8-23-04

There is no doubt that Alex Knowles struggles over every last decision during his day. He wakes up, is in a quagmire over what shoes to put on, whether orange or orange-pineapple will make for a better morning juice, and, to top it off, in which order he should schedule brushing his teeth and eating breakfast. And struggle he should. In his vernacular approach at an autobiographical memoir, Knowles is able to humanize himself to some extent, only before falling apart and into a hole of is own self-consciousness. To be honest, it seems almost superfluous for a nineteen-year-old to have written a memoir. But such is life. The title of the book, An Ironic Piece of Fiction, suggests something completely contrary to the nature of the book itself. It is a nonfiction memoir, revealing how he must see both himself and the society he exists in as fictional to an extent.

Alex was raised by his mother with no father, brothers, or sisters. Even his select aunts, uncles, and cousins were all concentrated in the Midwest - about 3,000 miles from his birthplace in Los Angeles, California. He insists that his mother, a schoolteacher named Karen, is a midwestern expatriate, taking herself out of a detrimentally conservative environment and protecting him from ever being subject to it. For this he thanks her on numerous occasions throughout the book. He goes into multitudes of experiences, most as random as playing catch with a pre-gubernatorial Gray Davis in a park at the age of thirteen. His tactful crudeness illustrates the gravity of situations without coming off as brazen or ostentatious. He’s got some interesting stories. One can’t take that away from him.

From those who read his online Chronicle, or for that sake, have been to his art gallery, Annenberg, in Downtown Los Angeles, you will go into this knowing that Knowles has a tendency to be slightly pretentious and more concerned with being hip than being honest. But from the way he’s constructed his narratives, there are some obvious spots of sincerity - although nobody would know exactly what they are, or why certain lines in the memoir are put in quotes but have no direct speaker. Of course, this is also to say that his account is true. It reads so non-fantastical that one has to assume it is his real life story. Similarly, it is advertised that way.

Given his age, Knowles is likely to draw criticism from some who will undoubtedly deem him “insincere” or “mistakenly ambitious.” But he takes enough shots at himself to, in all probability, drown his handful of critics in the abyss that is his self-indulgence. Those unconsciously hip enough to understand A.I.P.O.F., let alone relate to it, see that he’s simply a case study of someone being “young and hip and out to conquer the world.” He explains himself in such a way that messes with the perception of the reader as much as it references the perception of Knowles, himself. But what do we expect from a product of such a “media-saturated culture.” Hipness is constantly changing and it appears that Knowles has snuck in the back door with this one.

He is at his worst when he evaluates the politics of the world in his time. He observes the figureheads, condemns systematic inequalities, rants on the oppressive politics of religion in his country, and attempts to connect them all to his own existence. While these are all things that make sense, they don’t work as well as the narrative parts of the book - specifically his last chapter confession that the book was thematically plagiarized from one he had found on Amazon.com. Reading Knowles’ memoir will make you laugh a little, cry a little, but altogether get fed up with his gen-x bullshit (like his disposition that his story is too fragmented to be popular, or great). But it’s vernacular “beyond all rational explanation.” -Sandra Dodd

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.