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Stardust: Memoir and Essays by an Astronomer who Became a Psychiatrist by Jaime Smith (Granville Island Publishing $19.95)
Review by Brett Josef Grubisic (BCBW 2022)
The table of contents for Jaime Smith’s collection of autobiographical writing is worth noting—it spans five jampacked pages. Aside from two prefaces and one postscript the book weighs in at 145 chapters. As a writer, Victoria-based Smith is a sprinter.
Stardust’s first part, “Foxtrot” is straightforward memoir. However, it’s the substantial second part, “Mosaic” where Smith reveals many of his lifelong thoughts. The Wisconsin-born former astronomer, teacher and psychiatrist (and neophyte memoirist) describes them as “pedaling my thoughts in short essays.”
Autobiographical in their way, these “thoughts” cover topics by the hundred—books, greed, opera, patriotism, atheism, emojis, abortion, pseudoscience, melancholy. One hundred thirty-four of them take up about 170 pages. Often prompted by Smith’s reading, they’re eclectic, lively, thoughtful and funny. The sheer volume also encourages any reader to reconsider what an individual gets up to in his 80s. (Yes, “his”: in “The Abominable Pronoun” Smith explains his annoyance at “they” as a singular pronoun).
In “The Portable Curmudgeon,” Smith confides he’s an “old grouch” vexed by misplaced apostrophes. That curmudgeon persona appears intermittently, especially when Smith addresses “the ‘United’ States” (a “failed state” “founded … by slavers, perpetuated by a minority of white supremacists, egged on by an aspiring fascist government and facilitated by an eighteenth-century constitution that both prevents majority rule and promotes indiscriminate possession of lethal weapons”).
Now and then, Smith veers closer to despair: “The underlying problem is the evident unstoppable rush towards the collapse of social order caused by environmental catastrophe. I for one intend to persevere, one day at a time, but remain pessimistic about civilization, the future of the planet, and the foreseeably likely bleak lives of my descendants and others.”
These bite-sized, philosophically-minded pieces complement the memoir that precedes them.
“Foxtrot’s” ten chapters don’t quite reach eighty pages. In sharp contrast to the 3600 pages of Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle novels, Smith wrote his reminiscences quickly and was not moved to delve deeply or at length on any one episode. The result is succinct and surprisingly detailed but also quick to move from one year to the next.
As a self-described “fox” (the hedgehog knows one thing well; the fox lacks expertise in one major area, yet knows many things), Smith grew bored of other hobbies. “I considered composing some kind of memoir or autobiography and began writing a chronological account of my life experiences,” he explains, “I rigidly restricted it to one page per year, about 500 words.” The project took about three months.
Born an only child in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1933, Smith (then “James”) covers his first 22 years in seven pages. He expresses gratitude to his mother—a “kind person and well-meaning parent”—and outlines an evolving worldview that drew this bookworm loner to democratic socialism. Generally, Smith races through accounts of books, learning experiences and accomplishments. He’s averse to navel-gazing. The alcoholism of his father, Smith’s eventual statelessness as he moves from the U.S. to Argentina and Canada, his experimentation with hallucinogenics and later-life experiences with same-sex relations are there, yes, but the words dedicated to them rarely extend beyond a few lines. For example, he writes “a ceramics student at the art school gave us tabs of LSD to try. My first experience with that powerful psychedelic agent turned out to be transformative.…” The next paragraph pivots to university coursework and Smith acting in a Shakespeare production.
Therefore, the “transformative” psychotropic fills out only a portion of one small paragraph. And that’s too bad: as curious voyeurs, readers would appreciate greater detail on some topics.
This quibble aside, Smith describes a staggeringly full life, one where intellectual curiosity and abundant opportunity led to innumerable motorcycle trips and mountain peaks, richly satisfying and invaluable relationships (and a marriage that lasted over five decades), diverse occupations, and travel from Ashland (home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival) to Zurich.
Stellar photography in Argentina (citizenship there too) and, later in B.C., post-secondary teaching in Quesnel began a career that switched tracks when Smith became a doctor and counselled patients with HIV disease in Vancouver. He later took up residence in Whitehorse to assess patients. The man volunteered, parented, played in string quartets, read voraciously, learned calligraphy and made time to lobby for the de-stigmatizing of homosexuality in psychiatry.
Interpreted as an instruction manual, Stardust lets readers see how much there is to see, do and accomplish. The main character in the 1958 movie of the same name, Auntie Mame, once spoke immortal lines about life being a banquet; Smith’s book ably illustrates her point. 9781989467305
Brett Josef Grubisic has published five novels including The Age of Cities and My Two-Faced Luck. He resides on Salt Spring Island.
Review by Brett Josef Grubisic (BCBW 2022)
The table of contents for Jaime Smith’s collection of autobiographical writing is worth noting—it spans five jampacked pages. Aside from two prefaces and one postscript the book weighs in at 145 chapters. As a writer, Victoria-based Smith is a sprinter.
Stardust’s first part, “Foxtrot” is straightforward memoir. However, it’s the substantial second part, “Mosaic” where Smith reveals many of his lifelong thoughts. The Wisconsin-born former astronomer, teacher and psychiatrist (and neophyte memoirist) describes them as “pedaling my thoughts in short essays.”
Autobiographical in their way, these “thoughts” cover topics by the hundred—books, greed, opera, patriotism, atheism, emojis, abortion, pseudoscience, melancholy. One hundred thirty-four of them take up about 170 pages. Often prompted by Smith’s reading, they’re eclectic, lively, thoughtful and funny. The sheer volume also encourages any reader to reconsider what an individual gets up to in his 80s. (Yes, “his”: in “The Abominable Pronoun” Smith explains his annoyance at “they” as a singular pronoun).
In “The Portable Curmudgeon,” Smith confides he’s an “old grouch” vexed by misplaced apostrophes. That curmudgeon persona appears intermittently, especially when Smith addresses “the ‘United’ States” (a “failed state” “founded … by slavers, perpetuated by a minority of white supremacists, egged on by an aspiring fascist government and facilitated by an eighteenth-century constitution that both prevents majority rule and promotes indiscriminate possession of lethal weapons”).
Now and then, Smith veers closer to despair: “The underlying problem is the evident unstoppable rush towards the collapse of social order caused by environmental catastrophe. I for one intend to persevere, one day at a time, but remain pessimistic about civilization, the future of the planet, and the foreseeably likely bleak lives of my descendants and others.”
These bite-sized, philosophically-minded pieces complement the memoir that precedes them.
“Foxtrot’s” ten chapters don’t quite reach eighty pages. In sharp contrast to the 3600 pages of Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle novels, Smith wrote his reminiscences quickly and was not moved to delve deeply or at length on any one episode. The result is succinct and surprisingly detailed but also quick to move from one year to the next.
As a self-described “fox” (the hedgehog knows one thing well; the fox lacks expertise in one major area, yet knows many things), Smith grew bored of other hobbies. “I considered composing some kind of memoir or autobiography and began writing a chronological account of my life experiences,” he explains, “I rigidly restricted it to one page per year, about 500 words.” The project took about three months.
Born an only child in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1933, Smith (then “James”) covers his first 22 years in seven pages. He expresses gratitude to his mother—a “kind person and well-meaning parent”—and outlines an evolving worldview that drew this bookworm loner to democratic socialism. Generally, Smith races through accounts of books, learning experiences and accomplishments. He’s averse to navel-gazing. The alcoholism of his father, Smith’s eventual statelessness as he moves from the U.S. to Argentina and Canada, his experimentation with hallucinogenics and later-life experiences with same-sex relations are there, yes, but the words dedicated to them rarely extend beyond a few lines. For example, he writes “a ceramics student at the art school gave us tabs of LSD to try. My first experience with that powerful psychedelic agent turned out to be transformative.…” The next paragraph pivots to university coursework and Smith acting in a Shakespeare production.
Therefore, the “transformative” psychotropic fills out only a portion of one small paragraph. And that’s too bad: as curious voyeurs, readers would appreciate greater detail on some topics.
This quibble aside, Smith describes a staggeringly full life, one where intellectual curiosity and abundant opportunity led to innumerable motorcycle trips and mountain peaks, richly satisfying and invaluable relationships (and a marriage that lasted over five decades), diverse occupations, and travel from Ashland (home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival) to Zurich.
Stellar photography in Argentina (citizenship there too) and, later in B.C., post-secondary teaching in Quesnel began a career that switched tracks when Smith became a doctor and counselled patients with HIV disease in Vancouver. He later took up residence in Whitehorse to assess patients. The man volunteered, parented, played in string quartets, read voraciously, learned calligraphy and made time to lobby for the de-stigmatizing of homosexuality in psychiatry.
Interpreted as an instruction manual, Stardust lets readers see how much there is to see, do and accomplish. The main character in the 1958 movie of the same name, Auntie Mame, once spoke immortal lines about life being a banquet; Smith’s book ably illustrates her point. 9781989467305
Brett Josef Grubisic has published five novels including The Age of Cities and My Two-Faced Luck. He resides on Salt Spring Island.
