Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

—Day’s almost over.

—I can turn on a light if you want.

—It’s all right… What are we supposed to talk about?

—I told you, I’m doing this research, about how the interest in philosophy begins, what it leads to…

—You don’t want to interview me.

—I do.

—Danny, it’s all over now. Why do you want to drag it up? They fired me, that’s all.

—It’s not about the job. This isn’t about academics, I just mean how it got started for you, what it meant to you…

—Funny. What it meant to me? I was reading this book the other day. There’s this fragment I remember. Went something like, People whose best hope for a connection to other human beings lay in elaborating for themselves an elegiac mode of relatedness, as if everyone’s life were already over. Seemed accurate to me.

—How do you mean?

—This idea of living your life as an elegy, inoculating yourself against the present. So much easier if you can see people as though they were just characters from a book. You can still spend time with them. But you have nothing to do with their fate. It’s all been decided. The present doesn’t really matter, it’s just the time you happen to be reading about them. Which makes everything easier. Other people’s pain, for instance.

—Did this have something to do with what got you started reading?

—The philosophers—they were part of that, keeping things at a remove.

—How?

—They were my friends. Reliable. There to keep me company. You spent time with them, they talked to you. They didn’t have crises. They were always ready with a little numbered comment. So ideal that way. No dying bodies to drag around. Like a painting. No changes, no disappointments. Everything already over.

—Did you read when you were in the hospital? Mom said you always had your books.

—What are you talking about?

—The year you were on the ward.

—She told you about that, about me being in there?

—Yeah. She said she used to come and read to you… Look at me, Dad… Say something.

—Turn that tape thing off, would you? Oh Danny, why are you crying?

—And she said, she said the doctor told her you were sick…

—Stop it.

—And that you needed your family… Where are you going? Dad. Where are you going?

—I have to go.

—No, Dad, please. I want to talk to you, come on, you said you’d do the interview, please, this is for me—the research—come on, you can’t leave now, please… What about the day you picked me up from school in your tux—Dad?—with that Lamborghini, and we went to the Harbor and you bought me martinis and dinner and we stayed the night—tell me what it felt like, tell me what you were thinking—

—No, Danny, I have to—

—That week you slept in the garage or the time you made the sculpture in the living room, come on, I want you to tell me how it all fit in, how the books fit in, the theories, the things you read, Dad!

7. Daniel Markham, self-interview

—Anecdotal Sociology interview number something, Daniel Markham… So, Mr. Markham, could you tell us a little something about yourself?… Surely, I was born in Boston, we were all in the hospital there, me, my mom, and my dad too!… Your dad?… Yes, he too had a room, just over in the next wing… You’re such a kidder… I know, doesn’t it just kill you… So seriously now, to the topic at hand, why have you laid all your books out on the floor like this, and why have you stacked them in front of the door and why won’t you let Al in, and why, Mr. Markham, why are you naked, and why do you lie on top of these books, and do you really have a back condition, or is that just an elaborate somatoform pose, and do you really have an ulcer that won’t let you sleep, and do you really spend the day in a ghastly neurasthenic haze, and just what are those things you’ve started to draw on the wall that look vaguely like the symbols of some primitive religion, and what would Dr. Gollinger think of them, hey? And is it the circles in them that interests you, or the lines that cut across them, like the spike of the gearshift on which that cat landed?… All very interesting, yes, I agree, but really you’ll have to be more specific. I mean, what exactly is the question?… Well, it’s your own question, Mr. Markham, don’t you remember it? You asked them how their interest in philosophy began, so how did it begin for you?… Interesting yes, very interesting, the tears, I think it was the tears, or rather the pages wrinkled with the dried tears, the open book on his desk, my father’s of course, and then a paragraph where the paper was wrinkled, raised, you know the way paper gets when it’s been wet and then dried, just a few circles here and there, and no water glass in sight, and of course the other minor evidence being that he was weeping on the sofa. Reading those wrinkled paragraphs, looking at the little black words, listening to my father cry, well you see, it was all so fascinating and captivating to me, and I just said, gosh darn it, I’d love a career in this sort of thing…

There you go again, you crack me up, really this is supposed to be a serious interview… Sorry, I know, I know… And so what have you learned?… Well I’m glad you finally asked me that because you see, that’s why I keep the books all over the floor like this, and why I like to lie on top of them, because really then reference becomes much easier, I mean I can just feel the Symposium pressing up against my thigh here, but seriously, what I’ve learned, well there’s so much, but let’s see, Kant said I’m clearing away knowledge to make room for faith, and Marx said there is only one antidote to mental suffering, and that is physical pain (which seems accurate to me), and Kierkegaard said there are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys, they cheat their masters by copying the answers from a book, and Vico said the criterion and rule to truth is to have invented the truth, maybe even conducted a few interviews, who knows?

And Wittgenstein said ethics and aesthetics are one and the same thing, and he said the solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem, and he said I can only doubt if there is something beyond doubt, and Heidegger said the idea of logic itself disintegrates in the turbulence of a more original questioning, and Fichte said—No, Al, I’m not hungry, I’m doing an interview, I’ll be out tomorrow, go out, enjoy yourself, it’s a lovely day… A warning?… Burn it, Al!

It’s just a collection notice. Just burn it, burn the whole fucking stack, the phone and electric, just burn it in a pyre on the landing and strap that fucking nosy super to it! You can do it, Al, you can do it!… You were saying, Mr. Markham… Yes, I was saying Fichte said something too, and so did Pascal, and my mother said we all fall apart in little ways, and then there’s the passage here, the one I can’t stop reading, where is it? Here in the gospel, Luke, Chapter Two. And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?… My father’s business… Open to any page. Here, take a book, Mr. Markham, yes there, that wetted paragraph, read the words.

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