Sarah O'Connor

“Sometimes patrons ask if my full first name is Benjamin. Then they ask if I know what my name means…They are surprised to find out I’m the oldest of two sons and not the youngest of twelve. They look at me as if I’m wearing the wrong name tag, wearing the wrong name,” (Robinson 31).

Ben Robinson’s book is a combination of memoir and poetry, examining the etymology of his name and how he is perceived by others and how we perceive ourselves based on our names. How much do our names shape our identity? How much do we shape ourselves around our names? Robinson explores this and so much more in The Book of Benjamin.

I can’t remember the publication now or the exact time that it appeared, but it was either late 2019 or early 2020 that I first read an excerpt for The Book of Benjamin. I didn’t know it was an excerpt then. From my hazy memory the title was the same, it was a piece written for some literary review or magazine and I adored what I read. Unlike in the book, an explanation appeared either within or before the text (again, it’s a blur, there was a pandemic in between reading the excerpt and publication) that Robinson had put a Google alert out for his full name “Benjamin Robinson” and compiled excerpts of different search results to see the way the different Benjamin Robinson’s of the world were living countered with his own insights as a Benjamin Robinson, the etymology of his first name, and how we are perceived by our names.

On the left pages of The Book of Benjamin are the alerts, news stories, etc. of the other Benjamin Robinson’s of the world ranging from newspaper articles on various crimes, wedding announcements, birth announcements, theatre programs, obsessively listed often without punctuation. A never-ending multiverse of Benjamin Robinson’s. On the right side of the page takes the place of memoir. Here we learn about Robinson’s sister Emily, miscarried between him and his brother, as well as Robinson’s analysis of the name Benjamin and the history of the biblical Benjamin. My favourite part of course was Robinson looking at how people are perceived by their names, from a little boy who panics when the first letter from his surname is missing from his nametag and goes through an identity crisis to Robinson’s own relationship with his name to others (as stated in the above quotation). It is the blending of these two together that we get Robinson’s main point of the book: that we can never really be known by our names, that while they identify us people are too complex to only be understood by what they are called.

There were some odd, unexpected coincidences I related to in Robinson’s book that I wasn’t expecting and that I won’t go into, but it was strange and comforting to find certain thoughts and experiences reflected back to me. I’ve long been interested in names and the perception that comes with them and I’m glad that Robinson chose to turn this thought into a book that I’m sure many will relate to. The Book of Benjamin is a touching piece of poetry and memoir that is sure to be a favourite among many!

Publication: October 16 2023
Publisher: Palimpsest Press
Pages: 95 (Paperback)
Source: Owned
Genre: Non-Fiction, Poetry, Memoir
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:

Like an obsessive baby name book with only one entry, The Book of Benjamin establishes links between identity, birth, and grief. Braiding the story of his stillborn sister with the Biblical account of Benjamin to explore how names and their etymologies might shape our self-understanding, Benjamin Robinson resists the traditional individual focus of the memoir, while also investigating new forms of masculinity.  The Book of Benjamin is the testament of both a son and a father, contrasting genealogy with larger communal narratives.