The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir by Justin HockingGraywolf Press, 2014

This memoir, which consists of named chapters/linked pieces, some of which were previously published as standalone works, covers a lot of territory. It’s about obsessions, how they can shape a person’s life, how they can give structure/meaning/purpose, but also about the obvious flip-side of that: about how their all-consuming nature can be negative, can be a way of avoiding everything else. Hocking examines his own serial obsessions (skateboarding, surfing, Moby Dick, particular women/relationships) and tells the story of how he came to New York, then left again, in prose that’s sometimes lovely and sometimes struck me as overdone. (In one passage, Hocking describes Maspeth Creek, English Kills, and Newtown Creek as “ruined waterways like New York’s trackmarked veins after a century-long overdose” (4). But there’s this, from the same paragraph, which I really like: “Brooklyn spits us out into Queens, past cinder-block car washes and fast food joints and a cluster of graveyards: Linden Hill, Mount Olivet, Lutheran, and St. John—the only shards of green space for miles.”) My other issues with the book may just be about me not being the right reader for it, in minor ways or more major ones. Some of the skateboarding and surfing passages were hard to follow: I felt like I couldn’t really picture what was being described because I didn’t know some of the vocabulary (e.g. I don’t know what a frontside grind looks like). And I’m probably more interested in stories about people who come to New York and feel at home and stay than about people who come here, don’t feel at home, and leave.