Book Review: "Recollections of My Non-Existence" by Rebecca Solnit

I've had this book for a while and well, I read it back in the May of 2021. I've decided that I might revisit some old classics. Rebecca Solnit is a pretty good writer and I enjoy the idea that a book may also speak to me (as often as I do feel fairly invisible in the real world and ironically, I also feel incredibly paranoid from time to time). Recollections on My Non-Existence isn't just a book about not existing, it's about one's experience of existence not being acknowledged or respected in any way. From time to time, it's reality can get depressing but honestly, it is all true. I love the writing in this book and if you haven't read it already then I highly recommend it.

From the age of 19, Solnit lives in a studio flat on Lyon Street in San Francisco. Honestly, the fact she could even afford this at 19 is pretty impressive but it seems to be imbued with her want for creative freedom. She fills the apartment with things she finds on walks and random books she has been gathering over time. But it is clear that she is isolated, somewhat only existing in a floating-through-life atmosphere. Her writing is often shifting with the mood and yet, has a strange almost emptying quality to it.

Solnit tells us the stories of misogyny in the city - the ways in which men will purposefully make young women feel uncomfortable because it satisfies a strange ego within them. She tells the reader the story of a man following her home at night, talking about his shadow in almost a Jack-the-Ripper style. She tells other stories about failed romances and rejections she gave male poets for treating her like a property item. The silences from women who accept this behaviour, she examines, is almost ingrained. Whereas, Solnit herself definitely pushes back against it. She writes about the way she devoured books in order to escape the horrors of the real world, especially when it came to being a young woman alone in a male-dominated society.

As she becomes more of a respected intellectual, she tells us about her most famous essays including Men Explain Things to Me and others. Writing becomes more and more a part of her identity as she observes the diversity within her own community as she lives alongside BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ folk. I think the best thing though is that among all of this, she recognises that she embodies a certain kind of privilege that the more diverse folk will never experience and that they may be even more erased than herself. I love the way that Rebecca Solnit writes about her experiences and observations. It is so philosophical and yet, it is not overly worded. It feels almost poetic, which is quite right for a woman who writes about one of her influences being William Wordsworth.

This memoir is very much resistant to a main storyline, instead it collects memories and anecdotes from the time in which the author lives in the California apartment. I love the fragmented structure because it definitely feels like real life. We don't live in a linear reality, but instead our personalities and our lives are made out of all of our observations, experiences and interactions whether they are positive or negative. She acknowledges that many experiences for a young woman in the city can be negative due to unwanted advances and attention and also looks at the cultural shift towards the movement which holds men accountable for their actions. Though, she also sees that this has resisted any real, systemic change. She is definitely still right about this even though it's slow-happenings.

All in all, there is something brilliant about Rebecca Solnit's writing that many women can resonate with. There is something deep, heartfelt and intelligent in the way she crafts resurrected memories, often with new observations and angles she may have not thought of at the time. She is imperfectly human and as someone who is also a woman, I enjoyed her mediations on the way women must walk through the world often in silence. I would say that if you're a woman then this is probably one of the books you definitely want to read.