Adam Haslett’s experience

I think Haslett has an uncanny ability to reflect how people really feel in the situations he portrays. In every story I find myself wondering how much of this happened to him in real life. Do you think he is drawing on personal experience for a lot of these stories?

“Reunion”

Why does James write the letters to his father? Why does he seal the letters and put them on the living room shelf?

I love this sentence: “Gently, images flowed before his mind, and the inscrutable enormity of remembered life washed back over him, leaving him weightless and expectant.”

“War’s End”

Why does Paul go to Albert at the end?

Why does Paul decide this is the right time to kill himself? Will he do it?

“Devotion”

At the end of this story, we find out that Hillary knew about the letters already. Did she also know about Owen and Ben? She thinks that he has “led such a cramped life, losing his friends, scared of what people might know,” but what exactly does she know?

And with how much she cared about Ben, why was she so devoted to Owen? Why had she “held her tongue, remembering the chances Owen had to leave her and how he never had?” I know that quote attempts to answer my question, but I don’t think it is sufficient -- why did it matter to her that Owen stayed with her when she could have had Ben if it weren’t for Owen’s interference?

Erin’s pick

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

“The Beginnings of Grief”

What is going on in this story? What does Gramm get out of the relationship? What does the narrator get out of the relationship? Does the answer to that question have to do with his parents dying?

Does this sort of thing happen in real life?

And what does the title of the story mean?

Talk, talk, talk

Do you think she is rejecting his help in particular, or all help? Does he experience the rejection as personal, or does his ego allow him to attribute it to something in her personality? She asks him a lot of questions, mainly, it seems, to validate her own assumptions about who he is: relatively well-to-do easterner with a privileged background who probably has experienced very little pain in his life, let alone unspeakable tragedy. Is she doing this to gauge whether he has anything to offer her? What does he hope to "talk" her out of? Or into? Or over? For all his training and "empathy," is this woman's pain really "soothable" by him? By anyone? (Erin noted that the benefit of talking is largely his).

As I was reading this story, I kept thinking of an Ani DiFranco song. It's about racial injustice, particulary the way centuries of abuse have informed the modern ghetto:

Why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun?
'Cause we'll never live long enough to undo everything they've done
to you

The song is strangely uplifting despite its tone of irredeemable loss. It doesn't foreclose the possibility of a better life; it just frankly acknowledges the scope of the tragedy.

How much life there is

What is the significance of the works of art described in this story?

Good?

Is Dr. Frank Briggs good?

The Good Doctor?

Is “The Good Doctor” about Dr. Frank Briggs or Mrs. Buckholdt?

Graham

The character of Graham shows us how bad bipolar disorder can be even when treated. He doesn’t sleep well, he fears that his partner will leave him, and a part of him doesn’t want to take his medication. But the overall picture is of someone who can lead a reasonably normal life when taking his medication. Is Graham’s condition sad, or are you optimistic for him (especially when compared to his father)?

Depression

Most of bipolar disorder is depression. The average person with untreated bipolar disorder spends 70% of their life clinically depressed. Even though this story is about a manic episode, did you see his lifelong struggle with depression through the cracks in the story?

I see several clues to his depression in the story. One is that his family hasn’t heard from him in years. Another is that his son hints that his mother found his father after a suicide attempt. Do you see any others?

Mania

In “Notes to My Biographer,” we see a tragic portrait of the manic side of untreated bipolar disorder. It is painted so vividly and accurately that it makes me wonder whether it is about the author’s own father and whether the Graham character is the author.

As a person who has bipolar disorder and has been arrested when manic, this story was both difficult to read and difficult to put down. Did any of you have trouble reading it? Did it add anything to your understanding of mania, or did you already understand it?