“Dear Everybody” by Michael Kimball
Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if you were gone?
Jonathon Bender wouldn’t know, but we can see a version of this fictional character’s life in novelist Michael Kimball’s latest book, Dear Everybody. Jonathon’s letters, diary entries, personal documents, and other ephemera from his family, friends, and colleagues.
Ostensibly, this explains a life. But (and I think I’m on the right track here), when I finished this slight but powerful story of one man’s failure to hang on, I found myself obsessed with what wasn’t set down. Because, of course, what we leave out of our stories and documents and letters is just as important as what we put into them.
The reason I’m pretty sure I’m on the right track is that Michael Kimball has gained some notice for his ongoing project “Michael Kimball Writes Your Autobiography on a Postcard.” (He’s even written one for me, which I’ll share later this week.) Kimball understands that how we edit is how we live, and that what other people remember about us or what we remember about other people — these are slippery things that cannot be relied on to paint a complete or even reliable picture.
That said, Kimball also understands that the more perspectives we can include, the more likely it is that the layering will produce not truth, but compassion. Dear Everybody is a book about one man’s sadly short life in which any illumination gained throws back light on the people whose stories combine to give us Jonathon’s.
We’ve got five copies of Dear Everybody to give away randomly among the first 20 readers who give us their own autobiography in just one sentence.
on March 3rd, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I skipped the first day of the first grade, went back the second day, and haven’t been out of school since.
on March 3rd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I married a wonderful man when I was 21, and the happiness he brought me negated the bad times before that and has sustained me for almost 50 years.
on March 3rd, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Somewhere around 30 my life went on autopilot. I have to fight to get control of it now and readjust my course.
on March 3rd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
My name is Gail Christine Georges, Smith, Farrell, Hernandez.
on March 3rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I had an ideal upbringing and schooling which lead to a successful career but made a bad judgment about partner choice which ultimately ruined the greater portion of my life.
on March 3rd, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I’m an avid reader who is currently going to grad school because I need something to do and I don’t want to work!
on March 3rd, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Reading reading all the time and yet, I want to read some more!
on March 3rd, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Growing up working-class, Catholics, second-generation immigrant female in Buffalo in the 1950s hardly prepared me for the itinerant, bohemian, intellectually kaleidoscopic life I’ve led the last 30 years.
on March 3rd, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Oops, please correct to “Catholic.”
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:24 am
Granddaughter of a paper son and grass widow in Mei Gok, who became a poet and writer to tell stories of people like them.
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:26 am
Born with a wild imagination; always dreaming and doing; I try to find a balance in the space between.
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Used to play the drums, now I play the keyboard–either way I’ve still got rhythm.
on March 4th, 2009 at 2:00 am
I started kissing girls in kindergarten and commenced a lifelong habit of falling in crush with women - until recently, that is, when in my haste to win back the lost love of my life I lost myself, and have been reconsidering the eras of Kim, Jamie, Lori, Paula, Debbie oh Debbie, Kathy, Joanie, and Angela (and the minor months of so many sweethearts in between) as unrecognized, unfulfilled, and unrequited reflections of unrealistic expectations - or so I thought until this morning, when the gorgeous red-head in Human Resources asked me, I kid you not, in her sultry voice, “Are you finding enough to entertain yourself… in the evenings?”
on March 4th, 2009 at 2:02 am
Grew up in the suburbs, left, made friends, moved near back, continues even now to truly enjoy colors.
on March 4th, 2009 at 8:34 am
The days between birth and death are filled with words, spoken, printed and sung, and the lines of my drawing and paintings, overlaid with a web of family and friends to share it all with.
on March 4th, 2009 at 8:51 am
These one-sentence bios are amazing, delightful, illuminating…I might have to make this a regular giveaway conceit! Thank you, all. There are still a few “spaces” left…
on March 4th, 2009 at 11:23 am
So many books to read, so many crafts to complete, so many beautiful scenes to photograph, so many fun games to play, so many road trips to take, so many great blogs to read; leaves so little time to spend with my wonderful husband.
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I attempted to come out sideways, then attempted to crawl back in.
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
She was the coolest aunt ever!
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Michelle lives, loves and learns.
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I am on a wonderful journey, a blissful path to full enlightenment so that I may benifit all living beings.
on March 4th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I’ve lived my life and tried to live it well, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.
on March 4th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
My life has been beginning for forty-five years.
on March 4th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Today I went down to the beach where I found a smooth flat rock that I threw out into the water and watched skip along the surface three times before dropping in with a weak splash, and thought it all to appropriate — because that’s how it seems sometimes, that no matter how great the initial momentum, that first excited push, it can never be sustained, always ending inevitably, submerged, pulled down into the depths.
on March 4th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
I suspect that I am always showing up a little too late to win any prizes–still, I remain happy to arrived, if never, completely, content.
on March 4th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
“…to *have* arrived…”
on March 5th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
I am Alimaa to my childhood friends, Aimaa to my family, mommy to my kids, Naizuushka to my husband - on good days, Ally to my kids’ friends’ parents, and AJ to colleagues.
on March 6th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Getting old is the easy part, staying out of trouble is the hard.
on March 10th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Surviving dangerous childbirth episodes in the 80’s, I celebrate the rewards of happy, studious offspring and loving husband.
on March 24th, 2009 at 7:04 am
I harbour grudges in supermarket queues and at bandstands.
on May 17th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Да уж. Спасибо, что заставили задуматься
on May 22nd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Да уж… Тут как в пословице: Агриппине засвербило в спине
on June 12th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Что-то у меня в Опере дизайн вашего блога расползается…
on June 19th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Познавательно. Подпишусь-ка я на RSS пожалуй.
on July 5th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Увлекательно! Хотелось бы побольше таких же заниматльных сообщений
on July 23rd, 2009 at 3:41 am
Неплохой пост, очень интересно было посмотреть
on August 24th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Весьма возможно. Иногда так действительно случается.
on August 25th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Увлекательно написанно, я бы так не смог.