Half a Life: A Memoir (15 page)

The Real McCoy
centered on a man who threw off his identity, and in coming to New York lived as an impostor. That was how I felt, having fled to the city, having told no one about my past, about who I was.

More Than It Hurts You
is about a Long Island family with a terrible secret.…

It’s embarrassing how obviously I was writing about this incident—without my having known it.

CM:
And so now, having written it head-on, what’s the difference between examining the accident obliquely and actually facing it head-on, page-on?

DS:
One difference is: writing such non-fiction is basically a very public therapy session. As you know, you write a novel, interviewers ask about book-related points of interest. “How’d you come up with that character? What were you thinking with that plot twist?,” etc. But when you write a memoir, people ask about your state of mind. “Did writing the book help you? And how do you feel now?” It’s a very odd difference.

CM:
All right, then. So, how do you feel? I know how I felt when I first read the piece in
GQ
. It took my breath away. Quite literally. I remember gasping a moment. There is so much volume in a life.

DS:
There is volume in each life, and a writer tries (at least sometimes) to turn it up, the better to transcribe the noise. Most people—healthy people—work to turn it down: to find a little quiet in which to live. Maybe that’s why it’s such a weird job. (Philip Roth: “This profession even fucks up grief.”) Anyway.

I’m of a much stronger mind than ever about it now. At least I hope I am. This profession didn’t fuck up my grief; it allowed me to feel it, and then at least to begin gesturing past it.

In my friend David Lipsky’s excellent book with/about David Foster Wallace,
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself
, Wallace says that a small part of who he is craves fame, but that this part doesn’t get to drive. The fact that Celine died is present still in who I am—it would be inhuman if it weren’t at least in some way present forever—but it doesn’t get to drive my life. I used to wonder what would’ve happened if Celine had cut in front of a perfect driver, a Mario Andretti. Would that have been enough to save her life? I think not; I think physics dictates that nobody could have avoided her. But I now understand this Andretti vs. Strauss question is useless. She cut in front of me. And I did my best to avoid her. That’s all I can control.

I recently heard from a friend of the girl’s—someone I never knew. She read
Half a Life
and told me: “Stop beating yourself up. She committed suicide. She talked and even wrote about death constantly in the week before she died.” I didn’t want to hear that—I don’t know if it’s true, and it’s also not my business. Celine around school seemed happy to me. (Though admittedly I didn’t know her well.) I did what I could to avoid hitting her, and that’s the only part that concerns me.

All the same, when the book was about to come out, I wanted to write the parents a letter, a warning. Of course, they’d sued me after having said they knew I was blameless—and promising they would always support me. But I never blamed them for anything. (How could I? They’d lost a daughter, and I was walking around.) So I wanted to spare
them the pain of being surprised by the book. But the simple act of Googling them and writing the letter was hard—harder than writing the book. It never goes fully away.

CM:
Lorca talks about the pulse of the wound that goes through to the opposite side. I suppose that’s what you’ve located. It’s a very fine piece of work indeed. More than that, it seems necessary.

DS:
This was a wound I didn’t acknowledge; I was like Samsa in the beginning of
The Metamorphosis
, unaware I was schlepping around with eight skinny legs and an armor-plated belly. But the messages I’ve gotten from suffering people—distress signals, really—have strengthened my faith. I was going to say in books, but in everything.

To end on another Bellow (mis)quote, sometimes literary books believe all questions of truth have overwhelmingly formidable answers, uncongenial, hostile to us. It may be, however, that truth is not always so punitive. I learned this. There may be truths on the side of life … there may be some truths that are our friends in the universe.

READING GROUP QUESTIONS
AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Strauss includes a number of scenes (of him chatting up girls at the accident site, and of going to the movies later) that portray him in an unfavorable light. Do you think this makes him less likable, or more so? How effective is he in winning your sympathy? Do you think he wants to?

2. It took Strauss half a life to write this book. How do you think it would have differed if he’d tried to write it at the time of the accident? How would it be different if he’d waited another eighteen years?

3. Strauss writes that he thought of college as a “witness protection program”—he went off to school and told basically no one about the accident. Do you think this time was necessary for him to heal, or would he have benefited from talking about the accident to a lot of people right away?

4. As serious as this book is, it does include moments of humor. Strauss pokes gentle fun at “the Shrink”—a psychologist he saw soon after the crash—and at the “Death
& Dying” class he took in college. What purpose do these passages serve in this often somber book?

5. To what degree do you think Strauss’s memories were shaped by his age? How reliable is memory after almost two decades?

6. A number of reviewers of this book wrote that, if anything, Strauss was too hard on himself in this memoir. He was found blameless, yet he spent years feeling terrible about the accident. Is that a necessary moral stance, or could he have let himself off the hook a little more?

7.
The Washington Post
wrote that
Half a Life
has a universal appeal, calling it a “penetrating, thought-provoking examination of the human mind.” Do you think it raises larger issues beyond the immediate story of the car crash? If so, what are they?

8. Strauss’s parents are quite present in the early part of the book, less so as the story progresses. Is this merely a function of the narrator growing older? How would you act differently if it had been your child driving that car on that fateful day?

9. The accident resulted in a lawsuit. Do you think there is some peace of mind to be gained from litigation? Is it a way for us to try to feel better about something awful?

10. Define the relationship between Strauss and his wife, Susannah. How does she differ from the people he’d previously told about the crash?

11. Consider Strauss’s choice of career. He writes that, if not for the accident, he may not have become a writer. Does this seem true? Can we be shaped positively by terrible events? If so, how do we ensure that we are?

12. Strauss writes: “There are different brands of ignorance: the static of perplexity, the spun silk of denial.” What does this mean?

13. Strauss writes that there was no real epiphanic moment for him, no instant he can point to and say:
That
was when I began to feel better. And yet he seems to have learned a lesson from this event, and by the end of the book he is a changed man. What did he learn?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DARIN STRAUSS is the best-selling author of three previous books. The recipient of a Guggenheim in fiction writing and numerous other awards, Strauss has seen his work translated into fourteen languages, and published in more than twenty countries. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Writing at New York University, and he lives with his wife and children in Brooklyn.

Darin Strauss is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the Random House Speakers Bureau at
[email protected]
.