"Every time Marc Zimmerman publishes a new book, I celebrate. He is a wonderful writer ... [who] doesn't disappoint." Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird's Daughter.
The portrait of a would-be artist as a young middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish American living in the Newark/Elizabeth shadows of New York—his first memories, his summer and school days, his family, friends, and early loves, along with the impact of Holocaust, Cold War, and McCarthyism, the Rosenberg Case, and the founding of Israel. Mel's loss of God and community, his awakening to jazz and writing, to African, Italian, and other "Americans" around him all emerge as the book evokes memory's magic moments and the seeds they plant in our lives.
"We're in Philip Roth territory, as Zimmerman launches his Illusions of Memory series, a sprawling mix of memoir, diary, Bildsungsroman, travelogue, and short story collection that he has been piecing together over the past decade. U.S. post-war conservatism, the radical 60s and 70s, the restoration of the 80s and changes further on are all portrayed against the backdrop of three marriages and moves from east to west, from Mexican borderlands toward Nicaragua and beyond—to Europe, Minnesota, Chicago, and Puerto Rico. The quotidian and world-historical join in this book; and the overall series brings to mind Rousseau's Confessions—but with a jazzier, more dissonant vibe. I know of nothing like it in contemporary American fiction." John Beverley, author of Against Literature.
Marc Zimmerman has written and edited over forty books, including several recent tomes of "memoir fiction"—narratives in which memories lead to fictional constructs. The opening book of Cycle II of his autofiction series, Genesis includes an extended note by the author commenting on the stories in this book, his overall writing project and the ongoing crisis with Jewish identity. Other works in Cycle II are Two Ways West, No Light from Heaven, Black, Brown and White on the Border, and Managua mon amour, Nevermore.