In 2003 Kevin Sampsell authored a chapbook memoir of the same title. It was written as a kind of memory experiment in which he recollected luminous details from his childhood in independently amusing chapters. It functioned as an experiential catalogue of American youth in the 70s and 80s. In 2008 Kevins estranged father died of an aneurysm. When he returned home to Kennewick Washington for the funeral Kevins mother revealed to him disturbing threads in their family history stories of incest madness betrayal and death which retroactively colored Kevins memories of his upbringing and youth. He learned of his mothers first two husbands the fathers of his three older mythologized halfsiblings and the havoc they wreaked on his mother. He learned of his own fathers seething resentment of his stepchildren which was expressed in physical pyschological and sexual abuse. And he learned more about his oldest stepsister Elinda who as a young girl was labeled feebleminded by a teacher. When she became a teenager she was sent to a psychiatric hospital. She entered the clinic at 98 pounds. She left two years later 200 pounds diabetic having endured numerous shock treatments. Then after finally returning home she was made pregnant by Kevins father. Only at the end of the book do we learn what chance in life a person like this has. While his familys story provides the framework of the book whats left in between is Kevins story of growing up in the Pacific Northwest. He tells of his first jobs first bands first loves and one worn teal blue suitcase filled with the choicest porn in all of Kennewick Washington. Employing the same form of memoir as he did in his previous book Kevin intertwines the tragic with the everyday the dysfunctional with the fun lending A COMMON PORNOGRAPHY its undeniable unsensationalized reality. The elastic conceit of his memory experiment captures the many shades and the whole of the Sampsell family both its tragedy and its resiliency. Kevin relates this