3 out of 4 stars
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“In remembering, we create a context. This allows us to relive the events that shaped our lives.” G. Temp Sparkman reveals the salient events of his life in his 2018 autobiography, Boxes. Believing chronology is not the best way to represent a life story, Sparkman views his memories as being contained in distinct categories, or boxes. Each of nine boxes represents a chapter in the book.
We learn from “The Tribe Box” that Sparkman’s parents settled in Van Buren County, Tennessee in the early part of the twentieth century. He describes in detail his active childhood and deep bond with his mother. His eventual liberal political views arose from many nights listening to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats with his mother. After college, the author attended seminary and subsequently began his career on the faculty of a Baptist seminary.
Sparkman’s boxes reveal his views and experiences on matters of religion, race, politics, art, and aging. “The Literary Box” offers an in-depth look at the author’s writing endeavors. Sparkman served as the sports editor for his high school newspaper, and he has been writing ever since. Boxes is his sixth book. In his academic positions, Sparkman wrote prolifically. Here we discover the author’s precarious position as a Southern Baptist academic with liberal politics. The liberal views reflected in his academic writing tended to cause unrest in the seminary community. One such controversy nearly ousted him from his teaching position. Sparkman addressed this head-on by writing a narrative analyzing the ten-year controversy over his writings.
Boxes succeeds in exploring some of the tensions that can arise between diverging sets of beliefs. Sparkman is a Liberal and a Southern Baptist theologian, living in the South during the Jim Crow laws. I enjoyed reading about how the author navigated these tensions and would have liked even more exposition on this topic.
Temp Sparkman’s writing is thoughtful and efficient, despite meandering at times into some jerky and inelegant passages. I noticed some confusing imagery and mixed metaphors. Generally, the writing is above average for non-fiction, though it sometimes lacks the potency necessary to be fully impactful. The book was not professionally edited. I found ten errors in the first fifty pages. I started to call out sentence fragments as errors but soon realized they were part of this author’s writing style.
As an organizational tool, Sparkman’s boxes work to create basic categories and divide areas of experience. As would be the case with any non-chronological model, some repetition was necessary to give time context to each new box or chapter. I was interested in hearing more about the relationships between the boxes, and I wonder if some of those connections were missed in service of the format. In addition, there were storylines left hanging because they didn’t belong in the box. Here is an example in which the author discusses the funeral services for his parents: “Dad's service had been at the Church of Christ, but, for her, that would've been a sacrilege. (I'll explain that in the Religion Box.)” It wasn’t as though I couldn’t wait to find out the rest of the story, but it did feel awkward each time this happened.
“The Poetry Box” is a forty-five-page collection of the author’s poems. Nature and spirituality feature prominently in the work. Sparkman employs meter in certain poems, and others are free verse. The poetry is enjoyable to read, though the section seemed a bit long at nearly one-third of the book. Here is a short stanza from “Speak Gently Today”:
“Speak gently today.
Whatever your agenda.
Whatever your demands.
What is needed now is a gentle word.
For gentleness bears on her wings
the energy of God.”
In “The Age Box,” Sparkman yields to chronology and reveals his age. At eighty-six, and having suffered a stroke, he experiences some memory and communication challenges. But, he is still thinking critically, and he is still writing. I hope I am still writing at eighty-six.
I rate Boxes 3 out of 4 stars. The author’s life story is interesting and even compelling at times. The editing errors and the hit-and-miss writing make the book ineligible for a 4-star rating. If you enjoy memoirs or autobiographies, you may appreciate this author’s stories. I enjoyed the poems and think the book will appeal to anyone who likes poetry about nature and spirituality. The last of our author’s boxes is “The Not Yet Box.” You might be surprised at what lies in this final box. You will have to read the book to find out.
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Boxes
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. I'm not quite old enough to have the fireside chats in my history either, but I do like the idea of a family sitting around a radio together. I really appreciate you dropping by and commenting. Thanks so much.
