“Like an old shoebox full of family snapshots, some happy, some faded, some blurred and some very dark indeed, A Common Pornography makes a brutally honest collage of the author’s childhood. The voice is recognizable and true, the memories alternately familiar and disturbing. A dreamy kid makes construction-paper 45’s of his future hit records. A brother learns the full extent of his sister’s abuse at their father’s wake. Kevin Sampsell, a Portland bookseller, writer and independent publisher, has collected these disparate fragments into a powerful story of a broken American family. The style is deceptively simple, the memories usually quite brief. The effect is powerful.”—Brad Craft, University Bookstore, Seattle