Ace of Spades; an Interview with David Matthews
By Cara Hoffman - March 18, 2011
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David Mathews’ memoir Ace of Spades is the story of the author’s bleak childhood and adolescence in inner city Baltimore. A confessional, coming of age story that employs poetic language and sardonic wit to restrain and redirect the rage comprising the heart of the book.
Though published in 2007, Ace of Spades feels very much the work of another era stylistically. It also feels like the work of another era because the plot centers around Mathews, a mixed race kid, passing as white.
Ace of Spades stands out as a work of serious self-reflection and cultural analysis, a work that goes beyond the solipsism of other memoirs of the time and remains today a work of true revelation.
I recently asked David Mathews about the political subtext of Ace of Spades.
“For me,” he said “there happened to be a political element, or more correctly a sociological element, inherent in my story of growing up mixed in America. I didn't see a way around addressing the institutional forces which prompted most of the decisions I made. So the personal was necessarily political.”
“I was sort of reacting to the trend of memoirs written by (usually) white men of a certain age and class,” Matthews said. “whose stories seemed to have import only as far as the specifics of their lives, and maybe those just like them. Very few told me anything about the human condition, or gave me a glimpse into a world of stakes, with real consequences. Whether James Frey got clean (of his bullshit, entitled, self-imposed debauch) or Dave Eggers became the next great whatever, meant very little to me. I also wanted a literary style that freed the book from time or place, so I chose a kind of 19th century, ornate form-- kinda Poe meets Goethe. I wanted someone to pick it up a hundred years from now and have it feel timeless, like a black & white movie.”
Though published in 2007, Ace of Spades feels very much the work of another era stylistically. It also feels like the work of another era because the plot centers around Mathews, a mixed race kid, passing as white.
Ace of Spades stands out as a work of serious self-reflection and cultural analysis, a work that goes beyond the solipsism of other memoirs of the time and remains today a work of true revelation.
I recently asked David Mathews about the political subtext of Ace of Spades.
“For me,” he said “there happened to be a political element, or more correctly a sociological element, inherent in my story of growing up mixed in America. I didn't see a way around addressing the institutional forces which prompted most of the decisions I made. So the personal was necessarily political.”
“I was sort of reacting to the trend of memoirs written by (usually) white men of a certain age and class,” Matthews said. “whose stories seemed to have import only as far as the specifics of their lives, and maybe those just like them. Very few told me anything about the human condition, or gave me a glimpse into a world of stakes, with real consequences. Whether James Frey got clean (of his bullshit, entitled, self-imposed debauch) or Dave Eggers became the next great whatever, meant very little to me. I also wanted a literary style that freed the book from time or place, so I chose a kind of 19th century, ornate form-- kinda Poe meets Goethe. I wanted someone to pick it up a hundred years from now and have it feel timeless, like a black & white movie.”
