In an era when the internet encourages everyone to be a critic, it is worth reflecting on what criticism used to be: who the critics were, and whether losing those voices strips criticism of its value. Jed Perl's We Never Called It Frisco (Coffee House Press; 136 pages) explores that question while offering a remembrance of a bygone era and the critic at its center, whose death prompts rumination on who she was and what she meant to a particular movement. The book also examines what is lost when art movements lose their strongest voices, and how much of our voice carries on after death.

The characters that traipse through the book, often through Marcia's point of view, are an eclectic array of eccentric artists that feel unique to a certain time and in a certain place. Burt runs a small-time printing press and publishes a lit mag a couple of times a year, as well as the occasional book. Mike is a poet with a few East Coast awards who was particularly close to Marcia. Jack, a painter, is known for his intensity, while his wife, Evelyn, is recognized by her peers as the more talented artist, though she has stopped painting. The highlight is Jane and Jonas, a marionette-making couple who constantly bicker over the political direction of their shows. Together, the people who populate Marcia's life and the stories they tell don't represent a present-day "scene." Rather, this novel is an autopsy of what has already happened, and what has ended. The people remain, but the scene does not. The present-day narrative exists in 1968, just after the Summer of Love. But that's what happens to scenes. They are flashes in time and place, leaving behind culture and people, but they don't last forever.

The novel works within an unusual structure. After Burt begins working to finish Marcia's book, the remaining text consists of chapters Marcia had already finished, combined with chapters Burt added. As he explains, "Every chapter or two I’ve added a chapter that’s more or less my own—to fill in the gaps in the story, I guess." That leaves us to assume the novel itself is Burt's finished product, and that his occasional first-person narration is his contribution. It's a choice both curious and a bit disorienting. At times, when a chapter begins, we aren't sure who the narrator is, because Marcia also wrote in first person. The rapid jumps risk losing the reader, and it's fair to question whether the novel would have been better served by greater distance between Burt's perspective and Marcia's ending pages, or at least a more distinctive separation.

The novel's structure also mirrors broader themes of memory and legacy. Burt and Marcia's voices blend: one documents her life, the other reflects on a life already gone. Their differing perspectives reflect the way histories are constructed and remembered. Burt is not just filling in the gaps in Marcia's account; he also adds his own interpretation, that of someone surviving after the original author has passed away. Though we can eventually discern Burt's sections from Marcia's own, the blending strips out individual perspective, reinforcing the sense that this novel is not simply the history of one person, but of the cultural moment she was part of.

In the pages she finished, Marcia prefers anecdotes and histories of personal interactions. Parallel love stories run beneath the surface: Marcia's love for the people who helped define her career, the people she returned to in the Bay Area, and her love for Burt, subtle but still alive. Burt himself seems to downplay the relationship but shows his vulnerability when he wonders if he has a place in Marcia's journals. We finally learn he's there, and the tenderness with which Marcia writes about him shows. Coupled with Marcia's love for documenting people, which also conflates with her love for herself, this gives the novel the emotional heft it needs to deepen the story.

As a character, Marcia has a peculiar existence on the page. She's distant, existing beyond the first chapter only in memory and through her writing. She's also defined largely by others' opinions of her, while her relationship with Burt initially feels unclear. In fiction, it is not uncommon for a character to exist only in the past, with their voice and feelings conveyed only through letters and journals. Here, Marcia's presence feels deliberately incomplete. In the single on-page chapter at the beginning, she's a character full of opinion and personality. This contrasts with the drifting portrayal we get from her memoir. Marcia feels everywhere and nowhere at the same time, her identity filtered through memory and recollection, reinforcing one of the novel's themes: legacy is mostly fragments, never quite whole.

Marcia's distance, yet almost constant presence, shows another of the novel's themes: What do we leave behind when we die? For many, it's nothing. But at least Marcia had a will. When she left Burt her entire estate, she left him a house in Marin that seemed to be falling apart. Still, to Burt, it represents what he adored about Marcia, even if he won't openly admit it. In her writings, she left behind a piece of herself for others to interpret. In a way, Marcia's life becomes the act, the exhibit, and the partially completed memoir becomes the conduit through which other people judge her. She should be known as a critic, an author, and, at times, a firebrand. As Burt recalls, "Time magazine declared Marcia 'a new kind of critic, more interested in her own feelings than whatever she’s loving or hating. What Randall Jarrell called ‘the age of criticism’ is turning into the age of narcissism. Love her or hate her, Marcia Falk may turn out to be the voice of the new decade.'" Marcia made a career out of critiquing other people, other movements, and art. Now, her memoir leaves her open to critique, with no way to defend herself. So then, what do we leave behind when we die? A legacy for others to interpret, for better or worse, and that question carries the work forward.

We Never Called It Frisco offers a snapshot of a time in San Francisco when the city felt like an artistic epicenter, often comparing itself to New York. While other works, such as Maupin's Tales of the City or Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem, highlighted the vibrant chaos of the 1960s and ‘70s, Perl moves the timeline back a few years to portray San Francisco as an incubator for artists and writers born of a world torn apart by war. The novel also examines who gets to tell the story of a scene, a particular movement, and who gets to critique the critic once the critic is gone. The heavy focus on anecdotes and disorienting prose means parts of the novel don't land as effectively as intended, but it's an interesting examination of who is best equipped to document artistic scenes, and how the public at large replaces them, turning criticism into noise.