As Time Goes By

by W. Royce Adams

Overview

AS TIME GOES BY Nearing the end, Old asks himself, "Does my life ultimately have any importance in any universal scheme? Am I just taking up space? Have I wasted the time given me? What effect have I had on others? Have I unknowingly, worse, knowingly, hurt others in some fashion? What's my worth? These are playful existential questions with no pertinent answers for me. So I'm putting down my cane and picking up my pen. I'm going to sift through the sands of my time to see what I can discover through remembrance. Don't expect any fancy writing. No playing with altered punctuation, or trying to be aesthetically clever, or poetic, or intellectual. Not here a Sedaris, or Saunders, or Atwood, or Yuknavich. Just me, squinting into some memorable windows in my life before they all fog." W. Royce Adams' fictional works include The Rairarubia Tales, The Computer's Nerd, Me&Jay, Jay, and Against the Current, a collection of short stories. He lives in Santa Barbara, California. www.wroyceadams.com

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798986488516
Publisher:	RJK Books
Publication date:	08/10/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	266
File size:	3 MB

Editorial Reviews

11/07/2022

The heartwarming As Time Goes By finds the prolific Adams—who has published a slew of articles, chapter books, juvenile novels, and even a short story collection—telling the stories of his own life in a series of snapshots of disparate people, places, and events that come together to offer a panoramic view. From his childhood relationship with his grandfather, to his long list of girlfriends, to comic capers like the time, in a Navy plane unable to land on account of fog, Personnel Specialist Adams accidentally clocked his Commander in the head with a flashlight, As Time Goes By takes us on a journey through the terrain of a fascinating life in direct, inviting prose and a welcome sense of play, even as he faces hard truths and existential questions.

The book is divided into three distinct parts: Early Years, Middle Years and Later Years. Though this structure offers a distinctly chronological ordering, the stories themselves often aren’t directly related to each other. Instead, each chapter paints a portrait of an interesting character Adams met, or divulges a valuable lesson he learned, working like short stories in and of themselves. Adams's prose is eloquent yet unfussy, controlled yet never strained, characterized by a touching humanity that makes the reader feel everything the author is feeling.

One compelling throughline is Adams’s love of literature and music, especially his passion for jazz. His account of meeting the singer Abbie Hart at the storied Lighthouse club in California’s Hermosa Beach, and subsequently covering her career for Downbeat—and then eventually marrying her—is a breezy pleasure, pulsing with life and evocative of a long-gone milieu that, fortunately, we still can touch through recordings and stories like this. “I felt unhinged with happiness,” Adams writes. Lovers of humane short stories—trading in family, love and loss—and memoirs will enjoy this book, which is extremely pure and evocative.

Takeaway: This arresting memoir bursts with life, insight, and an infectious love of jazz and writing.

Great for fans of: Scott Yanow’s Life Through The Eyes Of A Jazz Journalist, Lee Smith’s Dimestore: A Writer's Life.

Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: B

BookLife Reviews