How to Change History: A Salvage Project

In How to Change History Robin Hemley grapples with the individual’s navigation of history and the conflict between personal and public histories. In an attempt to restore, resurrect, and reclaim what might otherwise be lost, Hemley meditates and speculates on photography, scrapbooks, historical markers, travelogues, TV shows, real estate come-ons, washed up rock stars, incontinent dachshunds, stalkers, skeletons in the closet, and literature. He also examines his parents’ lives as writers, documenting their under-seen influence on the art movements of the day. In one essay, he writes about his mother’s first cousin, Roy, a survivor of Pearl Harbor whose troubled daughter murdered him. The essay “Jim’s Corner” examines the notion of memorial plaques and how they often highlight erasure rather than forestall it. Hemley writes about a stranger whose World War II experiences were chronicled in a scrapbook Hemley bought at an estate sale. In this book about reconstruction, Hemley posits that while we cannot change events once they have passed, we can return to those events to learn and sometimes perhaps change our understanding of them.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prologue: Moments of Attention Part 1. Indescribable People In the Waiting Room of Dick Van Dyke Reading History to My Mother The Incomplete History of Mary Hilliard Jim’s Corner In the Theater of Half-Truths In the Storeroom of Figments A Word from Our Sponsors The Unmentionable One Part 2. Ghosts I Follow How to Change History Of the Affection of Fathers for Their Children A Reincarnation When I Didn’t Want One The Dachshund Endures On the Island of Our Fathers’ Ghosts For the Spirits of Guinaang Feast for the Departed In the Storeroom of Petty Hatreds Part 3. Salvage Projects How to Remove a Curse Something Must Be Understood Skinny Dipping with James Agee The Hypocrite’s Guide to Saving the Earth The Air Supply Guide to Matrimonial Bliss How to Change History, Redux The Writer across the Table In the Basement of Afflictions

About the Author :
Robin Hemley is the author or editor of sixteen books, including Oblivion: An After Autobiography, The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (with Xu Xi), and Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, 2020). An innovator of the contemporary essay, Hemley has won numerous fellowships, residencies, awards, and Pushcart Prizes. He is the founder of the international nonfiction conference NonfictioNOW.  

Review :
"How to Change History: A Salvage Project suggests in sum that the impulse to take available fragments and remnants and from them construct a world and an experience in ways that can survive the test of time is the origin of authorship, and in authorship, the origin of history."-Douglas Reichert Powell, Another Chicago Magazine “Without saying as much, How to Change History works as a highly unselfconscious form of memoir, an intimate form of engagement with Robin Hemley’s past but by way of broader subjects, which, as a methodology, has the effect of opening up the genre, the subjects at large, and the writer’s life. In other words, this is an entirely fresh way of approaching memoir-and, to my mind, one that is far more engaging and, by way of storytelling, engages the reader in a shared exercise. This is a beautiful collection and pushes both the essay and memoir in new and necessary directions.”-Lia Purpura, author of All the Fierce Tethers “As a brilliant chronicler of both time and space, Robin Hemley’s incursions into the past are about awareness: sometimes in the moment, sometimes years afterward. The past is its own country, and, unlike geographical countries, it shifts unexpectedly, so we never know when we might again cross its border-as Hemley so insightfully does. As readers, we feel great sorrow and tenderness for the foreigners trapped in that ephemeral kingdom, because those foreigners are us.”-Sue William Silverman, author of Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul “The thing about Robin Hemley is the thing about all great essayists: subject matter is secondary; the writer is the draw. Let Hemley ponder whatever his attention wanders to-diaries or plaques or photographs or family misadventures or so much more, all of it with a pinch of complicating ‘truth’-and I’m here for it, eagerly reading at snail’s pace to savor every word, because it’s oddball commentary that grants insight, not drama and suspense, and Hemley’s mind is the consummate guide to this wonderful world we share.”-Patrick Madden, author of Disparates and Sublime Physick “How to Change History delightfully captures the pervasive influence of the past-personal, familial, historical-on ‘the temporary haven of the present.’ With humor, deep insight, and keen self-scrutiny, Robin Hemley reminds us that although history can’t really be changed, our understanding of it remains open to revision.”-Michele Morano, author of Grammar Lessons and Like Love “Robin Hemley interrogates the tangled histories, both private and public, that constitute his legacy as a writer, son, father, teacher, and citizen. How to Change History, a memoir in essays, features unforgettable characters from his extended family-his parents, both of whom were writers, an uncle who appeared on the Dick Van Dyke Show, an aunt-in-law who is believed to have cast evil spells on her family-as well as writers and artists he knew through their work and a stranger whose scrapbook he purchased at an estate sale. So much of every person’s life is forgotten or never noticed in the first place. Against those odds Hemley achieves what he admires in Death in the Woods by Sherwood Anderson, which he identifies as ‘a story about the observer trying to understand what it’s like to be another person, an impossible necessity.’ How to Change History delves into the past and delivers revelations that will always remain mysterious, as they must.”-Kyoko Mori, author of Cat and Bird: A Memoir “In this rich and layered collection, Robin Hemley takes us on a fascinating tour of ruins, memories, scrapbooks, memorials, and mementos, luring the reader down each rabbit hole with a winning mixture of humor and vulnerability. At the same time, he is at work on a much larger theme in sketching a portrait of humanity through what we leave behind and how we try to stay the passage of time.”-Sonya Huber, author of Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook “Reading How to Change History is akin to sitting with an intimate friend, going through old photos and scrapbooks, conversing deep into the night about what connects us to the past and what might endure into the future. ‘Everything is about letting go,’ Robin Hemley writes, ‘but still we let go reluctantly.’ With his characteristic wit and keen acumen, Hemley inspects places near and far, even the most mundane sites-such as waiting rooms and flooded basements-for the wisdom they might offer us as we move through this temporary world.”-Brenda Miller, author of A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form “I wish Robin Hemley had written our actual history. In How to Change History, we are invited into a world where our uncle works on set with Dick Van Dyke, where our parents were not only writers but also knew all the cool writers and actors, including Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Moe, as well as William Carlos Williams. Where Provincetown is a kind of hometown and the Philippines is our backyard. Where true love is attending an Air Supply concert at the behest of true love. Not everything is perfect in this world, but if Hemley had devised our world, our lives would have been funnier, kinder, smarter, and more beautifully written. So, while our actual history was often painful, at least we have this book we can live in for a little while.”-Nicole Walker, author of Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh, and Navigating Disaster