Structure

Solnit divides her memoir into nine titled sections: "Looking Glass House," "Foghorn and Gospel," "Life During Wartime," "Disappearing Acts," "Freely at Night," "Some Uses of Edges," "Diving Into the Wreck," "Audibility, Credibility, Consequence," and "Afterword: Lifelines." Each of these sections is then divided into a series of smaller numbered chapters. Rather than adhering to traditional memoir structures, Solnit adopts a collage-like narrative form. She tells the story of her life, not merely from early life through her present reality. Instead, she disrupts the linear progression of time, often overlapping and interweaving different sections and periods of her life. For example, the first chapter in "Looking Glass House," not only depicts images of her first apartment, but looks forward to her larger coming interests and explorations as a young woman and a writer.

The structure of Recollections of My Nonexistence works to enact Solnit's interests and journey as...