Table Talk & Second Thoughts: A Memoir
By Michael Martone
Booth #19, 2024
Paper, Free with subscription to Booth magazine
Reviewed by Danny Gamble
Q: Does the world really need another literary memoir?
A: Only if it comes from the pen of Michael Martone.
But what is this text? Is it prose? Is it poetry? Is it prose poetry? Martone defines it as such. So be it.
In Table Talk & Second Thoughts, Martone offers a book of memory, memory of readings read, workshops taught, seminars led. On the page, Martone’s 133 offerings look like prose, yet each contains a certain lyricism that lends itself to verse. During a conversation about trains with poet Adrienne Rich, she labels Martone Train Man. “Train jargon is a kind of poetry,” he writes. “Not poetry, but not not poetry.” A former classmate once asked Martone why he broke a line at a particular place. His response:
I ended the line there because the…[typewriter] bell dinged.
And ever since then, my poetry has looked like prose with
a justified left margin and a very ragged right one.
These literary epiphanies help make Table Talk interesting. And there’s one on every page. Not all are literary or academic. In this age of Artificial Intelligence and social media, Martone muses, “…it is a good thing to talk in cafes with new people you’ve just met.”
Taken as a whole, the book is a geographic travelogue of the places Martone has landed and the people he’s met. Yes, there are the luminaries—Updike, Vonnegut, Rich, but Martone’s namechecks are never ostentatious. These are simply the people he’s encountered, shared a cup of tea, a meal. PoBiz is a small club.
Martone’s geographies are as fluid as his language. Here, readers take trips to such exotic locales as the hunting grounds at Story City, Iowa; the famous water tower in Ypsilanti, Michigan; the original Steak n Shake in Normal, Illinois. In a discussion on the questions a prospective faculty member or visiting writer might hear:
In Indiana it’s “What work do you do?” Virginia: “Who are your people?” An Iowa native might ask, “What will you garden?” And in the South:
“What church will you go to?”
Sounds about right.
Martone intersperses his prose poems with illustrations of vintage postcards. Each one depicts a dining room—a quiet place to sit and chat.
Michael Martone retired from the University of Alabama MFA program in creative writing after 24 years (1996-2020). His most recent book prior to Table Talk is Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana (Baobab Press, 2022). He was awarded the 2023 Truman Capote Prize for Nonfiction.
Danny Gamble writes from Montevallo, Ala.
