VHS

Campanioni (A and B and Also Nothing) offers an entertaining if messy collage of piquant observations about the nature of memory and storytelling. Presented as a series of fragments titled after classic films, the book begins with a prologue in which the narrator describes his attempt to write stories about his mother’s and father’s lives before they emigrated to the United States from Poland and Cuba, respectively. Instead of presenting his parents’ origin stories factually, he spins freely into fabrication and projection. In “What Dreams May Come,” Campanioni interrupts his mother’s memories of growing up in Poland shortly after WWII and playing dress-up with her opera singer mother’s costumes to muse on which details he’s invented and which were reported to him. In “Man Without a Face,” his cinephile father recalls a movie he’d seen starring Marlon Brando dubbed into Cuban (“which isn’t the same as Spanish”); Campanioni claims he’s thought about his father’s memories so many times that they have become his own. Unfortunately, the author frequently departs from the premise and opts not to develop any sort of narrative arc. It’s a mixed bag. (Mar.)