You Are Not A Stranger Here (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
http://www.andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2012/10/when-we-talk-about-mental-disorde...When We Talk About Mental Disorders in FictionWhen I listen to music, I've found, I alternate between two kinds of favorite musicians. I love bands with multiple voices, who alternate the lead, who create music with tight harmonies- Barenaked Ladies, the Weepies, Slow Club. Or I love male singers who who are better writers than singers: Bruce Springsteen, James McMurtry, to a lesser extent Jackson Browne.It's my preference, and it leaves me blind to the value of plenty of other performers. Most female soloists, especially pop singers who hit the high notes, do nothing for me. I'm sure it's often pretty, but if I can't sing along, I'm just not that interested in sitting through more than a song or two.So when I read, I'm usually on the lookout for a few things. In one of the books I'm reading now, Adam Haslett's You Are Not a Stranger Here, I get many of the things I most enjoy- short stories, deftly drawn people, a variety of settings.What I'm missing- what has me stalled about 30 pages from the end- is a variety of characters pressing against the boundaries of themselves. Haslett's characters are all pressed against the same boundary; they are a slew of people in the midst of mental health crises, and we either learn that nothing can be done to help this person, or we learn that the one in crisis is really the sane one.Here's the thing about mental disorders- I don't understand them. Sure, I joke about my quirks- ADD with workaholic OCD, but I know (or I think I know) that I am painfully normal. The challenge of great art is to take us to a place that we can hardly imagine and make it understandable- Lolita, Lord of the Flies, As I Lay Dying. And as much as Haslett captures the tone of mania and the tone of depression (I recognize those people, those voices), he does not bring me to a point of understanding, beyond the certainty that something is wrong. Maybe that's the point and I'm missing it, but I remain uncompelled by all be the best stories of unstoppable forces and immovable objects.It's interesting how much how I read influences my enjoyment. I started Stranger months ago, reading a few pages in bed each night. Then, because I was finally hooked enough to not be able to put it down, the lack of variety sapped my enthusiasm. I kept waiting for another change of pace, like the story "Divination," a blend of magical realism and parental shame that felt like an homage to the JD Salinger story "Teddy."
To start with, I am not a fan of short stories. That is why I know I would have never picked up Haslett's collection of short stories "You are not a Stranger Here" if it was not for Laura's inspiring review, which you can read here. It's not an easy task to describe these magical sketches about the imperfect lives of imperfect people. Complicated family relationships, homosexuality, coming of age, mental disorders, loss and trauma are ingeniously mixed by Haslett's talented hand and presented to us in vivid kaleidoscopic combinations, each of them a masterly and complete work of art. Now let us use the heavy weight of past to drown our kaleidoscope in the murky waters of loneliness and we may get a little closer to the fragile beauty of Haslett's writing.Short stories are usually too short for me to develop a deep emotional relationship with the characters, which is one of the things I seek from reading. That is one of the main reasons I prefer novels. I tend to perceive short stories as fragments and find it complicated to construct full images of their characters, and thus difficult to trully like them. Haslett proved how wrong my perception was. All of the characters in "You are not a Stranger Here" had a story to tell, all of these stories moved me and all of the characters felt real and palpable. And I couldn't fail to see a fragment of my own reflection in most of them. Even though I feel that I would have liked to spend more time with these imperfect but familiar characters, the time we had together was enough for me to love them. Am I a convert now? Could be. And if you are afraid of short stories like I was, summon up your courage and go for it. The result may surprise you.
What do You think about You Are Not A Stranger Here (2003)?
Dark, dark, dark. That works for me. All of the stories have to do with alienation, depression, homosexuality (a brutal coming out, dying of AIDS, resigning to a life of no affection), decay, mental illness... am I missing something? All of these topics are great, and the overarching theme is, I guess, alienation. But the stories are uneven. Some of them, like "The beginning of grief," and "War's End," pack a punch and lingered with me days later. Others are ambitious but fall flat. A few seem promising,like "Notes to My Biographer," but seem to lack an ending, as if Haslett was working with a first draft. There is some beautiful prose, but the writer is not self-consciously flashy; one character says "the world can be beautiful if you aren't actually in it." (I'm paraphrasing). This book is about people who are not actually in the world, some are avoiding it, some trying to be in it but failing.
—Larry Buhl
I don't read a lot of short stories, partially because I often feel like I don't "get" them. So I'm also a little unsure how to rate a book of short stories. In this book of 9 stories, there were definitely 3 or 4 "5-star" stories that I thought were excellent. They were so vivid and compelling that I felt like I started to understand what short stories are all about. The rest of the stories were perfectly fine....good, even. At first this added up to a 4-star review, but after I thought about it some more, I decided that in a typical novel, it's very rare that almost half of the pages are totally gripping. And the stories that I didn't totally love were over quickly. Because they're, you know...short.
—Michael Pahr
LA GIUSTA DISTANZAQual è la 'giusta distanza'? Quella che adotta Adam Haslett. Come si misura? Né troppo vicino né troppo lontano: alla giusta distanza, appunto. Empatia senza indulgere al compiacimento. Sicuramente Haslett si muove a suo agio fra le storie, i personaggi, e le ambientazioni della sua raccolta, perfettamente inserito, per nulla estraneo (il titolo originale è You are not a stranger here che fa a gara in bellezza con quello italiano). E anch’io mi sono sentito subito a casa, sin dalla prima pagina. Non mi pare che si tenti di svelare il principio del dolore in questi racconti. Tanto meno la fine del dolore, a meno che non coincida con la fine della vita, che comunque si lascia dietro in vita una scia di altro dolore. In un racconto si accenna ai cinque gradi del dolore, uno in meno di quelli della separazione, ma direi che i gradi del dolore sono nove quanti sono i racconti, o uno solo, il dolore è dolore. Haslett non prova neppure a indagare se il dolore è utile alla vita, se fa bene in qualche modo a qualche cosa: il dolore è dolore, esiste, c’è. Sono racconti bellissimi, uno più dell’altro: scritti come si faceva un tempo e in modo moderno, in modo semplice e sapiente, piano e ricco, intenso e leggero. Mai sentito nominare Haslett prima di queste pagine, che hanno già dieci anni, e che mi pare marchino chiaramente la nascita di un nuovo grande scrittore. La gara è accesa fino all’ultima pagina: vincerà il dolore o la bellezza della scrittura? Ho come l’impressione che se ne vadano via insieme, allontanandosi a braccetto, come Bogart e Rains nel finale di Casablanca: la conferma di un grande sodalizio, che non è iniziato qui, e qui neppure si concluderà.
—orsodimondo
