What I Think I Did: A Season of Survival in Two Acts

National Book Award and NBCC finalist (for his novel Beyond the Bedroom Wall) Woiwode tells of braving North Dakota's harshest winter on record (1996) as well as the New York literary world in this lovely but emotionally reserved memoir. Aiming to ""write a memoir that gets beneath the self-consciousness of self,"" he offers a seemingly natural view of his mind at work, gliding from fact (the correct pronunciation of Woiwode is ""Y-woodie"") to observation (on his daughter's unerring sense of direction) to drama (the pitching of a carton of college Dickens texts into the furnace when firewood runs out). Snatches of dialogue with mentor William Maxwell offering writing advice and with friend Robert De Niro revealing the actor's worries about love run throughout the book, as do sonorous descriptions of the world around him, as when he describes a sunset ""strip of orange under a boil of dark-blue clouds so huge their upper reaches bump at heaven."" Yet, while the memoir (his first of a projected three) is centered on particular personal events--setting up a wood-burning furnace, launching oneself as a writer--the work lacks immediacy and intimacy. Even Woiwode's encounter with God, the strongest portion of the book, although obviously heartfelt, is elusive, even for a fellow believer. While packed with incident and reflection, this memoir is best read not for author epiphanies or a sense of place, but for its unhurried and deliberate movement of words. 3-city author tour; radio satellite tour. (May)