Now here's a title I could have used for a book of my own. Problems with people? Where do you start? Here's a problem with them: I just want to be left alone. I want to stay on the periphery. Is that a sin? Yes. We're all in this together. That's what people think. But I don't feel that Im in this with anyone. Nor do I want to be. I'm fine on my own. I breathe easier on the outside. I don't need to be "in this" with anyone. For that, they'll never forgive you. You keep your distance, but that only makes it easier for them to wind up when they start throwing stones.
Guterson's stories in this collection deal with the second half of life, when bodies and memories start to fail, when options are winnowed, or disappear entirely, when disappointments and regrets mount and, inevitably, when other people become problematic in ways that we were able to ignore—or wish away—when we were younger.
To illustrate his point, Guterson writes about the quiet dramas in life, the kind that are hard to write about, but which fill the autobiography of the ordinary person. Oh, there are the big splashy terrors, the cancers, motorcycle accidents, dementias, divorces, even a shipwreck, but they aren't the real drama in any of these stories. What happens afterwards, often long afterwards, the scars and limps and partial paralyses that these everyday tragedies leave on us—that's what Guterson is really trying to describe. And he does a pretty terrific job of it. It isn't easy to write obliquely about the horrific mistake of human life. Yes, the horrific mistake of human life. My Schopenhauer is showing. I doubt Guterson would see it this way, though. I think he's trying to say that life is worthwhile all the same, that there are some shreds of dignity and sweetness to be pulled from the bone when all is said and done. Sure. But is it worth the price of admission? Is it worth the pain of aging, loss, disease…the problems with people?
For me, these stories were depressing. But depressing in a good, bracing, tonic sort of way. They're a reminder: don't get too comfy, don't get too happy. As the Who sang, "When I smile tell me some bad news, before I laugh and act like a fool." By the time I finished the final story, "Hush," in which a hard luck dog-walker attends the dying moments of the difficult old crank who employed her, a story that showed off Guterson's writing talent at its best—bitter and sweet, funny and tragic, heartbreaking but hard and never lapsing into sentimentality and bathos—I was thinking about the 400 xanax pills I've got hoarded in an old shoebox from my old panic attack days. I was wondering if they were still potent enough to get the job done after fifteen years. What's the half-life of a 1mg xanax tablet, anyway? I imagine it's not forever, the way the half-life of love is forever, well, at least according to Junot Diaz.
Probably this isn't the effect Guterson was aiming for with this collection of stories and I hope he wouldn't be horrified to hear that this is the one that I was left feeling. To be reminded of the harsh terms of our existence, to have our faculties sharpened by a confrontation with death, to be made aware of the choice we make every moment of every day between life and death, even if it's only by default, is the greatest gift a writer can offer.
Thanks David Guterson!
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