When literary critics turn memoirists: James Campbell's new book

James Campbell has spent decades writing about other people's lives. The Scottish critic and biographer gave us definitive books on James Baldwin, the Beats, and mid-century literary culture. Now he's turned the lens on himself.

The New York Times just reviewed his new memoir "NB by J.C. " and it's got me thinking about what happens when the observer becomes the observed.

Campbell built his reputation by getting inside the heads of writers like Baldwin and Kerouac. But writing about yourself? That's a different kind of excavation entirely. Honestly, it's weird how much harder it can be to see your own blind spots.

why critics make interesting memoirists

Reading the personal story of someone who's made a career out of analyzing other people's personal stories is pretty fascinating. Campbell knows how memoir works from the outside. He's seen the tricks, the evasions, the ways writers shape their own narratives to make themselves look better (or worse, depending on what they're going for).

But I keep coming back to this question: does that self-awareness make you a better memoirist, or does it get in your way?

When you know all the moves, can you still surprise yourself? The Times review suggests Campbell manages to sidestep that trap. He writes with the same clear-eyed attention he brought to his subjects, but without the clinical distance. It's intimate without being indulgent. Which is honestly pretty hard to pull off.

the art of seeing clearly

This reminds me of Percival Everett's "James," which takes Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and flips the perspective entirely.

Everett, like Campbell, knows literature from the inside out. But in "James," he uses that knowledge to reveal what was always hidden in plain sight. The enslaved Jim becomes the true intellectual of the story, code-switching between the language white society expects and his real voice. Not even close to what most readers probably picked up on their first time through Twain.

Both books are about the gap between public and private selves. Campbell the critic versus Campbell the man. Jim as he appears to Huck versus Jim as he really is.

There's something powerful about writers who can hold both versions in their heads at once. Everett's novel works because he doesn't just retell Twain's story, he shows us how much we missed the first time around. Campbell seems to be doing something similar with his own life, examining the stories he's told himself about himself.

And that's what makes literary critics interesting when they turn personal. They can't help but read their own lives like texts, looking for the patterns and contradictions that make a story worth telling.

If you're curious about either book, both are available on papr. Sometimes the best way to understand a critic is to see what happens when they put themselves under the microscope.