A Common Pornography, by Kevin Sampsell

I picked this book up at Dog Eared Books, a small bookstore in the Mission District of San Francisco. I almost would have felt wrong buying it somewhere else, now that I’ve finished reading it. Wrong in the sense that this book is of, from and about about everything classic in the modern memoir field. It is, as the quote on the back says, “Embarrassing and honest, heartbreaking and hilarious.” It is all of those things and more. But I can’t see it being a big hit at Barnes and Noble or Borders, mostly because it’s not happy enough. Funny? Yes. But not really happy, you know? It’s a journey through Kevin Sampsell’s life, which, as any good memoir will do, has a lot of crossover with the life of the person reading it.

I love the format, 200 pages of 1 – 3 page stories, sometimes building off of each other, sometimes starting in on a new topic or thread entirely. It’s the story of a dysfunctional family that an author who is both disgusted by and sort of revels in the chaos of his life, or at least in the presented chaos. He’s a great writer and I appreciated the fact that most of the stories made me feel like I was there, made me want to tell my own stories, and made me remember things that I did when I was in high school and college that made me cringe and laugh at the same time.

The first half of the book is dedicated to stories of him growing up, from his family to their house burning down to the title itself, the common pornography that makes up each of our childhoods. There is a fabulous series of how he finds out about and embraces porn magazines, and the stories about how he kept dozens then hundreds of mags up in his ceiling, eventually cutting out his favorite pictures and pasting them into folders, relieved that he no longer had to worry about his love for porn caving in on him unexpectedly in the night. Beautiful!

The next series of stories is about his dating life, his first’s, and the related chaos and wonderfulness that comes along with trying to figure out how to date. There is a great story or two of him moving to Arkansas just to do something different (?) and something about the way he tells the stories of his early 20’s loves rang very true for me. I know I didn’t really know what I was doing but I thought I was doing alright, and when I look back now, well, it’s pornographic in its cringe-worthy hilarity. Sampsell tells his stories with all of that feeling tactfully in place

The final set of stories in the book are about his father’s death and the effect it had on his family. The brutal honesty of these stories is hard to read without, for me, thanking my stars that I had/have a father I love and respect. Sampsell did not, and when he dies, the family can actually talk about it.

Read the book. It’s ideal to have around for a few weekends, reading when you can. I loved it. Thanks, Kevin!