The Winter Diary by T. Kilgore Splake. (self-published, 156pgs.) No price listed.

T. Kilgore Splake AKA Tom Smith has been a fixture in the small press for at least three decades and his story is an interesting one. His path as a small press writer has been a difficult journey with many detours according to his autobiography, The Winter Diary. A mad path that took him from a relatively conventional childhood in the 1950's through broken marriages, alcoholism and burn-out as a college professor. Yet, I was not entirely satisfied with The Winter Diary's telling of it.

Splake writes in all lowercase — obstensibly post-structuralist, faux stream-of-consciousness, peppered with his own unique syntax and Splake-isms. This may be jarring and a bit incomprehensible to the uninitiated. But his writing style is the least problematic thing about this book (although, what can be very affective in a poem or two wears a bit thin in a book-length manuscript). No, the real problem with this book is that it's incredibly dull. I've always taken Splake to be a deliberate writer — someone for whom even the smallest detail matters. Unfortunately, he leaves a lot of detail out of this book — detail that I am quite sure would have made for a more engaging read.

However, before I address that, let's consider overall production. Splake has always expressed a fondness for really cheap-looking chapbooks. I suspect this is partly because it seems to him more authentically underground. Yet one look at this book, before you even read it, you know you're in for a misadventure. The cover art is bland and unappealing. The text is printed in a font so small (8 pt font, I believe), it will damage your eyesight if you stare at it for too long. You will definitely need a magnifying glass or reading glasses to follow along and even then, you will probably get a headache. The layout is amateurish. Indeed, the entire production of the book seems like it was done by a blind monkey on crystal meth – designed more to save the author a few bucks on printing costs than in presenting a readable book. Once you get your head around that ordeal, you dig into Splake's narrative and realize that his writing is very deliberate after all (a fact confirmed by Splake in his notes at the end in which he confesses that he disregarded most of the advice he was given and, like Sinatra, did it "his way"), but find yourself questioning whether the decisions the author made during those deliberations were wise. Memoirs — good memoirs, like all good writing, are ultimately about good storytelling. Splake, who is a very fine poet and photographer isn't really a natural storyteller judging from this book. The problem here is that Splake leaves too much of his story out of the narrative. He flits about between past and present, randomly, never staying too long, stopping only long enough to introduce a subject and plop down a poem or two. He summarizes his life story, but he doesn't spend a lot of time rendering those events into life. The whole thing feels more like it was compiled than written. The people in Splake's life — his wives, lovers, friends, children — never come to life. Splake, himself, remains as much an enigma at the end as he does at the beginning. It is as if Splake wrote this book for an anonymous literary critic rather than for flesh and blood readers.

Don't get me wrong. I have no axe to grind. I love Splake (although he may not believe that after reading this review) and I normally applaud his cantankerous, anti-establishment, I-did-it-my-way-and-if-you-don't-like-it-screw-you acts of literary defiance. But I am, at heart, a pragmatist, so I found the author's approach to his subject impractical. While I could on some level appreciate what he was trying to do (or what I think he was trying to do) on a purely intellectual level, purely as a literary puzzle, and certainly believe he has every right to write his story any damn way he pleases, as a reader I was not pleased and was simply left wanting as a result.