The Factory of Facts [Paperback]

Luc Sante (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 30, 1999

The acclaimed author of Low Life reinvents the memoir in a cunning, lyrical book that is at once a personal history and a meditation on the construction of identity.

Born in Belgium but raised in New Jersey, Luc Sante transformed himself from a pious, timid Belgian boy into a loutish American adolescent, who eschewed French while fantasizing about the pop star Françoise Hardy. To show how this transformation came about--and why it remained incomplete--The Factory of Facts  combines family anecdote and ancestral legend; detailed forays into Belgian history, language, and religion; and deft synopses of the American character.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Luc Sante's memoir/history features the same elegant, faintly sardonic prose that distinguished his first book, Low Life. Born in Belgium in 1954, transplanted to New Jersey at age 5, he intermingles evocative material about his familial and national past with glimpses of his American experiences. Sante's not one to bare his soul, but the cumulative effect of his impressionistic technique is revealing: when he describes the hallmarks of his natal land as "ambivalence, invisibility, secretiveness, self-doubt, passivity, irony, and derision," we infer that these traits also form the author's essence. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Sante (Evidence, LJ 11/1/92) has won the Whiting and Guggenheim awards and contributes frequently to the New York Review of Books, New York magazine, and Slate. In his latest work, he has turned his interest in lost history on himself, his emigre family, and his native country of Belgium, especially the Walloon south. Thorough research informs Sante's prose, which is sometimes mind-numbingly top-heavy with facts. At other times, as when he recaptures his childhood first impressions of America, Sante is bitingly funny. And sometimes he is elegant and poignant; for example, when describing his childhood straddling of two languages, he says, "His coeur is where his feelings dwell, and his `heart' is a blood-pumping muscle." Recommended for large literary or special collections.?Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., Col.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679746501
• ISBN-13: 978-0679746508
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #900,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing factory -- in glorious full production February 11, 1998

By Eileen Galen

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Sante has a wonderful mind, a kind heart, the eye of a detective, an uncanny ear for language, cultural differences, nuance, and the meaning of things. In this book you come to know him and to know a lot about his subject: Belgium, where he started from (the adored only child of quite wonderful parents), and his experience of emigration to the US, and living in two -- or more -- (physical, religious, linguistic, historical, geographic, mental, psychic) places. A Lacanian reverence for language informs this work, which is worth reading and rereading. Each chapter can stand alone as an absorbing and fascinating essay. Wow! You even learn the proper way to pronounce "Sante."

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An introduction to a wonderful country November 30, 1998

By [e-mail]

Format:Hardcover

When I had the opportunity to study in Belgium I was told "Belgium is a beautiful country - when the sun shines." That is certainly correct. But if this book had been published before I left for Belgium it would have shown me a way of seeing this country in a whole new light. There is more than one source of sunlight. Luc Sante is one of those sources. If you are planning an extended stay in Belgium read it before you go. Even better, if you have had the experience of living in Belgium for a reasonable length of time you will want to get on the first plane back there.

5 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Boosting Cornellian Boxes January 9, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

"This book is the missing link between Benjamin's Arcades and Frank Kogan's fanzine Why Music Sucks, more streetwise than the former and with more potatoes than the latter, while not overlooking the traditions of the Rabelaisian catalogue, the Bretonian weekly junkshop run, or just good ol' Oulipian hijinks. You read this, then shoplift his templates and project them up onto the mural on the darkened childhood bedroom wall of your own life. Sometimes they come out looking like Nan Goldin's photographs; your psyche runs for cover." - John Wójtowicz