A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR β’ Alan Lightmanβs grandfather M.A. was the familyβs undisputed patriarch. It was his movie theater empire that catapulted the Lightmans, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant family, to prominence in the South; his triumphs that would both galvanize and paralyze his descendants.
In this evocative personal history, the author chronicles his return to Memphis and the stifling home he had been so eager to flee forty years earlier. As aging uncles and aunts retell old stories, Alan finds himself reconsidering long-held beliefs about his larger-than-life grandfather and his quiet, inscrutable father.
The result is an unforgettable family saga set against the pulsing backdrop of Memphisβits country clubs and juke joints, its rhythm and blues, its segregated movie theaters, its barbecue and pecan pieβincluding encounters with Elvis, Martin Luther King Jr., and E. H. βBossβ Crump. Both intensely personal and quintessentially American, Screening Room finely explores the tricks of light that can makeβand unmakeβa man and his myth.
(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)