Lost Memory of Skin
| Author | Russell Banks |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction |
| Published | 2011 (Ecco/HarperCollins) |
| Pages | 417 |
| ISBN | 978-0-06-185763-8 Search this book on  . |
Lost Memory of Skin is a 2011 literary fiction novel by Russell Banks. The protagonist, known throughout the book as the Kid, is 22 at the opening, and has recently been released from jail for committing a sex offence. The story follows him with close third-person, present tense narration, which gives it a sense of urgency and immediacy. He and the secondary central character, the Professor, both have very real, very current problems associated with society as a whole. In this book Banks tackles a subject that many writers and readers would leave well alone: sex offenders and their rehabilitation, or lack thereof, as they are cast out to the peripheries of a city that treats them all in the same way, regardless of the magnitude of their particular crimes. The book is set in the present time of its writing. It was a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction and highlighted as one of the New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books (2011).[1][2]
Plot[edit]
As we travel with the Kid in and out of the city of Calusa, the parole anklet attached to him keeping the authorities informed of his movements, we learn that he is homeless. He has been staying in a tent under the bridge connecting Calusa to the mainland, along with over fifty other men, all of them forced to live in the encampment, indirectly, by law; sex offenders must remain 2500 feet away from anywhere children might gather. 'Living in anonymity, the damaged group runs the gamut from a politician with a penchant for little girls to this lonely, asocial boy, whose only sexual relationship took place in an Internet chat room.'[3]
A police raid forces him to flee and leave his few possessions at the site. The next day he loses his job and returns to the causeway that night. He is woken during a poignant dream by the secondary central (and very complicated) character, known only as the Professor, who wants to interview him for a sociological study. We then follow his progress in trying to help the Kid, as he attempts also to solve the crossover problems of homelessness and sex offenders.
Setting[edit]
The Kid and the other sex offenders live under a causeway in the fictional city of Calusa, inspired by real-life events that took place in a similar setting between Miami and Miami Beach. Although he consoles himself with the fact that he has a front row view of the bay, 'the dichotomy between paradise and the squalor of the encampment is not lost on him.'[3]
Analysis[edit]
The Kid is an ex-prisoner at the start of the book, and an ex-porn addict. That addiction led him to online contact with an underage girl in a chat room. On trying to meet her for real, he was arrested and subsequently jailed. The novel leaves unresolved whether the Kid was set up before meeting her in person, and with this Banks asks us one of the book's main questions: In the digital era, 'an age when any of us can alter our identity, be anyone we want to be, what is real? What is false? And what do these options mean for us socially, spiritually?'[4] The societal transgressions, and their often heavy-handed judicial sentences, highlighted in the book, are the areas of study where the Professor believes he can make his next academic milestone. His 'presence allows Banks to speak in his professorial voice about some of the social issues he wants to raise.'[4]
The moral alignment of such issues often becomes blurred and as a result potentially difficult for the reader[4], but as with much of Banks's fiction there is a good deal of humour and irony mixed in; where there is no solution to the problem of sex offending in America, there are plenty of jokey male voices, unhelpful to the Professor's search for a 'cure'.
Author’s inspiration[edit]
The Kid’s sentencing is portrayed as being harsh. Banks has focussed more on the concept of trying to save a lost young man, who is really still a child, from the ways he has been failed in his upbringing (that are in turn a knock-on effect from his mother’s upbringing), than on the rehabilitation of the average sex offender. The author would have known what a difficult subject that would have been to find a sympathetic audience for. Interviewed on Writer’s Voice, he explained the inspiration behind his characterisation of, and back story for, the Kid, in terms of western culture dating back to the mid-twentieth century: ‘once you bring into the home the salesman, in the form of the television, if that becomes the babysitter then you've essentially abandoned the children. Part of that is shown in the life of the Kid. [He has] himself been abandoned, but in a way that has happened to millions of kids for the last three or four generations.’[5]
Banks started to write the book after hearing about events reported in the press taking place near Miami Beach. In the same interview he said, 'The colony [of sex offenders underneath the causeway], which connects the mainland to Miami Beach, was an unintended consequence of laws that were passed in South Florida that prohibited sex offenders from living anywhere within 2500 feet of any place where children gathered: school yards or child centres or even playgrounds or libraries or anything like that, and so that meant that they couldn't live anywhere in the city. Parole officers and police and city officials just started dropping these guys off there and leaving them to their own devices and pretty soon they had built an encampment and become a community. I was taken by that, and taken by the awful, dark irony of it.’[5]
Publication history[edit]
2011, USA, Ecco, ISBN 978-0-06-185763-8, Pub date 27 September 2011
Explanation of the novel's title[edit]
Banks said in a 2011 interview that 'one of the central themes or contexts for the novel is that fuzzy grey zone that has come to exist between fantasy and reality; sexual fantasy and reality in particular, largely due to the internet and the proliferation of pornography and so forth. Such that people have lost sight of that sharp line that previously seemed to exist between fantasy and reality. So it's like a lost memory of skin, of the tactile reality of the erotic.'[5]
Themes[edit]
The following subjects appear in the book:
Pornography
Sexualization in the media
And as ever in Banks's fiction, American values at large
Reception[edit]
The book received largely bad reviews but Banks’s bravery in taking on such a topic was applauded.
James Urquhart, in the Independent, says ‘the novel picks up some spooky nuances that alter the tone and pace but too often feel stage-managed and unpersuasive. At other points, Lost Memory of Skin feels like it could be more of an inquiry into morals, or the trust and identity issues surrounding homelessness and dysfunction; but its philosophical undertow is never fully fleshed.’ The review concludes: ‘Lost Memory of Skin reprises some of the author’s interests in marginal existences without allowing the reader enough purchase on his subject.’[6]
Janet Maslin, in The New York Times, called Lost Memory of Skin ‘a major new work ... destined to be a canonical novel of its time.’ She continued: ‘It engages the reader in one long wrestling match. It is sometimes marred by condescension. But it delivers another of Mr. Banks’s wrenching, panoramic visions of American moral life, and this one very particular to the early 21st century.’[7]
Barbara Hoffett said in Library Journal: 'Banks has written a disturbing contemporary novel that feels biblical in its examination of good and evil, penance and salvation, while issuing a cri de coeur for penal reform.' She also left a warning for sensitive readers: 'The graphic language may be off-putting for some but necessarily advances the theme of illusion vs. reality in the digital world.'[3]
The Guardian’s WB Gooderham called the novel ‘extremely pertinent to our times.’ But he said, ‘Unfortunately, it is also poorly plotted, with a baggy, unfocused narrative, and its dramatic tension is severely undermined by a blurb that gives away far too much of the plot.’[8]
Kirkus Reviews called the book ‘Intelligent, passionate and powerful, but very stark indeed.’[9]
Sue Miller wrote, in the Washington Post, of the ‘difficulty for the reader [because] too much … about the Professor is unresolved, a good deal of it seemingly unintentionally.’[4]
NPR’s Maureen Corrigan called the book ‘compelling in a low-grade nightmarish kind of way.’ She said, ‘Banks is going after a big idea about how contemporary culture can turn children into sexual commodities [… and his] ambition here has to be applauded, even if the final product falls short.’ She called the Professor ‘such a pointlessly distracting character ... that he all but wrecks the spare, blasted, end-of-world mood Banks has created.’ She concluded: ‘Lost Memory of Skin is an uneven effort to excavate and redeem the dregs of modern society. Banks tells a disquieting story here that would have been even more powerful and more daring if he had told it straight, without subplots and second bananas.’[10]
The New Yorker summarised the book with this closing statement: ‘Banks has mounted a thrilling defense of the novel’s place in contemporary culture.’[11]
Awards and nominations[edit]
- Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (Shortlist) (2012)
- PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Nominee (2012)
- New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books (2011)
References[edit]
- ↑ "Wyatt's World: The Carnegie Medals Short List — Library Journal Reviews". 2012-05-27. Archived from the original on 2012-05-27. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
- ↑ "100 Notable Books of 2011". The New York Times. 2011-11-21. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Russell, Banks. "Lost Memory of Skin". Library Journal. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Miller, Sue (6 October 2011). "Sue Miller reviews Lost Memory of Skin by Russel Banks". Washington Post. Retrieved 7 June 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Rheannon, Francesca (2016-08-18). "Russell Banks: Voyager & Lost Memory of Skin". Writer's Voice. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
- ↑ "Lost Memory Of Skin, By Russell Banks". The Independent. 2012-03-15. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
- ↑ Maslin, Janet (2011-09-25). "A Man Entrapped in a Host of Webs". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
- ↑ "Lost Memory of Skin – review". the Guardian. 2013-02-08. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
- ↑ "Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks". Kirkus Reviews. 28 June 2011. Retrieved 9 June 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "'Lost Memory Of Skin' Goes Where Most Fiction Won't". NPR.org. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
- ↑ Nast, Condé. "Lost Memory of Skin". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
Category:American novels Category:Novels by Russell Banks
This article "Lost Memory of Skin" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Lost Memory of Skin. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
|
This page exists already on Wikipedia. |
