Brian Dillon's 'Ambivalence': A Memoir in Third Person Explores Youth, Style, and Self

Brian Dillon's memoir 'Ambivalence: An Education' is reviewed in The New Yorker. The book, set in Ireland during the 1980s and early 1990s, recounts Dillon's late teens and early twenties in the third person, referring to his younger self as 'B'. Dillon, known for his memoir-inflected criticism in works like 'Suppose a Sentence' and 'Essayism', uses this unconventional approach to explore the formation of his aesthetic sensibilities. The narrative focuses on B's intellectual and emotional development, his obsession with style icons like David Bowie, and his deep engagement with texts by Virginia Woolf, Roland Barthes, and others. The memoir deliberately avoids conventional autobiographical elements such as friendships and love affairs, instead centering on the transformative power of literature and ideas. Dillon's third-person perspective allows for a detached examination of his youthful anxieties and aspirations, capturing the texture of a period marked by boredom, reverie, and the search for identity. The book spans from the death of Dillon's mother to his move to England for graduate studies, ending before he published any significant work. The review highlights Dillon's stylistic experimentation, including his use of italics and occasional second-person address, as a reflection of his engagement with postmodern theory. It also notes the memoir's relevance to contemporary questions about taste and cultural consumption in the digital age.