Tell Us About . . . a Memoir

Everybody is from someplace. Morris Beja—who has lived his adult life in Ohio, aside from extended stays abroad—is from the Bronx. In this book he gives a vivid account of what it was like to grow up there, in the thirties, forties, and fifties. He presents a memoir of his life and family and world, but he also conveys the importance of ephemera, of the fleeting: of the moments, impressions, places, objects, commodities, products, snatches of song, advertisements, phrases, people in our lives that one doesn’t realize at the time are memorable, but which turn out to be indelible. It may not be a question of their being worth remembering, in the sense of being “momentous” or “revealing” or “beautiful” or “moving”—or any of those things in any explicable way. But they are there—for always. Or they come back to you, after being lost for years and even decades. Perhaps no one who is not of your own generation could appreciate their importance; maybe no one could. The significance may be only for you, of all humanity. That makes them all the more fascinating.