An Anchor in the Sea of Time

Journalist and novelist Harrigan (Sorrowful Mysteries) delivers a vivid collection of essays on time, identity, and memory. After decades of reporting on Texas, he realized “that all that cumulative witnessing amounted to a story of its own.” Some entries are directly autobiographical, such as “Off Course,” where he examines the life of his father, an Air Force pilot who died in a plane crash before Harrigan was born, and makes a pilgrimage to the crash site outside Seattle. In “The Art of Low Expectations,” he describes a hobby he took up during the pandemic, sculpting polymer clay, which taught him “how satisfying it is to be bad at something and not care at all.” Others focus on changing social and cultural mores, like “Twilight of the Bronze Age,” which explores the U.S.’s reckoning with Confederate monuments and his own realization that “there was a point at which standing up for history felt too much like standing in the way of it.” Harrigan’s lucid and genial prose is on full display whether he’s writing about watching the premiere of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre while on a double date with the actor who played the killer Leatherface or describing the evolution of the magazine industry through his years spent writing for Texas Monthly. The result is entertaining and thought-provoking. (Oct.)