Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

—I’m so glad you came, Kyle, I’m in the process of developing this new way to map human experience, the research here is part of it, interviewing people. I want to figure out the relationship between the desire for theoretical knowledge and certain kinds of despair. This cat stuff is very interesting in that regard.

—Is your dad better since he got out?

—Wonderful. Just wonderful.

—I never had the same energy you did, Dan.

—Don’t be silly, don’t be silly, this is all extremely interesting.

—It’s strange being out in Bradford again. Something peaceful about it, though. You could come out and visit me sometime, if you needed somewhere to go.

—Sure, sure. Al, what are you doing?

—Shhhh. Listen. There’s someone at the door.

—Who is it, Al?

—I don’t know. I think it’s the super.

4. Interview with Wendell Lippman

—Daniel Markham conducting interview number three, June 16th, 1997, Anecdotal Sociology of the Philosophical Urge in Young Men, funding pending at the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Center for Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control, United States Departments of the Interior, Health and Human Services, and Education. Proceeding number 3B1997. Subject, Wendel O. Lippman, Caucasian male, age twenty-one, resident of Jamaica Plain, Boston. First question. Mr. Lippman, could you state your full name for the record?

—Wendell Oliver Lippman.

—Thank you. Now, Mr. Lippman, you have come here to participate in some groundbreaking research. What you say here today could alter the daily lives of mil ions of your fellow citizens. I don’t want to sound overly serious, but you need to understand you are sitting now at a kind of apex, an unparalleled position of influence, one you may never again attain in your life, a chance to shape the future of a nation by opening a window into the souls of its young men. Do you feel ready for this responsibility?

—I guess so. I mean, I just met Al the other day, at the park.

—Mr. Lippman, you must understand. In this instance Mr. Turpin is only a conduit through whom you have come to me. Your association with him is an empirical necessity but otherwise entirely irrelevant. This study is interested in you qua you, not you qua friend of Al. Is that clear?

—What does “qua” mean?

—Mr. Lippman, is it your impression that I am conducting this interview, or is it rather your impression that you are conducting this interview?

—You, I guess.

—That is correct, Mr. Lippman, that is correct.

—Look, man, I mean, Al just said I should come over sometime ‘cause, you know, we could talk about God and stuff like that, which is cool and all, but… I was just coming by to pick up some weed.

—For the record, I am now granting myself permission to treat the subject as hostile.

—What?

—State the titles and authors of the books you have read in the last five years.

—All of them?

—Yes, Mr. Lippman, all of them.

—You’re fucking intense.

—Are we done now with the editorial comment?

—Yeah.

—Good. So you’ve read what, exactly?

—Well, I checked this thing out on the Gulf War, about how, like, there was all this information about it, but not really any analysis, and that was sort of a new thing.

—Could you state for the record your level of education?

—I go to college.

—Right. Passing on the book question for now, perhaps you could tell us something about your interest in philosophy and how it began. You do have an interest in philosophy, correct?

—Sure.

—All right. Tel us how it got started.

—Well, the first time I got high—

5. Interview with Carl de Hooten

—We’re talking here this afternoon with Carl de Hooten… who is twenty-seven years old and a resident of western Somerville. Mr. de Hooten—

—Carl’s fine.

—All right. Carl is a—how did you describe it?

—A freelance graduate student.

—A freelance grad student. Meaning?

—I’m affiliated with a number of departments.

—He is a graduate of SUNY Oswego, where he studied philosophy. So, Carl, tell us something about your initial interest in the field.

—Where I lived as a child, a neighboring girl began a lemonade stand, her plan being to sell to passersby. My mother decided that I ought to participate in this venture, a sentiment which I later concluded derived from her conviction that I did not leave the house frequently enough. I fought her suggestion tooth and nail, having no interest in hawking some sugar drink to the locals. My mother persisted, however, going as far as to contact the girl’s parents and negotiate my inclusion. I was told to go and sit by the girl at the table—to go and have fun. It was through the experience of sitting beside this girl—Verena was her name—that I became interested in artificial intelligence. In front of the table, Verena had hung a sign which announced the price of a lemonade at twenty cents.

The interesting thing, however, was that despite the sign she charged different customers different prices. If her friend Judy came by, for instance, she was invariably allowed to pay only a nickel. Boys were generally charged five cents over—a full quarter—on the claim that the sign referred only to the price of the lemonade, and not the cost of the cup.

When cars slowed to make a purchase, she’d slap me across the shoulders and insist I kneel down in front of the table, thus obscuring the sign and allowing her to bilk the strangers for fifty cents or even a dollar. When I said I thought this was unfair, she took my face in her hands and yelled at me, saying, “You are only here because my mother says you have to be.”

Around this same time I had been taking apart a calculator my father had given me, checking out the circuits, looking through a magnifying glass at the chip, imagining all those microscopic chambers inside, how every calculation was broken down into its binary constituents. I was watching Verena one afternoon, watching the expression on her face as three older girls approached from up the road. I could see her trying to decide what to charge, and it struck me that if one knew enough about her brain, if one could get down into the synapse, down into the interstitial fluid, to the binary code, well, then she’d be predictable, even reproducible, and all the apparent capriciousness, all the malleability would succumb to an algorithm, a chip on a motherboard.

That’s more or less how it got started.

—Interesting…

—I’ve been pretty heavily into artificial intelligence ever since: neural nets, cognitive modeling.

—Ask him if he’s ever had a girlfriend.

—Al! I apologize, my roommate’s—

—That’s all right, I can answer if you like. The fact is I haven’t had a girlfriend.

—Does this bother you?

—It occasionally bothers me intensely and I feel like an outcast, and then for long stretches I don’t even notice. I must say, though, coming here is comforting.

—Why’s that?

—It makes me feel like a stable person, in control of my life.

—Coming here does?

—Yeah, I mean look at you guys. You’re living in these rooms so full of books you can barely move, your roommate’s lying on his stomach on the floor, he’s been there for an hour—

—He’s got gastrointestinal problems—

—And you’re sitting there with a bag of ice on your back and a Dictaphone asking these questions… and this is all somehow part of you selling me a futon? This isn’t normal, you know. There’s nothing normal about it.

6. Interview with Charles Markham

—Okay, Dad, it’s on… Are you going to say something?