Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

“The Wolf of Bordeaux” and “After All” are the only stories in the collection that don’t take place in present-day Southern California. How do these stories fit thematically within the rest of the collection? Do these two stories have anything else in common?

In “The 100-to-1 Club,” the narrator says, “You have to lose eventually so that someone else can win. Bitch and moan all you want, but that’s the first, and worst, rule of the universe” (page 101). Do you agree with him? Can there ever be a winner without a loser?

In “Gather Darkness,” the narrator says, “I pass by the spot where that bum shit on the grass, and I think that if I see him again, I’ll kill him. An instant later I’m like…where did that come from? It must have been a misfire or crossed wires. Or maybe it was somebody else speaking through me, maybe everybody else, the whole city” (page 119). How does Los Angeles shape the men and women in these stories? Do you think they are products of the city, or is the city a product of them?

Multiple paragraphs in “Instinctive Drowning Response” begin with the phrase “Maryrose dies on Wednesday.” What effect does this repetition have? How does this device illuminate the experience of addiction? Of grief?

Apocrypha are noncanonical religious texts accepted by some and dismissed by others, and the adjective “apocryphal” is generally used to describe a story that may or may not be true. How do the themes of belief, honesty, and truth play out in the story “Apocrypha”?

“After All” ends with the phrase “a once-dark room livid with incandescent light” (page 183). Is this a hopeful image or a foreboding one? How does it tie in to the experiences of Bear and Benny elsewhere in the story? What other symbolism may be at work here?

In “Sweet Nothing,” Dennis says, “We don’t ask for help, people like us. We do our suffering in private, do our grieving in the dark” (page 204). How do other characters in Sweet Nothing deal with emotional pain? Which characters do you think deal with it best, or worst?