Blood And Memory

In Blood and Memory the story of the son annotates the story of the father. That is an old theme, in the literature of the South and elsewhere. Robert Benson handles it without sparing, pitying, or psycho-mythologically aggrandizing himself. The substance of his book is anecdotal; the tone is low-keyed and even-keeled. You may not at first realize how long a shadow death casts over it, and how that shadow, as it deepens and draws nearer, evokes its wisdom. Benson's wisdom is a matter of empathy, detachment, a lucid acceptance of the bounty and harshness of life, and a rueful sort of modesty when it comes to himself. These are not qualities normally associated with our literary culture and our national character. His sanity seems instinctive, as do his stance and his voice. His contemplation of his own life unexpectedly brought into my mind a writer he apparently knows well enough to have utterly metabolized: Geoffrey Chaucer. (Franklin Burroughs)