Before I Forget

received this book about a week ago from Agate publishing. The book was produced by a division of theirs named Bolden, which specializes in African American fiction and nonfiction. They’re pretty hyped about this book over there, as it’s written by Leonard Pitts, Jr., a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who’s been a columnist over at the Miami Herald since 1991.

The story is a dramatic (and when I say dramatic, I mean dramatic, think soap operas) story of a grandfather who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and takes his son, an immature 19-year old with aspirations to be a rapper, on a cross country road trip to see his (the grandfather’s) dying father. On the way all kinds of stuff happens; it seems like every time you turn the page one character or another is having some incredibly dramatic life event occur.

The story is hard to put down because of this–it is so constantly teetering on the verge of disaster. In this novel Pitts is grappling with, largely, the issue of black men being irresponsible fathers. He’s also dealing with a lot of other difficult issues affecting poverty stricken communities today, but I think the main issue that this book wants to tease out is that of fatherhood. The book is quite evocative on this issue, though sometimes it comes close to being too heavy-handed.

Then again, I also have to say that I really enjoyed reading it. The book certainly raced along, keeping me on the edge of my seat. If you’re looking for a book that won’t challenge you too much as a reader, a book that will be exciting and riveting, you’d probably like this book a lot. Not all drama is bad, and neither are all soap operas. I would argue that, for example, the OC was definitely a soap. It was just a soap in prime time with a hefty budget, and that’s what Before I Forget Is too.

One of the things that I did find frustrating about the book, at times, was the lack of complexity in the writing. It seems clear to me that Pitts is a journalist, because everything in the book is written with a straightforward, dialogue/information-focused voice. Many people might wonder what the problem with that is; heck, Hemingway made a living writing like that, right? I don’t think so, no. Hemingway did not write in a simple way, he wrote in a condensed, succinct way, and there’s a huge difference between those two types of writing. At times Before I Forget can drift toward the simple side. What is the difference? The difference is the way small amounts of language are used. Hemingway was often able to create the vision and atmosphere of an entire scene with a few lines and bits of dialogue. He doesn’t take out the paragraphs of stylish, flowery language that some authors use, rather he finds ways to evoke those paragraphs of language with just a few words. Pitts, I often felt, was eliminating those paragraphs in favor a of a starker, more quickly moving text. I was often frustrated that scenes were under-described in the book. As a reader, I always want to be able to see things, smell things, feel things. Then again, the starkness of the writing does make the details he provides stick out vividly, which is an effect I like. Plus the lack of detail forces the story along quickly, and accentuates the dramatic twists in the story.

In some ways this novel reminded me of a more dramatic version of Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Both of these novels left me feeling like I’d read something important about the African American’s community. If you’ve never read books about the cultures that exist outside of your own, you should. This book might be a good place to start. Its 364 pages read quickly and, in many ways, quite enjoyably. Rating wise, I’d give it a 7 | 10.