"There's no escaping the primal stuff of memory and experience. Dramatize it. analyze it, amend it accidentally, remake it intentionally. Call it a temperamental autobiography."
This seems to be the seminal quote describing what awaits the reader of this unusual memoir. It is filled with memory and experience often amended in mid-presentation and then remade after temperamental reconsideration. This tome is so difficult to describe in a just a few words as to make the effort hardly worth it. Unless, that is, one is using the quote above. Those few words do this non-fiction book generously categorized as "memoir" justice. Not just because of the content, but also the construction. Most autobiographies are filled with large chunks of prose that seek to replicate a novel as its narrative. By contrast, Constructing a Nervous System seems like it was written by a nervous mind with its short paragraphs, its repetition, and stream-of-consciousness attitude. If it is rightly termed a temperamental autobiography, it is also equally deserving of becoming a temperamental anti-autobiography.
"STOP! Collect yourself, Professor Jefferson. You've spent all this time on a scene that's not even in The Song of the Lark. But I'm supplying context and subtext. I'm mapping some of the neural pathways by which a vision of culture develops. I'm going to try a version of those blind symphony orchestra auditions where the minority candidate plays from behind a screen to guard against the usual race and gender biases."
This quote actually is presented in bold print in the book. The paragraph interrupts what had been an extended academic analysis of a work by legendary American writer Willa Cather. In fact, Cather is one of the many notable names that the author dramatizes, analyzes, amends and—as this section reveals—remakes at a moment of intense temperament. This quote is kind of like the entire book compressed and miniaturized. It touches upon aesthetic analysis, racism, sexism, the author's approach to social commentary, and the self-conscious self-awareness on display throughout this overview of her own life. The "STOP!" is directed inward rather than to the reader. At times, however, she turns the table and projects queries or assertions to the reader. It is an excerpt chosen almost randomly which is demonstrative of the overall structure and tone of the entire book.
"Hattie McDaniel's Mammy rattled us. Her girth and loudness, her dialect-slinging bossiness were an embarrassment, and normally embarrassment would birth condescension. But Mammy wasn't just bossy, she was forceful. She was knowing. And she feared nothing."
What is being discussed is the 1939 film adaptation of the novel Gone with the Wind. Ever since its premiere, this film has been a source of division not just along racial lines, but within the African American community. Hailed as Hollywood's greatest accomplishment for several decades—and still the highest grossing movie ever when adjusted for inflation—the flagrant racism which was conveniently ignored during that time has come into sharp focus in recent years. Hattie McDaniel became the first Black performer to ever win an Oscar, but that glory is seen as partially being undone because she was honored for playing the epitome of an antebellum racist female stereotype. Mammy is a stereotype, but she is also a Black woman—a slave—who speaks back and, as the author observes, is fearlessly bossy. The significance of this quote is that this dual nature of Black representation in American pop culture is the norm rather than the exception. Members of the African American society are confronted every day with iconic figures from the pre-Civil Rights Movement era that can simultaneously be celebratory and embarrassing and the author's childhood confusion over whether the correct response to McDaniel is condescension or pride is far from limited to just this one example, even within this book.
