Johann Sebastian Bach was once passed over for a plum organist’s position because his work and style were considered derivative and out-of-date. Fortunately, those 18th-century critics didn’t bother him at all, because he had found his musical voice and it no longer mattered what anyone said.

I was reminded of the immortal JSB when Rebecca Solnit, in RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE, alluded to having entered the feminist-activist-environmentalist mainstream rather late, at a time when a generation and more of readers would already be familiar with the basic themes that propelled her to document her experiences in this refreshingly unconventional memoir.

For openers, there can be few nouns in the English language more loaded or prescient than the word “nonexistence,” which Solnit spells with an uncompromising lack of hyphenation. It’s an integral thing; it’s in your face right there on the cover.

And of course it fluctuates, squirms and coils its way through nine wonderfully unpredictable chapters, each comprised of several sub-sections, like the movements of a musical sonata. Along the way, “nonexistence” sheds or accumulates nuances of definition, often quite subtly, just  below the surface, but emerging every so often to remind us just how pervasive its myriad forms have become in a society where patriarchy is dying far too slowly.

"Solnit is most engaging when she connects with some of the many social currents flowing through her life as she researched, interacted with and reacted to the often grueling process of researching, writing and getting her against-the-grain work published."

RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE is anything but a smooth chronological account of how one of America’s most respected truth-to-power voices found her stride as a writer of substance. Within a few pages, she is telling the story of a tiny but charming San Francisco apartment discovered during the early 1980s when she was only 19 and too young to drink, vote or sign a lease. She persuaded the kindly black landlord to let her mother sign for her instead. Her official “nonexistence” as a tenant lasted for years beyond her official existence as a legal adult.

As Solnit reflects, infers, alludes to and surmises through these present-day reminiscences, it was within the walls of that unique apartment that she found both sanctuary from her previous life in an abusive family environment, and the courage to venture into encounters that would reveal her true voice as a passionate advocate for social, environmental and feminist justice.

In fact, as those familiar with any of Solnit’s two-dozen books, monographs, essays and numerous articles will know, her epic voice in popular culture is not the kind that strikes a different chord for each cause or subject she espouses. Like a masterful composer or orchestrator, she draws from a broad literary toolbox ranging from tight journalism to poetic wonderment, giving her prose a personal yet universal character.

So while Solnit reflects very closely at times on her physical presence in the world, RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE offers surprisingly little in terms of intimate or deeply personal detail. Just as surprisingly, one doesn’t miss this layer of self-expression, which in many memoirs tends to become annoying self-absorption.

Instead, Solnit is most engaging when she connects with some of the many social currents flowing through her life as she researched, interacted with and reacted to the often grueling process of researching, writing and getting her against-the-grain work published.

While alluding to being somewhat late on the scene (I would argue she is perfectly on time), her words ring not with anger or cynicism, but instead capture an essential hope tempered with cautious optimism in her revelations about ways in which women, racial minorities, the differently gendered, the poor and indigenous have been systematically rendered invisible, forgotten and, of course, “nonexistent” in a world consumed by the economics of greed and the elitism of patriarchy.

What is different about RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE is its cumulative atmosphere of becoming, through which Solnit reflects on claiming, little by little, who she was meant to be. So instead of ending as a finished and definitive work, this memoir reaches a pause-point where the achievement of social change for so many of the people whose plight filled Solnit’s heart has been real. While not quite enough (and it may never be enough), here we are all meant to breathe deeply, gather strength, ignore all the gaslighting voices and soldier on.