Micro Review: Dead Weight

Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays
Randall Horton
Published by Northwestern University Press
Paperback, 144 pp., February 15, 2022

“Bad personal essays are about the writer.  Good personal essays are about all of us.”  ~ Brian Doyle

Randall Horton’s second memoir, Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays, is unlike any other memoir I’ve read. I can use the same words that I’ve used to describe other memoirs, words like raw and unfiltered and honest; but the words pale in comparison to the experience of Randall’s ability to invite readers into his worlds.

I use that word in the plural, worlds, purposefully, because this memoir is all about the myriad worlds Randall has moved in. It’s also all about the re’s: rebirth, redefinition, redemption, remembrance, reality, recovery, responsibility, respect. Randall shies away from nothing: not his world as an addict, not his world as an inmate, not his world as a human navigating and re-navigating a society that has been, in so many ways, structured to keep him down.

This book is about the author, undoubtedly. Each essay is full of Randall’s trademark sound, the rhythm of his sentences more music than prose. His voice is at once lyric and lucid, the stories in each essay distilled to their most vivid expression. These essays are his reckoning with his past and make no mistake: Randall owns his life, the things he did. But this book is also about the collective us. The us that imposes rules to protect power and privilege; the us that preaches about redemption but continues to punish those who’ve strayed, even after their debt has been paid; the us who live in glass houses, yet still spend their evenings sharpening their stones.

In this memoir, Randall the writer recounts the life he’s lived. But he also calls on all of us to examine our own lives, the lexicon we use to hold others down, and the desperate need for a recreation of language that’s necessary for a true “all of us” to exist.