Reviewed by Jane Elizabeth, Sociology Group
There are biographies that document a life. Then there are books that interrogate what it means to write a life at all. Ben Stoltzfus’s The Nine Lives of BIG JP falls firmly into the latter category. At once intimate and expansive, personal and postmodern, this “metabiography” resists conventional narrative in favor of a form that reflects its subject’s complexity. Here, life isn’t told in neat chronology- it is assembled, deconstructed, and reimagined through memory, fiction, visual art, historical context, and emotional truth.
In choosing to write not just about Judith Palmer- artist, traveler, survivor but also to include himself as a character in the telling, Stoltzfus offers more than a biography. He opens a shared space of reflection where author and subject, husband and wife, live and write alongside one another. What results is not just a portrait of a woman who endured and was transformed through art, but a meditation on the very act of remembering, representing, and loving across time.
A Life Told in Fragments
The structure of The Nine Lives of BIG JP follows a clear narrative timeline. Stoltzfus begins with Judith’s ancestors and moves through her childhood into adulthood, describing her life as a mother, spouse, and artist. The book shifts between biographical facts, excerpts from Judith’s journals, fictionalized retellings, commentary on her artwork, and cultural context, but always within a steady chronological arc. The effect is less like reading a conventional biography and more like walking through an intimate exhibition – room by room, image by image.
This approach echoes postmodern literary traditions, particularly the metafictional movements of the 20th century that Stoltzfus has long studied and contributed to. But unlike some postmodern works, this book is not cold or overly cerebral. Its experimentation is grounded in care. The innovations in structure serve an emotional and narrative purpose: to express a life that goes beyond simple facts and dates.
Judith Palmer: Survivor and Artist
Judith Palmer emerges as a deeply compelling subject, not because her story is dramatized, but because it is presented with raw honesty. We learn of her difficult childhood, a marriage that failed her, a terrifying LSD trip that destabilized her sense of self, and a near-death scuba diving incident. These experiences are not treated as spectacles. Instead, they are entry points into the psychology of someone finding herself through trauma, yes, but more importantly, through art.
Her artwork, some of which is included in the book, functions not just as illustration but as testimony. Abstract, expressive, and often circular in composition, her images mirror the nonlinear recovery and re-creation of identity. Stoltzfus writes of these works with the insight of someone who not only knows the artist personally but respects the distance between knowing and truly understanding another person.
The Author as Participant
One of the more daring elements of this metabiography is Stoltzfus’s choice to include himself- not merely as an authorial voice, but as a character and emotional participant. He does not claim objectivity. He writes openly about his relationship with Judith, about listening to her stories over the years, about interpreting her pain and strength through his own lens.
Rather than being intrusive, this inclusion adds a necessary layer to the book. It reminds readers that stories- especially those between partners are co-constructed. Love, in this case, is not a backdrop but part of the narrative structure. Their artistic collaboration on the earlier work Romoland, in which his writing responds to her visual art, sets the stage for this more comprehensive merging of lives and creative languages.
Beyond the Personal
What keeps The Nine Lives of BIG JP from becoming a purely private memoir is its engagement with larger cultural and historical forces. Stoltzfus seamlessly connects Judith’s individual experiences to broader movements and events. Her interactions with Black students at Berkeley High are situated within the civil rights movement. Her journey through South Africa is contextualized by apartheid and the resistance led by Nelson Mandela. Her LSD experience is framed by the countercultural philosophy of Timothy Leary.
These additions do not feel academic or artificial. They provide a textured backdrop that allows the reader to see how a single life is always entangled with its times. In this way, the book not only documents Judith’s transformation, but also charts a quiet history of the mid-20th century through her eyes.
Stoltzfus does not tell us what to think or feel. He invites us into a complex process: of remembering, of imagining, and of writing a life in all its contradictions. It’s a brave act not just of authorship, but of companionship.
More Than a Story, a Shared Life
The Nine Lives of BIG JP is a moving, intellectually rich work that challenges the limits of biography while honoring the person at its center. Judith Palmer’s story is one of survival, self-definition, and creative resilience. Ben Stoltzfus’s telling is equally courageous- willing to be vulnerable, willing to be experimental, and above all, willing to listen.
This book will speak most to readers interested in experimental forms of life writing, feminist autobiography, postmodern literature, and the intersection of personal and political histories. But even beyond these categories, it offers something universally resonant: an honest attempt to understand another human being, and to tell that story with love.
Available on Amazon. Learn more about the author at www.benstoltzfus.com.
Also Read: Interview with Ben Stoltzfus on The Nine Lives of Big JP
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