Terra Infirma: A Memoir of My Mother's Life in Mine - Softcover
Ter'ra in'fir'ma, n. 1. Shaky ground. 2. The uneasy shared territory of love and painful separation that defines mother and son. 3. The border between life and death. 4. The precariously emotional place in which we are left after the death of a parent. 5. The mythic terrain a boy passes through on the way to becoming a man. 6. The material from which a writer must craft his story.
"Inside a mother, each of us begins a dream," writes Rodger Kamenetz. Actually, two: a mother's dream for her child, and the dream that will become a person. For Kamenetz, crossing the terra infirma--the place where the two collide--was not easy: his mother was a difficult woman who had loved her family with a tyrannical passion. Only as she was losing her battle with cancer at age fifty-four could her son begin to take the essential first step toward becoming a man, thereby fulfilling both of their dreams.
Rich with humor and insight, Terra Infirma is a deeply moving account of one man's spiritual passage to the firmer ground of maturity and self-understanding.
"Inside a mother, each of us begins a dream," writes Rodger Kamenetz. Actually, two: a mother's dream for her child, and the dream that will become a person. For Kamenetz, crossing the terra infirma--the place where the two collide--was not easy: his mother was a difficult woman who had loved her family with a tyrannical passion. Only as she was losing her battle with cancer at age fifty-four could her son begin to take the essential first step toward becoming a man, thereby fulfilling both of their dreams.
Rich with humor and insight, Terra Infirma is a deeply moving account of one man's spiritual passage to the firmer ground of maturity and self-understanding.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
In the months following his mother's death from cancer at age 54, Rodger Kamenetz (a poet, and the author of The Jew in the Lotus) had three dreams in which she appeared to him, offering clues to the secrets of her life. After the third dream, Kamenetz began writing Terra Infirma: A Memoir of My Mother's Life in Mine, a tragic story about the way his mother's tyrannical passion for her family shaped Kamenetz's life and prevented him from becoming a man until she was gone. The book is a collection of essays modeled after those of Montaigne, and their form is best described as purposeful wandering. The first chapters begin with Kamenetz's dreams, move on to his meditations on her piano (the household object that seemed most "to radiate my mother's spirit"), and then question why his mother hid from him all the details of her childhood, including the identity of her own mother. Throughout, the book contains vivid profiles of his family members and friends, poignant descriptions of his bewildered participation in Jewish mourning rituals, and painful descriptions of the technology that kept his mother alive until she gave herself up as "just a body in danger." Kamenetz's final chapter, a reckoning with his mother's last words--"I love you"--is especially affecting; like the book as a whole, it offers little solace to those who hope that life will make sense in the end, and great encouragement to those who realize that what sense life has is the sense we make of it. --Michael Joseph Gross
From the Publisher:
"Remembering his search for the separateness that would allow him to become an adult,
Rodger Kamenetz writes fiercely and movingly. A classic story, beautifully told."
--Rosellen Brown, author of Civil Wars
" I love this book. It is a powerful testament to the forces of life, will, and love. Calm, yet vivid in essential description , poetic where necessary to stir profound emotion, ruthlessly analytical in its quest for lived truth, this memoir will move the soul of anyone born of mother. It is highly rewarding and illuminating to read. "
---Robert A. Thurman
"Entirely under the spell of deep feeling, yet never relinquishing the irony of complex intelligence, this is one of the most beautiful books ever written about a mother and a son."
---Philip Lopate
"Turning his rapt meditative gaze to the baffling enigmas of family life, Rodger Kamenetz, author of the celebrated report The Jew in the Lotus, delves into that most charged and intriguing of subjects, a boy's attachment to his mother, in this reflective and compassionate memoir." ---Alix Kates Shulman
"He writes like the poet he is, wonderfullly drunk on language and constantly serving up fresh metaphors for familiar emotions and experiences."
--Kirkus Reviews
" One cannot be freed from a mother's possessive love merely by her death, without confronting one's own story. Kamenetz was willing to go through this process of liberation, and thanks to his honesty, courage, and skill as a writer, we have this absorbing and vivid account of his rescue from the silence that obscured his mother's past."
-- Alice Miller
"I would be hard pressed to name anyone who has written as beautifully and profoundly about death and family as Rodger Kamenetz in this remarkable memoir. Terra Infirma is a sweet miracle of a book.
---Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of author of A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain
"The terrors of intimacy are beautifully described in this tale of a despotic, mesmerizing parent and the son who struggles to free himself of her entrapping love.
-- Maggie Scarf
"Out of the absences in his mother's life, and out of her absence and presence in his own life, Rodger Kamenetz has created a beautiful grief-filled prose poem of love and loss. From terra infirma, that shaky ground, he leads his reader to higher ground."
--New Orleans Times Picayune
Rodger Kamenetz writes fiercely and movingly. A classic story, beautifully told."
--Rosellen Brown, author of Civil Wars
" I love this book. It is a powerful testament to the forces of life, will, and love. Calm, yet vivid in essential description , poetic where necessary to stir profound emotion, ruthlessly analytical in its quest for lived truth, this memoir will move the soul of anyone born of mother. It is highly rewarding and illuminating to read. "
---Robert A. Thurman
"Entirely under the spell of deep feeling, yet never relinquishing the irony of complex intelligence, this is one of the most beautiful books ever written about a mother and a son."
---Philip Lopate
"Turning his rapt meditative gaze to the baffling enigmas of family life, Rodger Kamenetz, author of the celebrated report The Jew in the Lotus, delves into that most charged and intriguing of subjects, a boy's attachment to his mother, in this reflective and compassionate memoir." ---Alix Kates Shulman
"He writes like the poet he is, wonderfullly drunk on language and constantly serving up fresh metaphors for familiar emotions and experiences."
--Kirkus Reviews
" One cannot be freed from a mother's possessive love merely by her death, without confronting one's own story. Kamenetz was willing to go through this process of liberation, and thanks to his honesty, courage, and skill as a writer, we have this absorbing and vivid account of his rescue from the silence that obscured his mother's past."
-- Alice Miller
"I would be hard pressed to name anyone who has written as beautifully and profoundly about death and family as Rodger Kamenetz in this remarkable memoir. Terra Infirma is a sweet miracle of a book.
---Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of author of A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain
"The terrors of intimacy are beautifully described in this tale of a despotic, mesmerizing parent and the son who struggles to free himself of her entrapping love.
-- Maggie Scarf
"Out of the absences in his mother's life, and out of her absence and presence in his own life, Rodger Kamenetz has created a beautiful grief-filled prose poem of love and loss. From terra infirma, that shaky ground, he leads his reader to higher ground."
--New Orleans Times Picayune
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- PublisherSchocken
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0805211101
- ISBN 13 9780805211108
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages128
- Rating
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