My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time

by Sven Birkerts

Author of the widely acclaimed New York Times Notable Book The Gutenberg Elegies , distinguished critic and essayist Sven Birkerts explores in this brilliantly written memoir what it means to be an American with roots in a distant culture. The son of Latvian immigrants, Birkerts describes how his struggle to find his own path thrust him up against the myths of his origins-the turbulent lives of his grandparents, whose artistic ambitions played out against a backdrop of revolution and war-as well as the excesses of the 1960s counterculture. A moving saga of a writer's painful-and comic-coming-of-age, My Sky Blue Trades is an absorbing chronicle of the circuitous path Birkerts took to becoming one of America's foremost literary figures.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."

Birkerts graduated from Cranbrook School and then from the University of Michigan in 1973. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, Amherst College, and most recently at Mount Holyoke College. Birkerts is the Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and the editor of AGNI, the literary journal. He now lives in the Boston area, specifically Arlington, Massachusetts, with his wife Lynn, daughter Mara, and son Liam.

His father is noted architect Gunnar Birkerts.

Reviews

[Zinta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having grown up in much the same time period and with much the same ethnic background (my family, too, came to the United States from Latvia during WWII), even in the same approximate area (lower Michigan), I picked up Birkerts' book (and, as chance would have it, I found it in the bookstore in Ann Arbor he describes as his place of employment) with immense curiosity. Just how similar would his experience be to mine? Initially, it was rather exhilirating to read this memoir that spoke of so much that I, too, knew so well, down to the ethnic bone. As I read of his discomforts and anxieties about learning a new language other than the one spoken in his home, his sense of being something of a misfit in both the Latvian and the American communities, I identified in most every detail. Ah, yes, this too I felt on my adolescent thin hide... Mine, I felt simultaneously as blessing and curse, as perhaps, in conclusion, did Birkerts.

In later years, of course, Birkerts' experiences forked away very much from my own... but no matter. I didn't need to look into a mirror to sustain my interest. Indeed, that is the whole appeal of this book - it is not only for the multicultural reader. The writing is excellent, and my exhiliration at sharing in a similar experience soon veered to an exhiliration simply in reading a book so well written. Perhaps that is one of the blessings of being bilingual, this ability to approach a second language with greater awareness. Birkerts' use of language is vibrant and lush and frequently stunning. His insights and perspective on his work, his relationships, the inner workings of his developing self.... all are richly portrayed. No matter from what backgrounds we come, we all question ourselves and our life choices, we all struggle with similar demons at one time or another. Family dynamics are not so different, I'm sure, no matter what the ethnic background.

Birkerts' `My Sky Blue Trades' is a valuable portrayal of the immigrant experience for more than one generation, but is also of value simply as a well written book.

[David Fulmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a literate memoir that touches on immigrant families, the Sixties, ambitions to write, and bookstores. Sven Birkerts is a teacher of writing (and also the son of modernist architect Gunnar Birkerts, with whom he clashed meaningful though mostly subtly throughout his youth) and he was raised in Southeastern Michigan by Latvian-American parents. Some of the best parts of the book deal with the way that Birkerts treated the foreign or other elements of his family with contempt as a teenager when he lusted after conformity with a suburban American ideal only later to flip, in a way, and embrace a desire to be different.

Birkerts went to college at the University of Michigan, spent time working at Borders Books in Ann Arbor in the early days (and a used bookstore owned by the founders of Borders called the Charing Cross Book Shop across the street) then moved on to Maine and Boston (where he also worked in bookstores including the Brattle Book Shop and Barnes & Noble).

While he does chronicle some of the times (he went to Woodstock but left before the music got underway) this is mostly an inward-looking book which is reflective, somewhat psychologically dense, and full of the kind of mental awakenings and reflections that work very well on the page in the hands of a talented writer like Birkerts who is able to wring drama out of mental processes. The stories he tells about his family, friends, and lovers are fairly uneventful but his own deeply thoughtful ruminations on it all are the focus and the main point of interest. here.

At times things come together in a way that is more conventionally satisfying. I’m think particularly of his desire to become a writer which has him filling notebook after notebook of material until he finally writes a disastrous novella which he reads aloud to two friends. This is followed by his successful essay about Robert Musil which he is able to get published in one of the most uplifting parts of the book.

I’m not sure who this book would appeal to. I read it because I was interested in the stories from the first few years of Borders and there’s a really good one about Joseph Brodsky shopping there. But I was also impressed and interested in the rest of it. Birkerts has read widely and he has filtered his life through a literate consciousness to produce a memoir of sophistication.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir of growing up in an immigrant (Latvian) family and coming of age during the turbulent 60s. Birkerts has the courage to lay bare his naivete, his arrogance, and his depression as he made his torturous way to the turning point which finally set him on the way to being a writer.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The master shows how it's done.

[Jen Knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

A master of language. Inspiring.

[John Fantin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent memoir!

[Gail Kennon · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked him and the story of his becoming who he is. i want to read his essays.

[Reinis Karlsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ai!
But then, later, I did ask Brodsky if he knew any Latvian poets.
''There are no Latvian poets.''
''Rainis -''
''Rainis...'' He laughed cruelly and I cringed. ''Ya, Rainis.''
That was all.

[James Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir was somewhat disappointing after having read his wonderful books of literary criticism. In 1969, the kid who lived in the dorm across the hall from Sven (the University of Michigan's Mosher-Jordan residence hall) slipped a tab of mescaline into his beer. "I felt myself being lifted slowly up in a rich, comprehending hilarity," Birkerts writes in "My Sky Blue Trades," his graceful and ultimately melancholy memoir of the '60s and '70s. Birkerts' mescaline trip had its conceptual aspect as well. "Everything -- absolutely everything -- made sense," he notes. "Profound sense. The doorknob - - perfect, beautiful, what a thing to have there on the door, which was really all about openings in space, points of entry and departure." While I was also in college (University of Wisconsin's Sellery residence hall) in 1969 I had very different experiences. My own memories include encountering the films of Bergman and expanding my knowledge of music, drama and art. His very different search for freedom in his life did not impress me. Fortunately, he went on to become one of the premiere literary critics of our age.