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

Sven Birkerts (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 2002

In The Gutenburg Elegies, a widely acclaimed New York Times Notable Book, Sven Birkerts won attention as a graceful and thoughtful essayist, an eloquent advocate of literature in an age of electronic media. Now he shows what only literature can do, in a moving, compelling, brilliantly written memoir that probes what it means to be an American with roots in a distant culture.

As a boy growing up in suburban Detroit, Birkerts always felt intensely uncomfortable with his family's ties to Latvia-the birthplace of all four of his grandparents. And yet his struggle to find his own path led inexorably back through the overgrown garden of family lore. Birkerts deftly weaves his own history (from struggles with his overbearing father to adventures at Woodstock, from lost loves to his emergence as a writer) with episodes from his ancestors' lives-scenes from Riga and Moscow during the Russian Revolution, tales of Paris and mistresses and family scandals. My Sky Blue Trades is destined to be a classic exploration of the immigrant experience and the writer's inner life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The literary world isn't lacking for memoirs about growing up, especially lately, but it could certainly use more like Birkerts's. Author of The Gutenberg Elegies, Birkerts presents here a collection of essays about life as the offspring of Latvian immigrants, languorously telling stories about his grandparents and parents before moving on, almost reluctantly, to his own youthful tales. They are presented as flashes of memory, always leading back to his roots. He writes, "I do not have a sustained narrative to present, only a cluster of episodes and characterizations. I want to understand my relation to the family past, to figure out why the contemplation of it should unsettle me so." He speaks of familiar things: the Hardy Boys, a best friend, pellet guns. After adolescence, he describes hippie nights, early jobs and searching for a girlfriend. He infuses every topic with a sense of curiosity about his place in the world and in his family. Every riff about going barefoot or drinking wine has the kind of grace achieved only through the combination of hindsight and exceptional writing skill. The book gets its title from a line in Dylan Thomas's poem about childhood, "Fern Hill." It's appropriate, because Birkerts often adopts Thomas's dreamy tone and knack for crisp language. As his ruminations about being a kid gently give way to descriptions of adult excursions, there's a sense of maturation, both in the writing and the subject matter. Although the realm of early experience is overly trod terrain, Birkerts makes it fresh, compelling and well worth another trip.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Essayist and critic Birkerts (Mt. Holyoke Coll.; The Gutenberg Elegies) here offers a splendidly crafted set of essays interweaving his youth as the son of immigrant parents during the Sixties with tales of his ancestors in Latvia. Born in 1951, Birkerts grew up in suburban Detroit and looked to books as a means of self-identification. He describes his struggles with his traditionalist parents as he attempted to submerge his Latvian heritage in American culture, his adventures in the counterculture, and the gradual process by which he came to peace with himself and discovered his gifts as a writer and literary critic. Those gifts are evident here, as Birkerts takes us on a journey at once deeply reflective of American culture and touchingly his own. This book is highly recommended for academic libraries, where students can use it to explore the writing process, and for larger public libraries as well. Mark Bay, Hagan Memorial Lib., Cumberland Coll., Williamsburg, KY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (August 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670031097
• ISBN-13: 978-0670031092
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,412,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Curses and Blessings of the Immigrant Experience..., January 17, 2003

By 

Zinta Aistars "Writer & Editor" (Portage, MI United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time (Hardcover)

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 WW2), 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.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Conformist Memoir, October 27, 2003

By 

Doug Anderson (Miami Beach, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time (Paperback)

A few themes run through these memoir-essays: rebellion against the father, books as an escape from life. Ok just two themes. The fifties and sixties (Birkerts was born in 1951) are what might be the most documented decades in the history of man. Its very difficult to write a memoir about this time that doesn't sound cliched.

Birkerts parents were from Latvia and spoke Latvian in the Michigan family home. Ok thats new. But Sven who insisted on being called Peter was a rebel with a cause as a young man: he wanted to conform and be American. As he got older he traded in the desire to conform for a desire to be different and so he became a hippie and he did all the things hippies do: drug experiences, sex, travel, Woodstock. Though well written this kind of book is routine. Birkerts is strongest when he is talking about his grandparents but he is at his weakest when he is talking about the counterculture and his various girlfriends. Birkerts' first love is not women but books. When he is discussing a book all the lights come on in his head but when he is talking about a woman the room remains dim.

Memoirs are reckonings and the person the writer is really attempting to reckon with is themselves. I get the feeling however that Birkerts has not quite gotten there yet. In this self-portrait the artist hides behind a series of 1950's and 1960's cliches; the experiences Birkert's describes just seem too generic. It is as if his mind is clouded with the popular view of 1950's-60's and he cannot see beyond that to form his own view of the times. Also there just isn't enough of his inner life in this book; no sense of intellectual evolution, no great awakenings to the world except in the most cliched kind of way, and no sense of love for his craft. In fact he doesn't really talk about his craft much. I was expecting some irony or some literary comment on the sameness of childhood and teen years. But no irony, no originality, just a generic MEMOIR.

A few observations are precisely worded though the thoughts themselves do not sound particularly authentic. Birkerts is a careful reader and his essays are often thoroughly researched and he is excellent at giving an overview of an author's career but I don't thnk he has a particularly unique vision of life to offer. To offer something unique he needs to dig deeper into his experience than he chose to do here.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No question, it's good, March 30, 2009

By 

Amanda Skelton (Mullumbimby, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time (Paperback)

I love a scene in the prologue to My Sky Blue Trades by Sven Birkerts. He introduces it, "One scene in particular comes to mind," then he moves back in time but stays in present tense, "It is fall of 1969 and my first semester at the University of Michigan." The use of present tense makes the scene feel immediate and intense. He goes on to describe a dinner with his family. He comes home unkempt, in his hippie clothes to his father's disapproval. The grandmother asks for a definition of a hippie. Talk turns to marijuana and the scene crackles with tension. Birkerts blurts out that he has smoked it. He predicts his father's reaction in the second before it comes, "He will blink and dab his eyes, and it will twist my heart." Throughout the scene, he scatters setting and sensory details that bring the scene to life. The dialogue is brilliant and tense in its restraint. It's a short scene but has great structure. At the end, he reflects back on that scene, acknowledges feelings of shame, and concedes that at the time, there was no question of "acting differently, of being someone else."
I admit to being a huge fan.