Lost In Place: Growing Up Absurd In Suburbia (1996) - Plot & Excerpts
Biographies in our society are usually reserved for the famous, the infamous, and the dead associated with the famous or infamous. To get to the real meat of what a biography should be, one must turn to the autobiography shelf. Although this area is also filled with the lives of the well-known, there also reside some gems that sparkle with an inner-fire of their own. These are the stories of lives which are unique in themselves, not for what they did on the sports court or the silver screen.Although Mark Salzman has starred in a movie, I somehow doubt that his is a household name. The movie was Iron & Silk, based on his book of the same title. Both book and movie are wonderfully simple yet with deep meaning, telling the story of Salzman’s life spent teaching English in China. Salzman has a real gift for taking himself out of the picture, so it seems that you are the subject of the autobiography. At the same time, he remains interesting as a subject. It was this strange mixture of self-depreciation and self-congratulation that endeared Salzman’s story to many readers, including myself.The two books that Salzman followed his debut with were both novels, one a fantasy about how the Chinese would and do see America (The Laughing Sutra), the other about playing the cello (The Soloist). Both were good, but neither had the same strange dichotomy of his first. Mark Salzman’s latest book, Lost in Place, returns to the autobiographical, and also returns to the strange brew that made Iron & Silk so appealing.Subtitled Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia, Lost in Place chronicles Salzman’s life before he went to teach in China. In some ways it is a fairly mundane tale of coming of age in the 1960s. Yet Salzman as a subject is never mundane; from attempting to become a Zen monk at age 12, through the wonder and terror of high school and sadistic karate instruction, Salzman reveals that what might seem mundane on the surface actually teems with absurdity, wit, and…well, life. Instead of a simple listing of happenings which served him well in Iron & Silk, Salzman has added the strength of the novel to his autobiography. Everything that made his writing style so interesting remains–now, though, it has a structure, including a world-shattering climax. (Well, world-shattering for the protagonist–with meaning for the reader.)The book is fascinating, especially for readers of Salzman’s previous books. We discover where his love of Chinese culture came from, and how he ended up studying classical Mandarin. We see the study of the cello in his own life, including has brief attempt at jazz cello and the interpretation of classical Indian music. But most of all, we see ourselves in Mark Salzman. We see the insecurities of a teenager in love and sex, ambition and depression, hedonism and the straight-and-narrow. While the specifics may not match our own lives, we can recall the same feelings of wanting so much, when life seemed like it was an endless chore, and also those epiphanies when we realize how much we resemble our parents, how much our parents resemble us, and how much we resemble each other.In Iron & Silk, Mark Salzman used his time in China to reflect on what it meant to be an American. In Lost in Place, he goes one better–here he shows us what it means to be human. That is what true autobiography is about.
One thing going on in this delightful coming-of-age memoir is Salzman’s coming to terms with the idea that attaining enlightenment is one thing and life is something else. Americans have a hard time with this, because we are preoccupied with becoming more than we can be. (Perhaps this is because advertisements continually sell us the idea that our lives will be so much more wonderful if we just do whatever it is we’re being urged to do.) And so Salzman presents us with his younger self, a kid determined to emulate Cain, from the 1970s "Kung Fu" television series, while in the background his amusingly gloomy father (a distinctly Buddha-like soul, come to think of it) passively encourages him to think for himself.Also significant is the fact that this memoir is perhaps the best I’ve seen at interweaving the viewpoints of the adolescent growing up in suburbia and the adult who is now telling the story. We see how overawed the boy is by his kung fu instructor, for example, and yet the way the guy is described he’s clearly a nut -- and a perfect example of why the Chinese didn’t want Westerners to learn their martial arts. A coherent understanding of what was going on in his life was probably not available to the 14-year-old in the story. But since then Salzman has worked through it with much thought, and the result is very impressive.
What do You think about Lost In Place: Growing Up Absurd In Suburbia (1996)?
This memoir focuses on Salzman's teenage years and how his obsession with kung-fu during the 1970's affected him growing up. Myself, I could have done with a few less kung-fu stories and a bit more of Mark's relationship with his gruff but loving father... but it's an solid read.One of the things I appreciate most about Salzman as a writer his his constant self-depricaiton about himself and his place in the world. Where this constant mystified perspective on his own talents and abilities might come off as smarmy in another writer's hands, Salzman's inner monologues really ring true to me as the writing of a person who really does feel he has feet of clay more often than not.
—Chris
I only recently rediscovered this book's title. It was gifted to me by my high school film analysis teacher.It was for me what Catcher in the Rye, or Perks of being a Wallflower was to other teenagers. I found the helplessness and loss that comes with age and hindsight very relatable to what I was going through. I empathized with this story more than any book I read up to that point. It opened up my world to the possibility that a story can just end, neither comedy or tragedy. The hijinks and plot lines are all tremendous fun, but I remember the feeling that I was left with and that is what i recommend to you now. Read it, it'll be good for you.
—Thomas
Perhaps it is the all-out, no holds barred nature of adolescent enthusiasms that makes them so appealing ("the kind of dedication that is possible only when you don't yet have to make a living, when you are too young to drive and when you don't have a girlfriend.") This memoir chronicles a middle school passion for martial arts that knows no obstacles: neither the drunken sensei nor the ridicule of fellow adult bruisers nor the patient sighing disapproval of his parents, nor the scorn of his siblings, nor a score of broken bones puts a damper on Salzman's dedication to kung fu. In fact, Salzman seems to know no obstacles in any aspect of life; he acts on a clear belief that if he wants to do something, there must be some way he can wrangle the circumstances. He audaciously tries anything and often succeeds. It's an epic tale that cycles around the wheel of life through both high points and low points, always engagingly humorous.The best part of the book is Salzman's loving presentation of his parents: a practical, in-motion, look-it-up-right-now, cellist mother and a vaguely depressed but reliable amateur astronomer father, with whom Salzman has endearing conversations regarding zen philosophy while trying to find comet hitting Jupiter in the telescope.The book is dedicated to Salzman's father: "artist, astronomer, social worker, beloved father and good-natured pessimist, whose reaction to this book was to say that he enjoyed it, but felt that my protrayal of him was inacccurate. I put him, he complained, in an excessively positive light"
—Francoise
