I bought a cheap Kindle copy of this one because I knew that Charles Blow writes op-eds for the New York Times. I'm not a regular reader of that paper, but I figured that his employment there at least guaranteed a good read. I wasn't wrong about that, but, while it probably can't be considered a classic of the midlife memoir genre, "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" also has a number of real strengths that make it easily recommendable to anyone with an interest in the genre. I found it to be a surprisingly life-affirming read, as well as, at times, a charmingly peculiar one.

What first struck me about this book is it's overwhelming sense of strangeness. I'm a white guy whose family is from Massachusetts factory towns, but the rural Louisiana that the author describes seems stuck in another century: we're in prime Faulkner country here. We're talking about a small town whose high school held separate pageants for black and white prom courts well into the eighties and whose cemetery was strictly segregated. The sort of town that had a cane field with a one-mule cane press. Blow talks easily about his town's juke joints and boogie-woogie dives. Blow, to his credit, is exquisitely sensitive to the judgments that the neighbors he grew up with made on the basis of race and class: it's a reality that seems to have left a deep impression on him. Still, reading this one, I sometimes asked myself, "where are we, again, and when?"

The real subject of "Fire Shut Up in My Bones," though, is Charles McRay Blow and his journey to accept himself and become somebody in a world that seemed more or less determined to keep him in the grinding poverty that he was born into. It's a narrative of growth and escape. Still, the details are captivating: he's the son of a philandering former musician and an enormously determined mother, a woman who once worked at the local chicken plant and ended up on the school board. Charles seems to have had to fight for space in a big, tightly-knit family as a kid. The way he tells it, it was often difficult to get enough food or enough space. His accounts of his mother's efforts to keep her family fed and off of the welfare rolls is downright inspiring: she grew and canned her own food, and when there wasn't enough she stretched what she had so that the family could make do. His description of the loneliness he endured when he got lost in the shuffle of a big family or failed to make connections outside of it are genuinely sadenning. Even so, there are times where I think the author rather overplays his hand. He's got a good story, and he knows it. But, occasionally, he can't stop himself from throwing in a passage like, "I wanted to scream, but couldn't -- wanted to cry, but couldn't. I was dead now, and dead boys forget how to cry." Charles, I know that you grew up rough, but you might be laying it on a bit thick here.

"Fire Shut Up in My Bones" is also a story of personal transformation, and not just the one that the author underwent as he grew into manhood. Throughout this book, Blow pays loving homage to the individuals that he believes made him into who he is today: the old folks that sat with him for countless hours when he was a kid, teachers who believed in him, and town outcasts who nevertheless found ways of surviving it what was often a lonely, repressive social environment. He also tells us about other experiences that shaped his values, spending numerous pages on the brutal hazing he endured in order to be admitted to.a fraternity. While he doesn't deny that his membership in this organization provided him with a chance to form what would become lifetime friendships, the outright cruelty that this process often involved gave him an opportunity to draw some hard moral lines. While he doesn't regret participating in frat life, Hell Week showed him that there are real sadists out there and certain rituals that serve to enable them. Lastly, it's heartening to read about the changes that his parents -- his hot-headed mother, his no-account father -- underwent as they got older. The author's mother seems to have grown into herself while his father slowly became more responsible and spent his latter years making genuine attempts to atone for his failures as a family man. "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" is a book that takes the long view.

The last thematic element that I think that the author handles masterfully here is his own sexuality. I'm old enough to remember when gay people where almost automatically social pariahs in most circles, but the cruelty and erasure that sexual minorities experienced in Blow's rural Louisiana went far beyond anything I ever witnessed. Blow is unsparing with himself as he describes the long-term consequences of the molestation he suffered as a child, his attempts to hide the effects of these experiences from others, and the numerous, mostly unsuccessful attempts to deny or repress his own attraction to men. While he now calls himself bisexual, it took Blow many years to realize that it's possible that he doesn't fit neatly into any category: attraction, for him, is something that ebbs and flows beyond his control. This hard-won realization seems to have helped him define and value himself, and while some readers may consider this yet another unnecessary pean to self-esteem, when I consider the whole of the author's experience, I couldn't help but admire his determination to accept himself as he is. "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" isn't a world-beating classic, perhaps, but it's recommended to fans of good writing an unusual autobiographies. ( )

I usually appreciate Blow's writing in the Times, but this book was really not for me. It reinforced for me how thoughtful and intelligent Blow is, but as many memoirs do, he also was sure of the motives of everyone else portrayed. He also did not give enough credit to those who helped him get where he wanted to go. I did not need all of the sexual details provided. ( )

I knew of Charles Blow from his columns in the New York Times. His writing is lyrical and powerful. Fire Shut Up In My Bones, Charles Blow’s memoir, is a powerful description of his life and its influences. He conveys a built-up rage since he believes his childhood was traumatized by abuse, poverty, and uncertain sexual identity. His racial identity also figured into his story of finding himself and becoming comfortable with his adult manhood and bisexuality. He emphasizes how he never felt like others in his family, school, and neighborhoods. He was a loner and social outcast in many life situations.

He describes the role of guns in his upbringing and many violent episodes in his life. Blow conveys many themes in this poignant story, including power, religion, sexuality. Although heartrending and disturbing in the gory details, I especially enjoyed his descriptions of choosing a college, joining a fraternity, and eventually landing a job as a journalist.

Fire Shut Up In My Bones was used as the basis of a modern opera, and snippets are available online. Both book and opera are worth exploring for a first-person account of this journalist’s turbulent life.
See all my reviews at https://quipsandquotes.net/ ( )

There's a lot of memoir writing these days and I find the focus on individual world view is saying a lot about who we are collectively. I prefer books about ideas.

I appreciate that not everyone's world view has been heard or listened to.... so can see why there would be an interest in Charles Blows' analysis of his development.

It's not a genre that I enjoy.
I also didn't think he was truly honest about himself, sometimes his personal evaluation was that he learned stillness and watching from his elders.... but when i look at his face and the constant mind of curiosity (which I admire!) He is not a still person at all.

I respect the author's journalistic writing, although I found this memoir only "eh". I think it's very possible that his editor was on vacation and forgot to finish her job. I also think that a promotional plan/PR firm promoted this book, it's just not great reading. ( )

How does one review a memoir? Certainly not for plot, or at least, not in the same way as one would review fiction. Maybe the best way to approach this is from the point of "curation", the way the vignettes involved are constructed into a narrative-- but I don't know if I can bring myself to offer critical judgement there, either.

This is someone's life, written in stark words.

Well written, heartbreaking, hopeful. Sometimes Blow charges straight at tragedy, sometimes he offers a wry laugh, and other times he circles the abyss of trauma in elliptical orbits. The writing is most effective when it's at its most personal, but loses some impact when he attempts to generalize from personal anecdote to broader contexts. Still an interesting, powerful read. ( )