Autofiction
autofiction
Illusions Of Memory
Illusions of Memory is Marc Zimmerman’s series of autofiction volumes (related life-based but fictionalized stories and sequences presenting events, adventures, relations, imaginings dreams, and fantasies organized into novel-like structures) touching on Jewish, African, and Italian American, but above all Mexican/Chicano, Latin and Central American as well as U.S. and island Puerto Rican themes in the course of the author’s life. Books are grouped in three cycles—I. Narratives organized by theme, ethnicity, etc. cutting across various time periods; II. Sequential narratives from his birth through his forty-first year (now complete); and III. sequential narratives planned to cover the undetermined remaining forty-plus years starting in 1980 (to be developed).
Praise for Marc Zimmerman and his Illusions of Memory Autofiction Series:
- A wonderful writer." Luis Alberto Urrea. author of Into the Beautiful North.
- An incredible opus. A good writer indeed." Dick Goldberg, Playwright and screen writer, author of Family Business.
- A writer with so many stories to tell." Carolina Rivera Escamilla, L.A.-based Salvadoran author of ...after.
- Zimmerman ... offers us wonderful, imaginative and truthful stories." Marta E. Sánchez, author of Contemporary Chicana Poetry.
- Zimmerman demonstrates his notable gifts as a writer of fictional memoir keenly sensitive to the vital socio-cultural nuances and ethno-communal borders his stories cross, explore, and illuminate." Roberto Márquez, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Mount Holyoke College.
- Zimmerman’s ‘Illusions of Memory’ series is a sprawling mix of memoir, diary, Bildungsroman, travelogue and short story collection that he has been piecing together over the past several years. 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 come together in ways that recall Rousseau’s Confessions, but with a jazzier, more dissonant vibe. I know of nothing like it in contemporary American fiction." John Beverley, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, U. of Pittsburgh, author of Against Literature and Subalternity and Representation.
Read Marc Zimmerman’s essay “Why I Write What I Write“
Also, an early overview of Zimmerman’s autofiction series by Antonio Zavala.
Cycle I. Narratives organized by theme, ethnicity, etc
The Short of it All (1940s-2017)
Dreams and Scenes of Memoir Fiction
ISBN-979-8327464384
“A beautiful and humorous fresco of a life converted into a literary project through memories and dreams made into fiction by the transformative act of writing.” Luis Alejandro Ordóñez, author of El último New York Times.
With a tip of his hat to Kafka, M, the professor/author protagonist of Marc Zimmerman’s most fanciful autofiction or “memoir fiction” book, lives his life haunted by problems with his weight and wives, his writing, teaching, and ethnicity. Where does all this lead? What can one make of these dreams and scenes of memoir fiction? This small collection presents stories that have emerged in Zimmerman’s pursuit of fiction over the last several years. Some of the stories may seem to be “light” at first, but all of them, taken together, achieve some kind of ultimate depth and wisdom.
Some stories draw on youthful memories, fantasies, and projections; others deal with M’s anxieties throughout his career and his life as Jewish American and human being. Along the way, we meet all kinds of characters, including some well-known ones—Lady Gaga, Placido Domingo, Albert Einstein, Studs Terkel, Herbert Marcuse, and Marilyn Monroe, to name a few. The book closes with M’s post-retirement dreams, when he faces the dread of being diminished, mocked, or forgotten as he rushes toward his illuminating dark. These stories are among the shortest of what Zimmerman has written—the shortest of his all.
“We’re all imperfect and vulnerable. … Assuming our limitations … with humor is … an indisputable merit of [this] book.” Angel Quintero Rivera, Professor, Universidad de Puerto Rico-Río Piedras, and author of Salsa, Sabor y Control.
Also read an article about MZ’s presentation of The Short of it All in The California Aggie.
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Also available in a Spanish language edition
Cuán alta la luna
ISBN-979-8878803717
“Con el transcurrir de los años, las limitaciones y la vulnerabilidad se tornan … más evidentes y presentes. Asumidas sin ambages con humor, … es uno de los méritos indiscutibles de Cuán alta la luna.” Ángel Quintero Rivera, autor de Salsa, sabor y control. “… Un hermoso y humorístico fresco de una vida convertida en proyecto literario a través de recuerdos y experiencias hechos ficción por el simple pero siempre transformador hecho de escribir.” .” Luis Alejandro Ordóñez, autor de El último New York Times.
Con un ligero homenaje a Kafka, M, el profesor/autor/protagonista de este libro vive atormentado por problemas con su peso y sus esposas, mas su escritura, profesión y etnicidad. ¿A dónde conduce todo esto? ¿Qué pueden significar estos sueños y escenas?
Si los recuerdos son, en última instancia, ficción, no importa cuán basada en experiencias, entonces las memorias son, inevitablemente, representaciones ficticias de la memoria. Y las ficciones de memorias (o “auto-ficciones”) son la elaboración abierta de la memoria en narrativas ficcionalizadas basadas en hechos. Este libro es una recopilación de relatos que reflejan en parte las búsquedas del autor/protagonista en la memoria ficcionalizada como proyecto literario.
Este libro se suma a otros volúmenes en esa búsqueda que han surgido en la búsqueda de la memoria ficción de Marc Zimmerman en los últimos años. Algunos tal vez al menos parecen ser bastante triviales, otros son claramente más, pero todos ellos, en conjunto, alcanzan algún tipo de profundidad máxima. Algunas historias se derivan de los recuerdos y proyecciones de su niñez; algunos otros se derivan de sus ansiedades a lo largo de su carrera y su vida como judío estadounidense y ser humano. Varios provienen de sus esfuerzos después de la jubilación, cuando enfrenta el temor de ser disminuido, burlado u olvidado mientras se precipita hacia la soledad.
Read Ángel G. Quintero Rivera’s complete review of the Spanish language edition at 80grados.
Read Luis Alejandro Ordóñez’s complete review of the Spanish language edition in Goodreads.
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The Italian Daze
Notes of a Lost Traveler
ISBN-979-8327467521
The Italian American and Italian connections of a Jewish American in the course of his wandering life. The book opens with a catalog of Italian foods, cultural actors, heroes and villains, etc., culminating with a litany of Italian and Jewish Americans. Next come four parts reviewing early loves, travels with an Italian American wife, and subsequent encounters. Depicting key Italian locales, the book includes some of the most acute Italian paradoxes, including Fascism, the Holocaust, the mafia, possible afro-phobia, and recent turns in Italian politics. Al coda portrays additional Italian encounters, a series of public demonstrations, and our aging hero’s final dream of being lost and dazed in the maze that is Rome and Italy. With a fine introduction by Prof. Alessandro Carrera, U. of Houston.And an addendum. by the author: “My Writing, Lady Gaga and Maryoin.”
“This book follows Italian American and Italian strands of my shifting days, my overall daze—the hazy, but sometimes dazzling (at times amazing) maze of my wayward ways.” Marc Zimmerman.
“A haunting, yet comic procession of Italians …pursued in every direction, … [but] never found.” Enrico De Vivo, Italian critic, in L’Indice dei LIbri
Reviewed by Fred Gardaphe at ytali.com.
The Italian Daze was also published in Italy under the title La penisola non trovata. For those who read Italian, it was reviewed by Enrico De Vivo and prefaced by Alesadro Carrera.
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A Mexican Maze Without Borders (1960-2022)
ISBN 979-8333334442
From the Borderlands to Minneapolis, from Mexico City to Chicago, Houston, and other points north and south, this book tells stories of Marc Zimmerman’s vulnerable, at times reckless and feckless protagonist Mel, as he encounters Mexicans, Chicanos and others-men, women, LGBTQ people, writers and lovers-who enrich his knowledge of Mexican worlds that are ultimately parts of an amazing borderless maze-a labyrinth “sin fronteras.”
Two initial Mexican encounters, several Mexican and Chicano/a writers who come and go, a Chicano convict and maybe mafioso who has to go; five or six Minnesota Marías, a French-Mexican/Jewish mis-alliance, predatory trips through Baja, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Jalisco and Acapulco, a Mexico City love affair throttled by personal insecurity and economic collapse; many ways to lose Chicana and other hers in Chicago-plus a Mexican Molly Bloomish transexual who goes from whoring, drinking and drugging to the brink of bright monogamous motorcycling marriage, as well as an L.A. Ashkenazi mother finally mourned by her lost son during a noche de muertos in a Michoacán cemetery. Among the writers portrayed are Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Carlos Monsivaís, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rolando Hinojosa and unnamed others.
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Sandino on the Border (1969-1981)
ISBN-979-8865460022
A Nicaraguan doctor steals his son across the border leaving his estranged wife and his son’s traumatized half-brother to fend for themselves until they meet up with Mel, a Jewish American who joins their struggle to win back the lost boy even as they pursue their new lives.
Book One traces Mel’s growing immersion in Lena’s fight for her lost son even as he becomes father to the boy left behind—a story that takes them to Nicaragua twice, as they become involved with the Sandinista movement and the Revolution. Book Two tells of Lena’s family—an uncle who coordinates Sandinista-related border crossings; a mother who smuggles underwear into Mexico City; an aunt who tries to keep her son’s family together in L.A.; a son who moves from the Californias to Minnesota; a grandmother who marvels at the world she beholds when she is taken across the border.
All this in the shadow of César Augusto Sandino, Nicaragua’s national hero, who hovers over an entire family, in a story roaming from Baja and Southern California to Minneapolis, Chicago, Mexico City, and Managua during a period of cold war and social upheaval.
With Carlos Barberena’s haunting prints, Sandino on the Border presents an untold story of the Americas and border life. The book’s multi-voiced narrative recalls Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and the epilogue evokes works by John Keats, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway in a text that also relates to more recent discursive modes and transnational relations. This new edition portrays the Sandinista Revolution’s early days and hints at the problems discussed in a striking final note on the Ortega-Murillo regime.
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Also available in the Spanish language edition
Sandino en la frontera (1969-1980)
ISBN-979-8413310083
“Historias que cruzan las fronteras entre Estados Unidos, México y Nicaragua… [historias que narran] la vida de Mel, Lena, su hijo Silvio y la de Dino, hijo de Lena de un matrimonio anterior, Dino. La acción es un “tira y jala” entre personajes que pretenden mantener una vida familiar pese a los muchos desafíos que enfrentan. Lena intenta rescatar a Dino, luego de que su ex esposo, Rolando, lo secuestra y lo lleva a vivir a Nicaragua; Lena y Mel no se ponen de acuerdo cuando ella decide continuar con su carrera universitaria… lo que dificulta que Mel siga con su trabajo. Intervienen la lucha política y la revolución; termina con la derrota de todos sus planes y esperanzas. Zimmerman tiene buen ojo para lo trágico y lo dramático. Las historias se cuentan con diferentes voces… por ende, aprendemos y empatizamos con [los] personajes mientras ell, con voz propia, relatan sus historias…” Antonio Zavala, Periodista y Autor de Pale Yellow Moon.
“Sobre esta traducción y el libro traducido – Traducir una voz que acude a la memoria implica hacer tuyo el recuerdo. Darle voces a la historia vivida, sobre todo, narrar desde el ojo que sentimos lastimar, narrar como remedio, así es esta entrega literaria de Marc Zimmerman. Sin lugar a dudas un acto valiente que merece nuestra lectura y nuestro aplauso, donde el autor explora (desde la memoria) la imperfección del ensueño ideológico y personal. Queda demostrado que narrarnos es también cruzar un límite caótico y fronterizo sobre lo que fue, y lo que esperamos haber sido. Dicen que la historia la escriben quienes ganan, imperios y demás. En este caso, pese a que “la memoria” como subgénero literario sugiere ser una obra de no ficción, el autor nos advierte que no suspendamos la incredulidad; por cierto, las llama “ficciones (o ilusiones) de la memoria”. Esta manera de definir su trabajo literario nos invita a cuestionar qué historia escrita no está exenta de ficción y por qué se decide decorar la historia. Por otro lado, si bien la literatura nos salva, ¿Cuán dispuesta está nuestra memoria a perder por segunda vez cuando es ella quien narra? ¿Por qué no remediar lo que debo? No obstante, traducir a Marc Zimmerman, hasta cierto punto, es abrir una herida, esa que persigue a quienes cruzan la frontera, más aún cuando se está al filo de una revolución.” Marisabel Martín Córdova, escritora y traductora puertorriqueña de Sandino on the Border.
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Martin and Marvin (1981-2005)
ISBN-979-8858055310
Can friendship exist in the contemporary world? If so, how? Otherwise, when and how did friendship die? Did it ever exist? What was it or of what is it composed? Is friendship today like or different from friendships in the past? How to deal with an unbearable friend? How to handle a friendship when at least one has a Puerto Rican spouse and the other is a loner who seeks the love of the women within his reach or is, as that combative spouse would say, a serial predator who always seeks to exploit as many women as he can?
This book tells the story of Martin Klein, a Jewish Mexican living in Chicago— his family ties, friendships and love affairs, his artistic endeavors, his travel adventures, and misadventures. Centering on the relationship of Klein and his closest friend, Marvin, this combination of stories forms a special kind of short, fragmentary novel that explores friendship today, as well as the rise of Latino in Chicago and beyond.
“A special contribution to contemporary American literature.” ***** “An amazing book that will touch your heart.” ***** “Replete with poetic imagery and philosophical depth.” ***** “Well written and entertaining—a saga of true friendship.” ***** “A gem.”
Read reviews by Ellen McCracken, Prof. Comparative Lit. U. of California Santa Barbara and Stephanie Cordero, student, U. de Puerto Rico Mayaguez, and Antonio Zavala, journalist and author of Pale Yellow Moon.
Click on the PDF icon to read a review by José Ángel N., author of Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant
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Also available in the Spanish language edition
Martín y Marvin
ISBN-979-8507616701
“El libro inicia con una narración que rastrea una amplia gama de incidentes y encuentros hilvanados por la muerte de Martín y lo que su vida y fallecimiento implica para Marvin y para otros que lo conocieron. Una segunda secuencia narrativa incluye una serie de acontecimientos y sueños que brindan nuevas perspectivas sobre los amigos y que culmina con la visita del hijo de Martín a Puerto Rico y la nueva conciencia de Marvin sobre lo que mantuvo la amistad entre ambos incluyendo sus dudas sobre la muerte de su amigo así como resignarse a su pérdida y a su propio final inminente. Es una joya.” Guillermo Simbolov, traductor y crítico ruso-guatemalteco.
“En una narrativa que cierra el círculo solo en su última página, Marvin, bendecido por la sabiduría de la vejez, se da cuenta de que la identidad no es más que una falacia, y que judío-mexicano, judío- puertorriqueño, mexicano y mexicano-estadounidense no son más que etiquetas arbitrarias que se nos imponen y con las que a menudo se nos obliga a luchar sin pensar. O al menos eso parecen sugerir las imágenes poéticas, la profundidad filosófica y el tono redentor del final de Martín y Marvin…” Ángel N., autor de Illegal.
“Bien escrito y entretenido, este libro de Zimmerman, experto en literatura latina, es la narrativa de una amistad duradera entre ambos personajes que solo termina cuando Martín fallece. El libro es literatura local, brinda a los lectores una sensación de espacio y tiempo sobre cómo se relacionaban los latinos en Chicago en las décadas de 1970 y 1980. … Es una saga de verdadera amistad entre dos hombres que comparten más que un café en los restaurantes locales de Chicago. Los dos son los amigos leales que todos deseamos tener en nuestras vidas a menudo ocupadas pero a veces solitarias.” Antonio Zavala, activista, periodista y escritor mexicano. Autor de Pale Yellow Moon.
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Forthcoming Collections on
- Black Matters and Ways
- Jewish American Days
- My Puerto Rican Phase
- The Latin American Malaise
- The Academic Gaze
- My Own Years and Craze
Cycle II: 1939-1981 and Beyond
Genesis (1939-1958)
Seeds of Being in the Early Years of a Jersey Jewish American
ISBN-979-8324932176
“Philip Roth territory, as Zimmerman launches his Illusions of Memory series.” (John Beverley, author of Against Literature).
A portrait of a would-be artist as a young middle-class Jewish American living in the Newark/Elizabeth shadows of New York. Mel’s 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.
Following is an official Online Book Club review of “Genesis.
Mel is a man with an interesting past. Having lived an eventful life, he reminisces on the highs and lows of his existence. Mel is of a middle-class Jewish family, living in the suburbs of Elizabeth, New Jersey. He is constantly at war, but no one else notices or is willing to help him. His many decisions somehow brought him to a fortuitous fork in the journey of life. Walk with him as he recalls his early struggles with his weight, his introduction to a Jewish community, and most interesting of all, his ideological struggle with his faith. Get ready to be amazed by the events in this man’s life.
Genesis: Seeds of Being in the Early Years of a Jersey Jewish American by Marc Zimmerman takes us on an exciting journey into a man’s unique struggles. The book initially sounds like a nice family-oriented story. But on a deeper look, there’s darkness creeping in ever so slightly. There is also a certain sadness in this story — a tragedy that underlies the author’s story. This story is supposed to be a fictional work, but it does not feel anything like it. It has the quality of a true-life story put to paper in striking detail.
I did enjoy the author’s analytical method of reviewing every scenario in which the principal character was involved. It made it easier to understand the subsequent actions carried out by Mel, and to a large extent, it was easy to sympathize with his reasoning. The author made a lovely attempt at aligning the principal character’s timeline with significant turning points in Jewish history. They added so much depth to the story that a true historian would appreciate.
This book has an aspect that makes me believe that minority migrant families struggling to fuse into a new culture will quickly identify with this book. Despite that, I will primarily recommend it to fans of the fiction genre, as it does make for some good, wholesome reading.
Marc Zimmerman pens an impressive work of fiction with this book. The storyline is absorbing and educational, and the flow of the author’s language makes it easy to read and understand. There is also a touch of humor and romance to this novel.
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Two Ways West (Exodus--958-1961)
ISBN-979-8325834301
A father, a son, two stories making one. The first text is a Jewish-American tragi-comedy, dealing with the rise and fall of Sam Weisman,a New Jersey restaurant owner whose gambling addiction leads to a break with family members and forces his departure from his hometown and business on a one-way trip to L.A. The second is a coming of age narrative, as Sam’s son Mel takes his own road from New England to L.A. and the San Francisco Bay area, seeking friends and lovers until he finds a way that for him marks and makes all the difference. Representing countless Jewish-Americans and others who moved from the east coast to California in the 1950s and 60s, this book includes characters, incidents and insights that evoke a past period and project readers to our living present.
lately. Bravo! How fortunate to meet Gardner, the author of that marvel that is “Fat City”, to listen to jazz in the old Blackhawk of San Francisco, places that I dreamed of in my adolescence. The anecdote of the heroin addict who interrupts you while you’re with his doña is a beautiful ending – not at all sordid – for a book that has so much to do with tenderness and innocence.”- Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, outstanding Puerto Rican novelist and chronicler–author of The Renunciation, Cortijo’s Wake, and several other books still awaiting published translation.
(MZ’s translation of an email received from him 6 de Oct. 2020)
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No Light From Heaven (1961-1966)
ISBN-979-8321266373
To misquote Tolstoy, “Every unhappy marriage is unhappy in its own way.” So it goes in Marc Zimmerman’s No Light From Heaven, which tells of his protagonist’s marriage to the passionate, beautiful, charismatic and willful Marlena Rienzi, an Italian-American woman of the 1950s who rejects the stereotypical roles that others wish her to play and lives out the fulfillment of her desires until, in the 1960s, she comes to see the marriage as a cage out of which she must break free. What emerges is a gripping narrative combining experience and imagination, a story evoking the compulsion and heartbreak of relationships that many have come to know.
Who is Marlena? Like and unlike Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Constance Chatterley or Nicole Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic novel-or other women who struggle against the bonds of marriage. An Italian-American woman of the 1950s who rejects the stereotyped roles others have wished her to play, who lives out her drive to attract and seduce many of those who come to know her, who is relentless in fulfilling her desires, and who, in the 1960s, comes to see the marriage she has sought as a cage out of which she must break. A bi-sexual but primarily Lesbian woman demanding freedom and self-fulfillment no matter what, and a man whose passions lead him into a downward spiral that threatens his life and identity unless he can find the strength to escape.
Is the book a novel, a memoir or some hybrid genre? Clearly a Jewish-American narrative, it deals with Italian, Latino, African and other Americans, as the star-crossed lovers travel from California and Oregon to New York and back-to Spain, France, Italy as well as other locales in the U.S., Europe and Mexico. What emerges is a gripping narrative combining experience and imagination-a story of two who should probably have never been, a story evoking the compulsion and heartbreak of relationships many of us have come to know.” Guillermo Simbolov, Guatemalan critic and writer.
Read the Kirkus review of this book: at https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/marc-zimmerman/no-light-from-heaven/
And here’s the Kirkus review for no light from heaven:
BOOK REVIEW
A work of autofiction that revisits Zimmerman’s complicated, doomed-from-the-beginning first marriage. Mel, the author’s stand-in protagonist, is 22 years old when readers meet him in 1961 on his way from San Francisco to visit his friend Jack in the latter’s Berkeley apartment. An aspiring writer, Mel has just secured his creative writing ba chelor’s degree. Without a summer job and nursing the pain of several short-lived relationships, he is once again looking for love. Marlena enters his life; a striking sexual adventurer of Italian heritage, she is six years older than Mel. He is immediately smitten, but Marlena is the girlfriend of another resident in Jack’s building, and she is more attracted to women than to men, anyway. For a time, Mel tries to keep his distance, but the intensity of their mutual attraction is not to be denied. So begins a lengthy, tumultuous, angst-filled love affair that displays elements of a physical and emotional sadomasochistic relationship, with Marlena in control.
Mel struggles with his attempts at playwriting while studying for his graduate degree. He accepts an out-of-state university’s offer to be a creative writing instructor, which leads to the couple’s continual separations, during which Marlena takes up with a variety of female lovers. Still, they marry, and as the narrative meanders through the social and musical signifiers of the late 1960s, it takes readers through the couple’s five
troubled years of matrimony. Zimmerman lays out the defining parameters of their relationship early in the saga: During one of their breakups, in a moment of painful clarity, Mel tells Marlena, “The truth is, you’re my enemy. You get inside me and destroy me from within. And the worst of it is, I let you do itd her wanderings while maintaining a narrator’s distance. Though Mel finally leaves his nem.” In lengthy passages, Zimmerman dwells on the details of their sexual relationship, which he describes repeatedly and graphically. Occasional copy-editing oversights notwithstanding, his prose is steady and engaging, skillfully communicating Mel’s emotion-laden obsession with Marlena aesis/inamorata behind, this erotic tale is exhausting for protagonist and reader alike. Intriguing, poignant, and well-written…
Also read the following commentaries:
“I’m so glad I recently sat down with “No Light From Heaven,” book # 3 of your incredible opus. What a compelling story, fascinating characters, clear, unimpeded writing, first-rate dialogue, and provocative insights. A sort of Jewish/Italian response to The Sun Also Rises but I liked your wanderers ever so much more. Marlena belongs in the pantheon of truly unforgettable harridans, … in the summer of her life. (“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from {her womb?”) … My response to her was always intense, often angry, even hostile, and I couldn’t take my eye off her. Kudos! But she is only one of the many treats in store for your readers. Mazal tov on such a heady artistic achievement. I can’t wait to read more– and Lord knows, there’s more! Finally, a very interesting question as to who you were before and during that marriage. … “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! ” … I kept thinking you were trying to become “the new man,” a guy who wouldn’t mind his wife’s serial homosexual dalliances” but doing that turned out to be impossible– especially with her such a force of nature…” – Email from Dick Goldberg, Playwright and screen writer. Author of Family Business.
Romance and Heartbreak at the Dawn of the Hippie Era
By Antonio Zavala
The sexual revolution of the 1960s plays havoc with the two main characters in Marc Zimmerman’s excellent and most readable of novels, No Light From Heaven, published in 2020. Mel and Marlena meet, fall in love, live together and eventually marry as they try to make their relationship work, but Marlena’s will to power and sexual exploration send Mel into a tailspin of despair and doubt.
Beginning in the San Francisco Bay Area at a time when everything held dear and clear is challenged or debunked, this novel shows how differences in age, ethnic background, ideas, values, and sexual orientation begin to set a couple adrift from their initial hopes and ambitions. Mel begins the story as a 22 year-old Jewish American grad student, trying to become a writer; Marlena, a charismatic Italian American six years his senior and with a lesbian past, experiments with male-female love, but eventually seeks work that sets her up for extra-marital affairs usually involving women more than men.
Eventually moving from L.A. to Oregon, Mexico, and Europe, and finally to San Diego as a gateway to Mexico once again, the book anticipates its author’s future Latino focus, as it portrays the couple’s loose sense of wanderlust, their urge to travel and seek faraway places even as some of the key events and figures of the era emerge as they travel and struggle. The Cuban missile crisis, Joan Baez , Ray Charles and The Beatles. the Free Speech movement and Mariko Savio at UC-Berkley, the deaths of John Kennedy and Malcolm X are all present, even as the anti-war, civil rights and feminist movements soon begin to empower Marlena to reaffirm her core desires but leave Mel unable to cope her ever-more compulsive search for women, as the story leads to the couple’s separation and divorce.
Zimmerman stands as a post-Beat and pre-Hippie writer of talent, integrity, and courage. His book is one of his most memorable works of “memoir fiction”—one that should be reprinted and made available throughout the country to as many readers as possible.
ANTONIO ZAVALA is a journalist and writer from Chicago. He has worked for Spain’s EFE News Service. He has just completed a book of short stories titled An Old Man, in a Dry Season, Waiting for Rain and is looking for an interested publisher. For his previous published books , see the Chicago Mexican segment of this website.
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Black, Brown, and White on the Border (1966-1972)
ISBN-979-8330395736
This installment of Zimmerman’s Illusions of Memory series portrays his problematic Jewish Amerian protagonist, Mel, encountering African and Italian Americans, Mexicans, and Chicanos. Here is the San Diego-Tijuana border area and beyond during a time that proceeds but foreshadows the full crush of feminicide, narco-capitalism, and human trafficking that marks our now.
Part I presents Mel’s early relations with urban African Americans in stories depicting multi-ethnic parties, womanizing, ghetto theater work and Black empowerment. Part II’s stories mix reality, fantasy, humor, and pathos, with matters of sex, romance, love, and politics as Mel goes from the border area deep into Mexico. Part III portrays Mel’s parents in their Mexican misadventures, his father’s Mexican death and his mother’s reactions to it all, followed by Mel’s deepening relations to Chicano and cross-border encounters, his final departure from the border area, and his lingering memories of life on the border.
A Rare book about the Border–Wonderful Storytelling“
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2017. Martha Sánchez, Professor Emerita, U. of California, San Diego. Author of Chicana Poetry.
This is an important book for anyone interested in learning about Border Studies. It would be a great book to appear on a syllabus of Border-, Latino-, Chicana/o classes: ideal for students because it is personal and easy to read, with touches of humor throughout, yet elegant in its phrasings and thoughts; unusual because the writer, who knows the culture and language of the border, offers a Latino Jewish American perspective. Speaking through his protagonist—someone who has “been” there?–he offers us many perspectives, approaches, and projections from which to view it: gender (especially women), genre (stories, memories, anecdotes). It includes a useful introduction followed by wonderful imaginative and truthful stories.
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Amores Fronterizos
ISBN-979-8321258378
Key stories from Black, Brown and White on the Border now available in this Spanish language edition.
“Una especie de bildungsroman judío-estadounidense, ambientado en el sur de California. Sobre amoríos fallidos, estas historias también capturan un momento de transición en la historia y la cultura de los EE.UU. La frontera es una zona de división, pero también la conexión entre lo anglo y lo latino; Estados Unidos y México (y el Tercer Mundo); los años sesenta radicales comenzando a decaer y los setenta que surgen justo en el horizonte.” John Beverley, Distinguido Profesor Emeritus, U. of Pittsburgh, autor de Against Literature and Subalternity and Representation.
Managua, Mon Amour (Nevermore) (1969-1981)
ISBN-979-8327485303
“Every time Marc Zimmerman publishes a new book, I celebrate. He is a wonderful writer.” Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Into the Beautiful North and The Hummingbird’s Daughter.
Both epic and personal, Marc Zimmerman’s latest work is a novel memoir-novel of thwarted ambitions, conflict, and heartbreak.
Zimmerman’s richest book to date tells how his divorced Jewish American protagonist, Mel, marries Lena, a brilliant Central American activist-intellectual and endangers his academic career. He and Lena participate in anti-war, anti-Fascist and pro-Latino rights struggles; both join in Nicaragua’s anti-somocista movement, while Lena continues on her academic path and Mel \fights to keep his intellectual calling alive even as he fights against Franquista executions, Mexican worker exploitation, sexual abuse, and drug-dealing gang violence. Breaking up and then joining up again, Lena and Mel work in the Sandinista Revolution, only to separate again, with Mel finding work in a Cuban refugee camp and finally winning a university home in a journey that painfully ends his closest human relationship.
“I’VE JUST FINISHED THE BOOK AND… I AM EXHAUSTED!!! Through Marc Zimmerman’s eyes and words, I’ve traveled extensively, explored the ins and outs of academia, suffered the pains of an author, learned about revolution… viewed family relationships, suffered financial hardship, met more than a few people and experienced sexuality both in and out of multiple marriages. The vivid, detailed, lifelike, emotional, technicolor life experiences described in ‘Managua Mon Amour’ have exhausted me despite the pleasurable experience of reading about them.” Dr. Murray Seltzer, M.D., writer and avid reader
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Out Of Print Collectable Books
With Stories Absorbed In Other Volumes But Remaining As Author-Signed Copies At Greatly Reduced Prices: $12.00 plus s/h each. All 3 For $30.00--includes s/h
Stores of Winter
ISBN-976701944
A sampleincluding three stories of childhood now part of Genesis and a Jewish-American tragic-comedy part of Two Ways West framed by two stories of not-so-innocents abroad in the 1960s from No Light from Heaven. These are winter tales stored, life moments storied, fictions sometimes lived, from the darkness through the author’s own looking glass sometimes darkly, by a critic-theorist who has always sought heat and light, and who has now decided to bring forth illuminations of his fragmented and obscured imaginary–these tales of winter discontent from the near tail end of his winter years.
Lines on the Border
ISBN-9781545439739
Somewhere between short story collection and novel, this book portrays the evolution of Ben, a young and confused Jewish-American, through his interactions with friends, lovers, and others on and beyond the San Diego-Tijuana crossing point. Failed romances, journeys south, moments of sexual and colonial exploitation, and repeated errors tell of an uneven search for genuine contact and understanding. Written with humor, irony and a feel for border pain, Lines on the Border is a gift for both fiction lovers and those interested in Mexican border themes long before the current deportation raids and immigration crackdown.
La Dolce Vita on the Northern Side
ISBN-97817030956232
In this border collection, Marc Zimmerman shows his protagonist exploring San Diego as he seeks connections in the midst of belated but growing civil rights and anti-war struggles. Ben’s first worlds are Jewish-, Italian-, and then African-American before they become ever more Mexican, Latino/a, and Latin American. Here the focus is mainly on his African American relations, with some Jewish hangovers and Chicano beginnings as he visits theaters, concert and lecture halls, community centers, jazz and dance, happy hour, night and after-hour clubs, the piano bars, the pickup spots and picket lines, the bar, house and other party sites—all the settings which he and others can enjoy on and off stage, as they live the “sweet life” of their time.