What do you think?
Rate this book
Witness
Literary Nonfiction. In this collection of eighteen essays, Curtis Smith offers one man's perspective on birth and death, tattoos and Halloween, freshman psych and children's literature. Smith asks a lot of questions and, in the process, discovers that answers aren't always in ample supply. Primarily writing about fatherhood and the discoveries made alongside his son, Smith's crystalline prose frames moments that will both fill and break your heart. WITNESS is not just a book but a testament to the joys and beauty all around us begging to be discovered.
150 pages, Paperback
First published December 16, 2010
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 24, 2011
4 1/2 stars, really. I don't think there is anything Smith could write that I wouldn't love. These essays are somewhat thematically linked and are well arranged. You take a journey with the author on his thought quest about life in general and his new experiences as a father. He ends with a heart-breaking essay about his own father, and then reprints "my son's first portrait," a line drawing of a man. And the journey begins again . . .
This is one of the best passages I've read about the poor: "There is a visible weariness to the poor, the threadbare elbows of their shirts, their oil-stained work boots. They have been bowed by hard luck, by the impossible math of making ends meet, by the thankless choices they make each week of whether to pay the electric bill or buy medicine or repair the sputtering cars that limp them back and forth to work. They are a community bonded by a shared suffering the rest of us ignore or don't see, unified by the rides and hand-me-downs they share, by the babysitting they provide for each other on a moment's notice."
This is one of the best passages I've read about the poor: "There is a visible weariness to the poor, the threadbare elbows of their shirts, their oil-stained work boots. They have been bowed by hard luck, by the impossible math of making ends meet, by the thankless choices they make each week of whether to pay the electric bill or buy medicine or repair the sputtering cars that limp them back and forth to work. They are a community bonded by a shared suffering the rest of us ignore or don't see, unified by the rides and hand-me-downs they share, by the babysitting they provide for each other on a moment's notice."
February 25, 2011
From the beginning, I'd found this book of exquisitely written essays deeply moving. The book begins with Smith and his wife grappling with the news that their unborn child has a hole in his heart.
It's a worst nightmare beginning. But things turn out okay. The child is born. The child thrives. The child teaches the parents so much about themselves. And it is with great tenderness that Smith ferries us through his journey with his son, showing us not just the microcosm of their lives but the macrocosm of our world at large--how all those that will and have done evil were once babies, how all those who are heroic and all those who make bad choices were once babies.
How our own babyhood lives within us still, experienced once again through the lives of our children.
So as I picked up the book late this afternoon, I expected it would end in a lovely way but what I did not expect was the sense of catharsis it would provide me. The title essay, "Witness," is about the death of Smith's father and about the importance of father to son, of parent to child:
"I understand in my son's eyes, I am not alloted the luxury of background. A child can't be asked to comprehend his father's history; a child's father is history, an influence so deeply entangled in a child's own existence that he will take years to separate the two.
I pull my chair closer to my father's bedside. I am glad I have grown old enough to understand him better--a child of the depression, poor and fatherless, a father himself at nineteen. He gurgles. He twitches in the throes of his final sleep, his history now written and sealed."
I'm confident I can speak for most parents when I say that the second worst thing to losing your child would be to die yourself while your child still needs you. To be an adult and be able to tell your parent they can let go is a gift. And it turns out that it's a gift both Smith and I share, though I didn't realize how valuable it had been until this dreary afternoon, reading this essay. So thank you, Curtis Smith.
But lest you think the book ends with sadness, let me tell you no, it does not. Instead, there is a beautiful treat: his son's first drawing of a man. In that lies all the hope for the future. In that lies the knowledge that someday this boy will be a man standing beside his father, helping him let go.
It's a worst nightmare beginning. But things turn out okay. The child is born. The child thrives. The child teaches the parents so much about themselves. And it is with great tenderness that Smith ferries us through his journey with his son, showing us not just the microcosm of their lives but the macrocosm of our world at large--how all those that will and have done evil were once babies, how all those who are heroic and all those who make bad choices were once babies.
How our own babyhood lives within us still, experienced once again through the lives of our children.
So as I picked up the book late this afternoon, I expected it would end in a lovely way but what I did not expect was the sense of catharsis it would provide me. The title essay, "Witness," is about the death of Smith's father and about the importance of father to son, of parent to child:
"I understand in my son's eyes, I am not alloted the luxury of background. A child can't be asked to comprehend his father's history; a child's father is history, an influence so deeply entangled in a child's own existence that he will take years to separate the two.
I pull my chair closer to my father's bedside. I am glad I have grown old enough to understand him better--a child of the depression, poor and fatherless, a father himself at nineteen. He gurgles. He twitches in the throes of his final sleep, his history now written and sealed."
I'm confident I can speak for most parents when I say that the second worst thing to losing your child would be to die yourself while your child still needs you. To be an adult and be able to tell your parent they can let go is a gift. And it turns out that it's a gift both Smith and I share, though I didn't realize how valuable it had been until this dreary afternoon, reading this essay. So thank you, Curtis Smith.
But lest you think the book ends with sadness, let me tell you no, it does not. Instead, there is a beautiful treat: his son's first drawing of a man. In that lies all the hope for the future. In that lies the knowledge that someday this boy will be a man standing beside his father, helping him let go.
July 29, 2016
I reviewed Curtis Smith's book when it was published, for the New York Journal of Books, and said, in part: "Curtis Smith is a wonderful storyteller. As a writer of fiction, he has published two collections, The Species Crown and Bad Monkey. With Witness, we get the pleasure of experiencing Curtis Smith’s talent as a writer of nonfiction.
His strong skills of observation are matched by his gift of language; and these personal essays vibrate with the beauty of a sensitive, creative intelligence. He reads the world much as a visual artist does, drinking it in with his eyes and heart; by the time he writes what he has absorbed, it has been alchemized into a kind of golden truth, archetypal and pure."
The entire review can be read at my page at the NYJB http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-...
It is a very good book. I recommend it highly.
His strong skills of observation are matched by his gift of language; and these personal essays vibrate with the beauty of a sensitive, creative intelligence. He reads the world much as a visual artist does, drinking it in with his eyes and heart; by the time he writes what he has absorbed, it has been alchemized into a kind of golden truth, archetypal and pure."
The entire review can be read at my page at the NYJB http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-...
It is a very good book. I recommend it highly.
November 29, 2010
Love the way he shapes his words
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews