Lessons in Printing by Klancy Clark de Nevers
Reviews
“de Nevers is a meticulous researcher, reluctant to accept any unreliable memory unless there is concrete supporting evidence. She’s trying to cut through the prejudice of her youthful self by sticking with just the facts. In a few places she describes unsuccessful attempts to approach the story though fiction, trying to rework it into something with a happier ending in which a more loving and supportive daughter might have heroically saved the press (and by extension, her father’s true self) from a fire and eventual bankruptcy. While these fables came to nothing, de Nevers nevertheless credits poetry and creative writing with tapping into buried emotions that inspired her to start digging into the past.
Although this is called a memoir, it’s not entirely autobiographical. For long stretches, de Nevers appears mainly as curator of papers and as a dogged researcher, vanishing from the story herself much as she vanished from her father’s life. Only toward the end does she finally let herself react, recounting an emotional blowup at a callous mortician during her father’s funeral as long repressed feelings rise to the surface.”
— Artists of Utah: 15 Bytes Book Review, June 2019 by Amy Brunvard. "
“The writing, of course, is beautiful, the story, poignant. I took pages of notes, and phrases just leap out at me. ‘Ink and paper age like fine wine.’ Your dad who exuded security comes back from NY, ‘confused and helpless.’ I know that even if had loved him to distraction I would have felt exactly like you, wanting the dad you had known. The parallel is Aberdeen, the booming town with ‘the wealth that should pour downhill’ dammed by the late sixties.”
– Kathleen Farley, Limerick, Ireland”