like improvisational first drafts, 174 pages of Shields on Shields.

In the prologue of Enough About You, Shields writes that he wants "to make the case that the only real journey is deeper inside and the only serious subject is the mystery of identity — mine, especially, but yours, too, I promise." Ask yourself if you agree before you proceed. If you're (as I am) skeptical about the artistic merits of solipsism (and weary of otherwise excellent fiction writers becoming mired in their own stories), there's little here that will convert.

Shields loves collage, calls it "a beautiful, unbreakable braid." But here his transitionless assemblages of overheard cultural detritus, literary criticism, and autobiography feel abrupt, his pithy wrap-ups unearned. And there's a disconcerting strain of egotism everywhere in this book. Shields lingers over memories in which he is the star, the best on the basketball court, the adored object of a girl's gaze. And how about a chapter on all the bad reviews he's ever gotten? Shields: "This is what I learned: I'm right. They're wrong. (Smiley face.)"

Nowadays, Shields says, fiction feels like gimmickry — worn and boring. In the wake of all this narcissism, I'd call it necessary.

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