BOOK REVIEW

ROSANNE CASH

Composed: A Memoir

[Viking Press]

First and foremost, Rosanne Cash wanted to write. It wasn’t a call to the stage that inspired the eldest daughter of Johnny Cash to make her first record in the late 1970s at age 23. Performing was simply a medium for songwriting, a craft that fascinated Cash and that she pursued with a fierce intellectualism. Her third book and first memoir, Composed is long on such procedural details about Cash’s evolution as an artist and short on gossip. Pages are devoted to the nuts and bolts of her professional partnership with singer-songwriter and producer Rodney Crowell—but little is said of their romance, which produced three children and ended with an amicable divorce in 1991. It’s as if, having grown up in the spotlight, Cash has little patience for the notion that we’re entitled to any details about her personal life. But that doesn’t mean Composed isn’t intimate. Cash writes candidly about her complicated relationship with her father, and eloquently about personal tragedies such as miscarriage, brain surgery and losing her parents. Her evocative prose elevates the book far beyond the standard celebrity autobiography. “With time the unbearable becomes shocking, becomes sad and finally becomes poignant,” she writes. “Or maybe poignancy isn’t the conclusion to grief. Maybe there is something beyond poignant that I haven’t experienced yet.” Long ago, Rosanne Cash established herself as a singer-songwriter in her own right. With Composed, she reveals another layer of her artistry, one that takes the next step in establishing her singular legacy. —KD