Jamison, Dirk

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JAMISON, Dirk

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

E-mail—dirk@dirkjamison.com.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

Perishable: A Memoir, Chicago Review Press (Chicago, IL), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including LA Weekly, Utne Reader, and Self, and to Public Radio International's This American Life; writer and producer of a documentary film based on the life of his father.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dirk Jamison's Perishable: A Memoir is an autobiography that recounts his childhood growing up in an unstable family in 1970s California. Jamison's father chose to live an alternative lifestyle, one that did not include a job or caring for his family. Instead, they lived in a variety of arrangements, and Jamison was drafted to help his father find food in dumpsters. His father did not take his family to doctors, instead treating his wife's arthritis with the stings of live bees. She eventually divorced him and rejoined her Mormon church, which did not significantly improve the children's lives. Jamison writes of his dog, who developed uterine cancer; his cruel sister; a pedophile scoutmaster; and his father's failure to accept responsibility. "The few glimpses we see of Dirk without direct reference to his parents show a boy who knows he has a target on his chest," reported Bookslut reviewer Carrie Jones, "but can't use his maxed-out emotional antennae to know when to run." Jamison also writes of his childhood feelings about his father's philosophy. J. Bowers wrote in a review for the Baltimore City Paper Online that "as the book progresses, this wonder gives way to an age-tempered brand of teenage resentment and confusion, then a resigned, half-amused acceptance of his father's strange society-bucking ways."