Reviews for How to Become a Complete Nonentity: A Memoir

The average rating for How to Become a Complete Nonentity: A Memoir based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-09 00:00:00 Donovan Kilmartin While not a perfect book, Mr. Carkeet's memoir does show the impact that a book read in adolescence can have on a reader long past the time of reading. The novel about which he writes -- also titled Campus Sexpot -- takes place in a fictionalized version of Mr. Carkeet's native Sonora, California. Many of the characters, he tells us, are thinly-disguised analogues of actual Sonorans. That novel, by Dale Koby, deals with the seduction of a teacher by a pretty, strikingly busty, and rampantly promiscuous student. Consequences of the affair include two pregnancies, a resignation, a gang-rape, two marriage proposals, and a wedding. It was shocking stuff, apparently, for Sonorans in the early 1960s. Definitely add this to your reading list for the Summer! Jeff Daiell

Review # 2 was written on 2014-07-02 00:00:00 Daniel Gleason A memoir about how a high school teacher in the author's home town wrote a steamy pulp novel based on actual town characters, then fled to Mexico, and how the locals reacted. This starts out well, with hilarious excerpts from the novel, but gradually loses steam. At the end it becomes a portrait of the author's father, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything that's been set up earlier. About the fiftieth memoir I've read which would have made an excellent long essay. I am very curious as to how he got permission to do such extensive excerpts from the pulp novel, which is not listed where one normally lists permissions. Unless maybe the whole thing is fiction? But if so, you'd think he'd have made it more dramatic.