“This is Arnold’s first and longest abiding memory: Nathan in the lead, Arnold coming along behind, following this person destined to inspire and trouble him the most. This person he will always love the most.”
So begins Kirinski’s Life & Times, the story of fraternal twins who are non-identical in almost every way. Nathan is the mercurial, brilliant, and once-renowned philosopher who turns his back on academia and disappears for years at a time. Arnold is the even-tempered, responsible, accomplished but conventional professor of history. Set across America, the Middle East, and Asia, the novel is a composite of memoir, mystery, psychological exploration, and philosophical reflection. Kirinski’s Life & Times recounts the brothers’ separate lives, their relationship, and, ultimately, their interwoven quests for meaning and fulfillment.
Praise for Kirinski’s Life & Times
“Kirinski’s Life & Times is original, lyrical, and powerful. From its knockout beginning, through the tale of the twins’ coming of age and maturity, to the crisis of hurricane Sandy’s devastation of the Jersey Shore, this surely paced and evocatively placed novel blends past and present in rich detail. Often, I found myself tearing up at the beauty and energy of the language depicting the worlds both Kirinskis travelled, and the poignancy of their sometimes separate, sometimes shared journeys. A thrill to read.”
-Ginnah Howard, author of Night Navigation, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
The Memoirs of Stephen Belding
Fiction for Readers Who Love Character and Place
Written with the lyricism of a poet and the warmth of a born storyteller, The Memoirs of Stephen Belding is a luminous work of literary fiction at its most layered: in part a novel of youthful adventures, in part a novel of midlife struggles and satisfactions, in part a novel of aging and reflection, and wholly an exploration of the life examined. Rich with a sense of place and saturated in the sights, sounds, and textures of America, Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East from the mid-1900s to the present, this is character-driven storytelling at its most honest and deeply felt.
“Family, friends, lovers, enemies—you’re all part and parcel of who I’ve become. I take you everywhere, carry-on baggage. Everyone and everything loaded in.” So begins Stephen Belding’s account of his most formative moments. In a series of linked stories—humorous, poignant, sobering, and intense—he takes us through his life.
In Part One, “The Waters of Childhood,” Stephen regales us with tales of growing up on the New Jersey Shore in the 1950s, where family and neighbors are the stars in each drama, friendships are destined to be lifelong, and Stephen’s entire world is contained in his town of one square mile.
In Part Two, “Bathing in Dreams,” Stephen relives the events and relationships of his young manhood in the tumultuous 1960s, when he leaves his hometown to attend college, hitchhike the American West, study in Japan, teach in Korea, drop out of UC Berkeley, and settle in Hawaii.
In Part Three, “Bright Vanishings of Air,” we follow him through the accomplishments and calamities of his middle years, from commune to corporation to classroom, through Europe and the Middle East, through failed and happy marriages, fatherhood, and the anguish of family deaths.
In Part Four, “No More Assignments, Please,” the 80-year-old Stephen draws up “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of people he has harmed. Determined to make amends, he is led to a reckoning with memory, regrets, and, just possibly, self-forgiveness.
