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Full Description
In How to Change History Robin Hemley grapples with the individual's navigation of history and the conflict between personal and public histories. In an attempt to restore, resurrect, and reclaim what might otherwise be lost, Hemley meditates and speculates on photography, scrapbooks, historical markers, travelogues, TV shows, real estate come-ons, washed up rock stars, incontinent dachshunds, stalkers, skeletons in the closet, and literature. He also examines his parents' lives as writers, documenting their under-seen influence on the art movements of the day.
In one essay, he writes about his mother's first cousin, Roy, a survivor of Pearl Harbor whose troubled daughter murdered him. The essay "Jim's Corner" examines the notion of memorial plaques and how they often highlight erasure rather than forestall it. Hemley writes about a stranger whose World War II experiences were chronicled in a scrapbook Hemley bought at an estate sale. In this book about reconstruction, Hemley posits that while we cannot change events once they have passed, we can return to those events to learn and sometimes perhaps change our understanding of them.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Moments of Attention
Part 1. Indescribable People
In the Waiting Room of Dick Van Dyke
Reading History to My Mother
The Incomplete History of Mary Hilliard
Jim's Corner
In the Theater of Half-Truths
In the Storeroom of Figments
A Word from Our Sponsors
The Unmentionable One
Part 2. Ghosts I Follow
How to Change History
Of the Affection of Fathers for Their Children
A Reincarnation When I Didn't Want One
The Dachshund Endures
On the Island of Our Fathers' Ghosts
For the Spirits of Guinaang
Feast for the Departed
In the Storeroom of Petty Hatreds
Part 3. Salvage Projects
How to Remove a Curse
Something Must Be Understood
Skinny Dipping with James Agee
The Hypocrite's Guide to Saving the Earth
The Air Supply Guide to Matrimonial Bliss
How to Change History, Redux
The Writer across the Table
In the Basement of Afflictions
