Judges’ Commentary on “Nowhere Man”
by
Dana Edmunds
“Nowhere Man” won first prize in the University of Pittsburgh’s
2008/09 Composition Program Writing Contest
Assigned to create an experimental essay after thinking about how Susan
Griffin’s “Our Secret” aims “to do what can’t be done in more conventional
forms,” an author less skilled at writerly reading than Dana Edmunds might have
rushed off to experiment with little appreciation for the complexity of Griffin’s
approach. But in “Nowhere Man,” Edmunds demonstrates an understanding of
Griffin’s multilayered form by adapting it to her own purposes. She represents a
relationship over time with a charismatic yet unstable parent by structuring her
essay as though it were a mixtape, with each track bearing a Beatles songtitle.
This design choice enables her deftly to showcase the role of that iconic group’s
music in her father’s life and her own childhood, while also addressing certain
cultural implications of the songs she features and the life of John Lennon. By
bringing Biblical references into this already complex composition, Edmunds
associates scriptural expressions of God’s wrath and a description of ideal love
with images of her own troubled family relationships. Although such intricate
layering asks much of readers, her perceptive crafting rewards those efforts of
attention. Consider, for example, this track from early in her mixtape essay:
Revolution
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In the hands of a less deliberate composer, quick shifts from information about
versions of a Beatles song to a report of the final version’s influence on the
notorious family leader Charles Manson to Lennon’s disillusioned statement
about the saving power of love might easily become distracting jumps, but in
“Nowhere Man,” these details, as well as the section’s admonition about parental
entitlement, reflection on memory, and reference to the Old Testament’s golden
calf, seamlessly reinforce the author’s central thematic concerns.
As with any artfully assembled mixtape, the overall effect of “Nowhere
Man” is accretive: a whole greater than the sum of its parts yet heavily dependent
on individual readers’ sensibilities.
Like Griffin, Edmunds moves from
illuminating description to reflections on memory, nostalgia, and identity, and
demonstrates the difficulty of believing in love while experiencing insensitivity,
authoritarianism, and wrath. Her willingness to turn a discerning eye toward
3
herself as well as toward others increases the essay’s credibility and poignancy.
“Nowhere Man” ends not with tidy resolution, but with a juxtaposition of public
fact and family story made hauntingly resonant by all that has come before:
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To read the full text of Dana Edmunds’ essay, click here
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