WEBVTT - Escape Velocity 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.000 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. This 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:08.799 episode contains discussions of suicide. Listener discussion is advised. If 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:11.440 you are a loved one is struggling with suicidal thoughts, 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:23.799 please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at three. For 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:26.200 the next year, I was always on the road, or 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:29.080 on the phone, or lying on my couch a Washington 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:33.600 television gathering the strength to leave again. I answered every 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.920 question like no one had ever asked before. We do 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:39.879 not turn into what we pretend to be, but what 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.560 we pretend. You can still unmake us, worship the false 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:46.280 idol and tell yourself you are only playing the game 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:50.720 of survival. How long before that graven image comes to 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:55.760 mean something or everything? How long before we confuse happiness 0:00:56.120 --> 0:01:00.640 with distance from disaster, closure with being unable to remember? 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:08.080 That's Adam Man's back. Award winning novelist, screenwriter, cultural critic, 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:11.480 and number one New York Times bestselling author of the 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:16.679 hilarious instant classic Go the Funk to Sleep. Yes, there 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:19.360 are going to be cuss words in this episode. It's 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:23.520 in the book's title. After all. You know that expression, 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:26.440 God doesn't give us anything we can't handle. I hate 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:30.800 that expression sometimes God or the universe or whatever gives 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:37.080 us a lot, and sometimes something absolutely terrible coincides precisely 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.679 with something absolutely wonderful, And how are we supposed to manage. 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:45.360 Adam's story is about exactly that, when it all explodes 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:59.400 all at once. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:02.120 the secrets they are kept from us, the secrets we 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.200 keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:16.840 I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, which is a close 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:20.560 suburb to Boston. My parents moved to Newton, like a 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:23.239 lot of people, because it was known to have good 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:26.600 public schools. Both of them are from the Boston area. 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.960 My father grew up in Boston and Brookline. My mother 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:34.000 is from Cambridge, so I had also four grandparents living 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:36.440 in the area for most of my childhood. Now that 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:40.519 I'm a parent, and I look at the relatively constrained 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:43.840 level of freedom that my kids have because of the 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:47.160 way we are placed geographically, I look back at my 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:50.880 childhood and think about how much freedom we had to 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.360 just kind of run the neighborhood, you know, walking to school, 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.680 taking the train into Boston, playing pickup basketball or football 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:03.200 at different arcs and playgrounds, walking to friends houses. Like 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.280 there was a game we played there was kind of 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.959 a modified, more violent version of like Hide and Seek, 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.040 where it was hide and Seek plus throwing tennis balls 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:16.079 and people and uh, it raged over you know, like 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.720 probably a couple of square miles, which was ridiculous because 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:21.880 you never found the other team. They were hiding for 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.720 like three days. So when I think about the geography, 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.000 that's the first thing that comes to mind, is just 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:30.639 sort of having the run of a large, pretty safe 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:36.800 suburban space and then also having the freedom to take 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:38.880 the train and explore. I could get on the train 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:42.000 and go to my grandparents house in Cambridge, you know, 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:44.560 take the green line, switched to the red line, be 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:48.280 there in less than an hour. I could take the 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:52.000 train two different record stores. You know. I was a DJ, 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:54.760 so I was always looking for vinyl. So I could, 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:57.600 like even before I could drive or anybody I knew 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:00.320 could drive, I could get around the greater Boston area 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:05.480 with a certain amount of ease. Tell me about your mother, 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:09.240 your father, and your younger brother, David So. My parents 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:14.080 met at the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Um, my dad 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.080 was an editor and my mom was a reporter fresh 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:20.839 at a grad school. My mother is very funny and 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.240 a serbic and has a quick wit and curses like 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.479 a sailor. So like when go to fund to Sleep 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:28.560 came out, you know, I placed a lot of blame 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.200 on her for teaching me to talk like that. My 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:37.359 mom comes from a family of writers and words smith's 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.359 my grandmother. Her mother was a poet and a playwright. 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.719 Her father was a law professor and a judge who 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:48.400 was known for the eloquence of his legal writing. Both 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:52.360 of them were very present in my life growing up. 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.120 I think in a lot of ways, my mom sort 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:59.800 of rebelled against the culture of their house. They were 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:02.720 both very social. They threw a lot of parties. They 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.560 went to a lot of parties. Their friends and their 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.160 careers in some ways came first. I mean, this was 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:12.040 also a different time, but like you know, they weren't 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:14.880 probably as present as parents as she would have liked 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.960 them to be. And as time went on, I think 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:24.919 she found the elevated, sort of intellectual, artistic social life 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:27.159 of her parents house to be a little bit oppressive 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:29.919 um and kind of rebelled against it. She didn't like 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:31.760 to go to their parties. I like to go to 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.080 their party. She brought me to their parties and then 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.560 like hung out in the kitchen and ignoring everybody. But 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.120 she was pretty close to her parents, I think in 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.279 her own way, and her parents were very much a 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.560 presence and an influence on me growing up. You know, 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:47.760 these were the first My grandmother was the first writer 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:50.479 I ever met, And as I grew up and got 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:53.960 into hip hop, I found this very close parallel in 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:59.479 my grandmother's work because she was writing rhyming political poetry 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:03.200 that you word politicians and social morays, and it was 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:07.440 like published in our local newspaper ship poetry column called 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:09.599 the Muse of the week in Review that was in 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:13.279 the Boston Globe, and um syndicated in a bunch of 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.120 other newspapers, which seems insane in retrospect, but like in 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:21.760 the eighties you could have a syndicated political poetry column. Yeah, 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:26.760 I'm sitting here shaking my head. Oh those right, right. Also, 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:29.839 there are these things called newspapers in those days. Yeah. 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:36.440 Imagine that. My father was very much a working class 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:41.320 kid from Brookline. My dad came from a family without 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:45.400 much money. His dad was various kinds of salesmen over 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:47.360 the years. I always think of him as kind of 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:51.120 a Willie Loman kind of guy. His mother was a painter, 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:55.760 but not really a successful one, and also was manic depressive, 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.640 although I don't think they had that diagnosis then, and 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:01.680 was in and out of the hospital. So my dad 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.160 lived at home through college, went to Boston University, and 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:09.400 then went straight into the workforce as um a reporter 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.880 at the Worcester Telegram and Gazette the tn G as 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:16.800 they called it, and uh, you know, is a brilliant guy, 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:21.280 and spent forty years subsequently in the Boston Globe newsroom 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.440 and became kind of the institutional memory of the Boston 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:27.640 Globe newsroom. My dad has an incredible memory and spent 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:29.920 forty years like laying out the front page of the 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.680 paper deciding how it looked and what went there. One 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.520 of the things about my dad that I really always 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.679 loved and noticed was how much he loved his work. 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:42.560 He worked weird hours. He went to the newspaper at 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.920 like three four in the afternoon, he packed a dinner, 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:48.360 he didn't come back until one in the morning. But 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:51.040 he loved it. It was somewhere he was excited to 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.760 go every day, and because of that and his job 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:59.160 and his sensibilities, we lived in a house where everybody 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:01.440 read the newspaper and discussed what was in it. We 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:07.360 were very much creatures of politics. We followed elections the 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.440 same way we followed the Red sox. Um. You know, 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:12.640 it's kind of the culture that that I grew up in. 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:18.480 And so how old are you when you moved to Newton? Uh? 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.080 I was two years old when my family moved from 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:26.960 Worcester to Newton and my dad moved from the Telegram 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:31.920 to the Boston Globe. I think in nineteen. And your 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:35.520 brother David is born when you're he old. I was 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.840 born in seventy six and he was born in seventy nine. 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:43.920 We're two years nine months apart. My brother was I think, 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.800 you know, some of my earliest memories of him were 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:52.760 of a certain kind of unspoken worry and anxiety around 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.720 him for reasons that I think didn't actually make any sense, 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:59.320 but that as a parent now I understand very well. 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:05.880 Because kids developed differently, and I was really gregarious and 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:10.440 learned to speak really really early, as firstborn kids often do. 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.880 My brother didn't learn to speak quickly, and when he 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.400 did he had kind of a minor speech impediment, and 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.000 I think these things made my parents think that he 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:24.959 might not be smart. And in my family, particularly my 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:28.480 mother's family, there's really nothing more important than being smart, 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.200 and I think that was their big fear that he 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:33.760 like wasn't so bright. This is a kid who went 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:35.480 on to get a six hundred on his s A 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:38.360 T S go you get a PhD in atmospheric science. 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.800 But I remember there being a certain kind of like 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:46.520 worry and coddling of him, um particularly around the talking. 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:49.320 And I remember being the only person in the house 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.440 who could sometimes understand what he was saying, and I 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.160 would translate what he was saying for my parents. And then, 0:09:56.320 --> 0:10:00.000 you know, I remember just a goofy, giggly kid. I remember, 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.080 even at the time seeing how some of my friends 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:07.040 and their younger brothers or sisters interacted. And I don't 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:11.480 know that David and I were like as easy and 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:13.560 free with each other. You know, we fought a lot, 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:17.680 all kids do, I guess, but I loved him and 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.320 we hung out to some extent, and we sort of 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:24.160 did our own thing to a large extent as well. 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:28.320 We had very different kind of interests David didn't have 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:31.240 as many friends as I did. He went on to 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:36.040 not be a creature of like words and jokes and 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:38.280 arguing the way that I was, in the way that 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.000 kind of the rest of my family also was. He 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:44.000 became a scientist, and I mean, even at a young age, 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.440 he sort of had the proclivities and the inclinations of 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:49.600 a scientist. A lot of my childhood memories do revolve 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:52.400 around like how we were each treated by our parents 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:57.440 and the compensatory things they seemed to do um maybe 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.920 to give him more agency or more of a sense 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.600 of himself. Like I remember them buying him like a 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:09.120 Nintendo and basically telling him that it was his and 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:11.840 that I could only use it with his permission. So 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:14.360 you know, like in retrospect, that's kind of a it's 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.120 kind of a weird move, right, Like, Okay, you bought 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.560 your like eight year old a Nintendo and he's the 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.080 gatekeeper of it. There's no equity here. There's no like 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:25.200 you're gonna play for half an hour and your brother 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.040 is gonna play, or like we're gonna set a timer, 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.439 or like you gotta share. I think that they felt 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:34.600 like giving him sort of ownership was was gonna be 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.280 i don't know, good for him somehow, empowering to him somehow, 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:40.880 or that I would overwhelm him if they didn't. I 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:43.360 remember feeling a lot like there was the fear that 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:48.679 I would overwhelm him, or my superior ability to speak 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:53.040 would somehow sort of subsume him, which in some cases 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:56.680 was true. I also remember being a real dick to 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.720 him because I could talk circles around him, and knowing 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:03.520 that a eventually, if I did it long enough, he 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.120 would just resort to hitting me, and and and that's 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:08.320 and that was sort of like when I knew I 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:10.840 had won, you know, if he just gave up and 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:13.800 started flailing his fists at me, that was a victory 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:17.320 for me. It's so interesting because now I'm sure as 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:21.160 a parent yourself, once you become a parent, so many 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:26.319 of these moments from your own childhood are understood differently, right, 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.360 or the or the worry of your parents when they 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.839 were being your parents as as as little kids. From 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:34.840 the way you're describing that story to me, probably a 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:38.199 lot of thought went into David's Nintendo, you know, and 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:42.160 like leveling the playing field somehow, or like the idea 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:44.200 that they needed to level the playing field so that 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:47.840 you know that it could be his. Yeah, I think 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.000 I think a lot of thought probably did go into it. 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.680 I wonder in retrospect if any of that thought was 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:59.000 directed towards consulting people who knew anything about child psychology. Um, 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.720 my guests, maybe not. Yeah, it sort of wasn't the time. 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:05.400 You know, in art in our times, that would be 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:08.719 stop number one. But in those times, no matter how 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:11.600 educated and sophisticated people were, it wasn't the first thing 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:18.079 they thought about. Adam and David are two very different kids, 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.920 with different interests and different paths. David is on track 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:24.880 to become a scientist and Adam is on track to 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.960 become a writer. Though of course, when it comes to 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:30.840 a career as a writer there is no well lit path. 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:34.719 It helps that Adam comes from a family of writers, 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:37.480 which gives him a kind of permission, the sense that 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:40.720 such a life is possible. His father is an editor, 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:44.120 his uncle is a sportswriter, his grandmother is a poet. 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:48.320 It is, as you might say, the family business, and 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:50.960 yet it can take a long time for writers just 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:54.319 starting out to find their footing. There are no guarantees 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.600 you write in your extraordinary poem slash memoir, sort of 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.800 genre defying book. I had a brother once. It's a 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.440 sentence that begins with not even just the word and 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:12.320 but actually an ampersand and you you're right, And now 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:17.040 it was eleven. What was going on in your life 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.640 at that point? So you know, for a number of years, 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:24.240 I've been basically just a novelist, a literary novelist who 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:27.000 at any given time was like knee deep or waist 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.640 deep or shoulder deep in a book and coming up 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:32.720 to maybe do a little journalism on the side. I 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:36.880 had a two year old daughter. I was teaching in 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:40.160 the m f A program at Rutgers Camden, which was 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.960 kind of the first full time academic job I had had. 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:46.400 I was lucky enough to get it, and then lucky 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.680 enough to get offered a second year in my visiting 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:54.120 writer position. And you know, I was just kind of 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:57.840 trying to figure out how to make a career as 0:14:57.840 --> 0:14:59.920 a writer. Like I had a career as a writer, 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:02.000 but I was trying to figure out how to not 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:06.280 lose that career, not have to fall back on teaching 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:08.760 full time, which I enjoyed but didn't want to do forever. 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:12.640 And I suddenly had a kid and a greater degree 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.720 of sort of financial responsibility than I'd ever had before, 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:18.520 and my teaching appointment was going to end in a 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:20.120 couple of months, and I was going to go back 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.600 to California, and the mortgage on my house and all 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:26.760 kinds of things. So I was just trying to figure 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:33.320 out what my next move was going to be. While 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.320 he's figuring out his next move, Adam writes an unusual 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:40.520 and unquantifiable twenty eight page book. He really writes it 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.200 for himself. He's not sure there's any market for it 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:46.680 at all, and neither is his literary agent. He ends 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:48.680 up selling it to a small press owned by a 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:53.240 friend with very low expectations. The book in question, though 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:56.160 The Funk to Sleep, is not quite out yet, but 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:59.440 it will be soon. It's about to go viral, but 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:02.600 Adam does know this yet. He's a new dad in Philly. 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:08.520 He's teaching dj ing, hoping for the best. I wrote 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:13.120 that book really with no expectation that it was even publishable. 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:16.440 Certainly was not part of my like strategy to secure 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.920 future for myself, for my family. Um, you know, the 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:25.320 book was really just kind of something I did for fun. 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:30.600 It was my attempt two kind of cross stitch all 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.800 of the board books B O, A, R D. But 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:37.640 it kind of works both ways because they're incredibly boring, 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.440 like the little cute see books that you read to 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.720 your kids at bedtime that have all of these A, B, C, 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:47.040 B rhyme schemes and these like cute animals who are 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:50.000 all toddling off to bed. To try to kind of 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:55.239 remix that by inserting a real parental monologue into it, 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.440 something that expresses the frustration of a parent who cannot 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:00.160 get his kid to go to sleep, which was the 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:04.080 position I found myself in every night with my daughter Vivian, 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:06.800 who was probably two two and a half when I 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:09.800 wrote the book in two thousand ten, and you know, 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.520 a year later when the book started to inexplicably make 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:16.360 all this noise. The book was supposed to come out 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:21.200 in October, but the day after my daughter Vivian's third 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:27.040 birthday April, I did a gig in Philly where basically 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:29.200 I read the book out loud on stage. I had 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.800 just gotten a PDF of the entire book with illustrations, 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:34.840 and I was able to project it on the screen 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:36.320 and I, you know, I read it to maybe a 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:39.160 hundred and fifty people, and I got a good reaction. 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:41.480 They thought it was funny. People asked me where they 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:43.119 could buy it. I told them they couldn't because it 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:47.959 wasn't coming out for six months. So from that initial reading, 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.080 people began to order the book, and the buzz began 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:53.640 to spread. By the end of the week, the book 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:56.119 was number one on Amazon. This book that that that 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.480 did not yet exist, hadn't even been printed yet, was 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.400 not even on a boat headed for the United States yet. 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:05.840 And from their things sort of accelerated and got even 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:09.920 crazier because the fact that an obscenely titled book from 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:14.160 an obscure publisher was number one sort of engendered around 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:18.240 of media attention, which I think then led to a 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:22.400 PDF of the entire book beginning to ricochet around the Internet. 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:24.960 And meanwhile, we're rushing to get the book out as 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.000 soon as possible, so instead of October, we publish it 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:32.560 on Father's Day, which I believe was June four, So 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:35.800 we're sort of rushing towards that, and I'm fielding phone calls, 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:38.800 and we're trying to make decisions about whether I'm even 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:42.080 going to talk to the media. Because now there's an 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:46.760 element of strategy in place, like someone, if I remain quiet, 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:49.639 can get an exclusive with me. And I'm like, you know, 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:52.600 an exclusive, like I'm I'm used to talking to anybody 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:54.960 who's willing to talk to me. Like, you know, as 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.000 a literary novelists, you're not giving exclusives. You're hoping that 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:00.560 your phone rings, you know, But we have at this point, 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:02.720 like a publicist in place, and she's talking to the 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.679 Today Show and Good Morning America and pitting one against 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:07.880 the other, and you know, people are trying to get 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:12.080 the exclusive, and things are just out of control. We're 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:15.920 auctioning off foreign rights and audio rights and movie rights 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.159 and all kinds of stuff again for a book that 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:22.240 does not technically exist yet. So it's kind of a whirlwind. 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.439 And I'm doing this as I'm wrapping up my final 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:29.120 weeks of my tenure at Rutgers and Adam, how did 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:34.840 it feel to go from being a literary novelist spending 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.600 years at a time with your head down working on 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:42.320 one book at a time. You know, the sound of 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:44.720 a literary novel being published is a little like a 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:48.840 tree falling in a forest. Um, except on the rare 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:54.560 times when when it's not and this entirely left field 0:19:54.680 --> 0:20:02.560 thing happens completely unexpected, no impossible to have imagined. Along 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:05.840 with trying to do everything right, what did it feel like? 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:12.120 There was definitely a lot of joy and exhilaration and 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:16.400 shock and surprise. Um. I mean I was feeding off 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:18.919 of the people around me, and my friends were watching 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:22.159 this happen, and they were tickled by it because it 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:24.920 was something that was just done with so little calculation, 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:29.000 And I was excited, but I was also nervous or 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:33.639 kind of jitteryan on edge, I guess, because what was 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:37.480 happening was clearly very good, but it was impossible to 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:41.439 see even three days into the future, so, you know, 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:45.000 it was impossible to know whether this was such a 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.200 flash in the pan that the book would actually be 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.920 forgotten already by the time it was published, or whether 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:56.240 it was conceivable that we could ride this and stay 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.720 at number one until it was published. I was refreshing 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:04.680 my Amazon page every fifteen minutes, you know, I was like, Okay, 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.320 still number one, still number one. Click, okay, still number one. 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.120 You know, go make a coffee, come back, click still 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.399 number one. Okay, so far, so good. It was a 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:18.240 wild moment. I mean, it was more exciting than anything 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:20.840 that had happened in a long time. But I also 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.480 felt like I had to be very strategic and careful 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:31.080 and do anything I could to help this thing continue 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.200 to succeed. And I also felt powerless over it. I 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:36.800 didn't really know what the hell I was doing or 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:40.000 whether any action of mine could affect this in any way. 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:42.919 At the very least, this was an industry I knew 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:46.160 and had been making a living in for the better 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:49.399 part of the last decade. So you know, it's not 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:51.840 like I was just some schmuck who'd never written a 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:53.919 book before and this was happening to me. I was 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:56.280 some schmuck who'd written several books and this was happening 0:21:56.359 --> 0:21:58.000 to me. So at least I had that going for me. 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:20.119 We'll be right back with Father's Day just around the corner. 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:23.879 Adam is cautiously riding the high of his forthcoming publication 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:29.960 in June. On May eleven, he's playing records in a 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:33.359 lounge bar in Philly. He's just taught his last class 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:36.399 at Rutgers, and many of his grad students are in attendance. 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:40.040 It's a joyful night, a victory lap of sorts, and 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:43.479 a goodbye to his students, and a goodbye to Philly too, 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:46.400 as he's planning to move soon. A lot of good 0:22:46.440 --> 0:22:49.160 friends are there, and Adam is basking in the great 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:52.760 energy of the evening. Then his phone rings and he 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:57.240 sees that it's his father. He doesn't answer. It's unusual 0:22:57.359 --> 0:22:59.680 that his dad is calling so late at night, but 0:23:00.200 --> 0:23:03.840 doesn't clock it a stranger, unsettling in a state of 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:07.480 cognitive dissonance, he ignores the call with no inkling that 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:11.240 anything could be wrong. But then his phone rings again. 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:16.800 It was about twelve thirty nine times out of a hundred, 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:19.160 I would have been home and asleep and in bed 0:23:19.200 --> 0:23:21.840 at that time. My father was always up at that 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:24.639 time because he would be coming home, probably from the newspaper. 0:23:25.040 --> 0:23:29.240 So I saw his name on my phone, and I 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:30.840 didn't pick it up because I was in the middle 0:23:30.840 --> 0:23:33.600 of playing this set um and you can't DJ and 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:37.240 talk on the phone at the same time. And inasmuch 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:40.520 as I thought anything, the quick calculation that I made 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:44.600 about my father calling me unprecedentedly at this time he 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:47.800 never called me that late, was that it had something 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:51.240 to do with the book, that some new bit of 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:55.159 news around go to funk to sleep had emerged that 0:23:55.240 --> 0:23:57.320 I didn't know about it. He did because he'd spent 0:23:57.359 --> 0:23:59.720 the last eight hours in the news room and he 0:23:59.800 --> 0:24:02.479 was haul in to tell me something funny, or you know, 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:05.240 tell me that one of his colleagues had had the 0:24:05.280 --> 0:24:08.040 PDF land in their in boxing, you know, some something 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:12.919 trivial and cool like that. So I didn't answer, and 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:17.960 then he called back again, and so I answered. And 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:20.199 the first thing my father asked me was whether I 0:24:20.240 --> 0:24:23.879 was sitting down, which I don't think anybody had ever 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:27.800 asked me that in real life before. You know, I guess, 0:24:28.160 --> 0:24:30.440 I guess that question is only asked when you think 0:24:30.440 --> 0:24:33.160 that the news you're about to deliver might literally knock 0:24:33.200 --> 0:24:36.240 somebody on their ass, that that the person's legs might 0:24:36.280 --> 0:24:40.880 stop working. So I walked outside through the back room 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:42.920 of the club and then also through the front room, 0:24:43.080 --> 0:24:47.960 and sometime I think before I got outside, my father 0:24:48.040 --> 0:24:52.000 said to me, David has taken his own life. That 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:57.320 was the phrase he used, and and I was unable 0:24:57.800 --> 0:25:01.240 to even really process he was saying, it seems so 0:25:01.359 --> 0:25:06.280 outlandish that the first thing I said was what I mean, 0:25:06.359 --> 0:25:10.280 it's I couldn't even wrap my mind around it. UM. 0:25:10.359 --> 0:25:12.679 So I made him say it again, and by that 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:18.080 time I was outside, and he proceeded to explain to 0:25:18.119 --> 0:25:22.560 me that my brother had been missing all day, that 0:25:22.680 --> 0:25:25.360 he and my mother had been at my brother's apartment 0:25:25.440 --> 0:25:31.080 with my brother's wife um with the sinking growing feeling 0:25:31.200 --> 0:25:35.600 that something had happened, um, but that they had just 0:25:36.720 --> 0:25:39.680 received the news from I guess it would have been 0:25:39.880 --> 0:25:43.320 the police officer or the emergency worker or something who 0:25:43.359 --> 0:25:47.119 found his body in his car where he chose to 0:25:47.200 --> 0:25:49.960 kill himself. So this is what my father told me 0:25:50.000 --> 0:25:54.840 A twelve thirty On that night, I had some further 0:25:55.240 --> 0:25:59.960 conversation with my father that I can't really remember very well. 0:26:00.160 --> 0:26:03.200 I remember the it was extremely hot, even at night. 0:26:03.200 --> 0:26:04.639 We're in the middle of a heat wave, and I 0:26:04.720 --> 0:26:06.639 was sort of, you know, I sort of stepped outside 0:26:06.640 --> 0:26:08.639 into this hot air and it felt like somebody was 0:26:08.680 --> 0:26:14.480 breathing right in your face, and I remember crying. I 0:26:14.600 --> 0:26:19.000 remember asking further questions. I remember my father sort of 0:26:19.040 --> 0:26:23.760 inquiring into my safety and well being, like he really 0:26:23.760 --> 0:26:25.959 wanted to know, like where are you and what are 0:26:26.000 --> 0:26:29.359 you gonna do now? And like can you get yourself home? 0:26:29.440 --> 0:26:30.760 You know, like what are you gonna do, like I 0:26:30.800 --> 0:26:33.200 he I think he made me promise not to drive 0:26:33.320 --> 0:26:36.639 or something like that. I got off the phone with 0:26:36.760 --> 0:26:42.119 my father and I stood there crying hysterically. And I 0:26:42.160 --> 0:26:44.200 don't think that I spoke out loud to my brother, 0:26:44.240 --> 0:26:46.240 but I think I spoke in my head to my brother, 0:26:46.280 --> 0:26:48.800 and you know, I said something along the lines of 0:26:48.880 --> 0:26:51.399 like what have you done. I don't think I was 0:26:51.440 --> 0:26:53.800 out there very long. I think before I was even 0:26:54.000 --> 0:26:56.919 done crying, I went back in the club. I walked 0:26:56.920 --> 0:26:59.720 straight to Emery, who was a good friend of mine, 0:27:00.119 --> 0:27:04.280 be my closest friend in Philly, and I told him 0:27:04.480 --> 0:27:08.280 then that my brother had killed himself. And you know, 0:27:08.480 --> 0:27:11.400 the look on his face was sort of the first 0:27:11.920 --> 0:27:13.960 it was the first kind of mirror that I had. 0:27:14.680 --> 0:27:17.840 It was the first reading back of what had happened 0:27:17.880 --> 0:27:20.639 on someone else's face, which because he's like, what do 0:27:20.680 --> 0:27:22.480 you need? Do you want me to drive you home? 0:27:23.240 --> 0:27:26.359 I basically just was like, I'm leaving, grab my records 0:27:26.359 --> 0:27:28.159 when you go, or something like that, and I, you know, 0:27:28.200 --> 0:27:29.720 I just I just kind of got out of there. 0:27:30.280 --> 0:27:32.720 I think I called my father back from the car, 0:27:33.440 --> 0:27:36.360 having already promised not to drive, and you know, currently 0:27:36.440 --> 0:27:39.919 driving to try to get more information, to try to, 0:27:41.040 --> 0:27:43.400 I don't know, understand this thing better in some kind 0:27:43.400 --> 0:27:47.880 of way. I remember just driving down the freeway, blinking 0:27:47.920 --> 0:27:51.800 back tears and just kind of like feeling a lot. 0:27:51.840 --> 0:27:54.480 I mean, there was there was the shock, there was 0:27:54.520 --> 0:27:57.480 the attempt to understand what was happening. I should say 0:27:57.520 --> 0:28:00.800 that I can't imagine that then NWS that someone killed 0:28:00.840 --> 0:28:05.239 himself would ever not be surprising and shocking. But in 0:28:05.240 --> 0:28:09.000 the case of my brother, he had gone to Great 0:28:09.560 --> 0:28:15.199 Pines to hide his depression and make sure that no 0:28:15.240 --> 0:28:19.199 one knew about it. So this was entirely surprising to me. 0:28:19.280 --> 0:28:21.959 I had not known that my brother suffered from depression 0:28:22.600 --> 0:28:26.600 in any way. I thought he was a weird but 0:28:26.720 --> 0:28:31.119 happy guy. So, you know, I was learning this entire 0:28:31.240 --> 0:28:34.760 history and this entire secret that his wife had kept 0:28:35.640 --> 0:28:40.280 from everybody, that he had insisted she keep from everybody 0:28:40.360 --> 0:28:42.520 on pain of him never speaking to them again if 0:28:42.520 --> 0:28:48.280 she told them. Tremendous shame on his part about what 0:28:48.440 --> 0:28:52.360 he was going through. I learned that my parents had 0:28:52.440 --> 0:28:54.760 known for a little while that my brother's wife had 0:28:54.760 --> 0:28:58.920 eventually kind of buckled under this tremendous pressure and told 0:28:59.000 --> 0:29:01.640 them but that my brother had downplayed it, but that 0:29:01.680 --> 0:29:04.080 they had all been extremely worried for the past few months, 0:29:04.560 --> 0:29:06.800 and that I had not been brought into this confidence, 0:29:07.480 --> 0:29:10.840 which even at the time, like I felt very frustrating, 0:29:11.240 --> 0:29:15.400 and I think immediately took me down the track of like, 0:29:16.160 --> 0:29:18.280 what if I would have been able to do something? 0:29:18.600 --> 0:29:21.000 What if not telling me was the worst thing you 0:29:21.040 --> 0:29:23.240 could have done? What if I'm the person in this 0:29:23.360 --> 0:29:27.480 family best equipped to do something at least and convince 0:29:27.600 --> 0:29:30.800 him to seek help. But there was another part of 0:29:30.840 --> 0:29:35.560 me that, as I was sort of navigating my own grief, 0:29:35.680 --> 0:29:42.080 navigating the roads of Philly, was filled with enormous trepidation 0:29:42.120 --> 0:29:45.040 because I knew that when I got home, I would 0:29:45.080 --> 0:29:50.960 have to wake up my then partner, Vivian's mother and 0:29:51.000 --> 0:29:55.120 tell her what had happened. And that seemed, you know, 0:29:55.440 --> 0:29:59.720 incredibly hard even I mean, saying it out loud felt 0:29:59.720 --> 0:30:01.880 in it will be hard, but having to break that 0:30:01.960 --> 0:30:06.959 news felt almost too much. Um. But that's that's what 0:30:07.000 --> 0:30:12.080 I went home and did. There's something that, you know, 0:30:12.160 --> 0:30:17.160 in the midst of just profound shock, having to say it, 0:30:17.720 --> 0:30:20.640 being the bearer of it, suddenly you know which you 0:30:20.680 --> 0:30:22.440 know you were when you when you told Emory, but 0:30:22.480 --> 0:30:24.320 then you know you're going home and you're telling your 0:30:24.400 --> 0:30:30.440 your then partner. It makes it more real, I think, Yeah, definitely, 0:30:30.800 --> 0:30:33.120 it makes it more real with every time that you 0:30:33.200 --> 0:30:36.360 say it, with every repetition you you bring it more 0:30:36.360 --> 0:30:40.200 fully into reality. Somehow you feel like you're lying, like 0:30:40.320 --> 0:30:44.240 these words can't be true. I'm saying these words that 0:30:44.280 --> 0:30:46.160 I know are true, but they can't be true. And 0:30:46.160 --> 0:30:49.680 then each time you say them, it becomes more true 0:30:49.800 --> 0:30:53.280 or more real. Yeah, and then even realer than that 0:30:53.480 --> 0:30:59.160 is watching it becomes true for someone else, destroying someone 0:30:59.200 --> 0:31:03.240 else's world with that information, you know. I mean, for 0:31:03.400 --> 0:31:08.520 months and months after his death, I really strove to 0:31:08.680 --> 0:31:10.920 never be the one to break the news to anyone. 0:31:11.400 --> 0:31:14.120 I wanted people to know. I wanted the roads sort 0:31:14.160 --> 0:31:15.760 of paved ahead of me, Like I wanted all my 0:31:15.800 --> 0:31:17.480 friends to know, but I didn't want to be the 0:31:17.480 --> 0:31:20.280 one to tell them. And you know, I found ways 0:31:20.440 --> 0:31:24.520 to navigate conversations with strangers. I've developed kind of a 0:31:24.560 --> 0:31:27.320 sixth sense for when a conversation might turn in the 0:31:27.320 --> 0:31:31.160 direction of families, so that I could steer it another way. 0:31:31.440 --> 0:31:33.840 Before I was asked to kind of account for my 0:31:33.880 --> 0:31:36.040 own family, you know. And this was a time when 0:31:36.040 --> 0:31:38.960 I was like around a lot of strangers because the 0:31:39.000 --> 0:31:42.040 funk to sleep continue to happen, and I continue to 0:31:42.120 --> 0:31:45.680 like have to deal with what that meant and tour 0:31:45.760 --> 0:31:50.840 and travel and chat and schmooz. But yeah, the actual 0:31:51.360 --> 0:31:55.800 simple act of stating that my brother had killed himself 0:31:55.880 --> 0:31:59.640 was probably the single most painful, Like it was the thing. 0:31:59.840 --> 0:32:01.760 I there's the thing I guess that I felt like 0:32:02.280 --> 0:32:05.120 I had enough agency to be able to avoid, so 0:32:05.200 --> 0:32:11.360 I tried very hard to avoid it. Adam returns to 0:32:11.440 --> 0:32:14.240 Newton to his parents home, where they observe the Jewish 0:32:14.320 --> 0:32:18.400 ritual of sitting Shiva, a prescribed week of mourning. Though 0:32:18.440 --> 0:32:21.560 they are descended from ancestors who are famous rabbis, the 0:32:21.600 --> 0:32:25.240 family are secular Jews, not religious at all, and these 0:32:25.280 --> 0:32:28.800 religious practices in the case of David's death do not 0:32:29.040 --> 0:32:35.560 feel exactly healing or helpful to Adam. Because my family 0:32:35.840 --> 0:32:41.680 is deeply culturally Jewish. I think my sensibilities are very Jewish. 0:32:41.720 --> 0:32:46.080 My sense of humor, my sense of art coming from 0:32:46.120 --> 0:32:49.280 the margins, all of these things to me are quintessentially Jewish. 0:32:49.280 --> 0:32:52.959 But we do not go to synagogue there's an, if anything, 0:32:53.000 --> 0:32:56.360 a hostility and a skepticism towards organized religion. I was 0:32:56.400 --> 0:32:58.920 not born mids, but my parents don't belong to a synagogue, 0:32:59.120 --> 0:33:02.200 nor did their parents, and you know, we go pretty 0:33:02.240 --> 0:33:07.280 far back as secular, agnostic Jews in this country. So 0:33:07.600 --> 0:33:10.200 when we were sitting shiva, we had no idea what 0:33:10.240 --> 0:33:12.520 the funk we were doing. It was an approximation of 0:33:12.520 --> 0:33:16.080 a shiva. We didn't have any guidance. We didn't really 0:33:16.120 --> 0:33:20.239 have a connection to these rituals. You know, suicide in 0:33:20.280 --> 0:33:23.480 some ways is a is a dramatization of that, because 0:33:23.480 --> 0:33:25.880 you're at a loss. I think almost no matter what 0:33:25.960 --> 0:33:29.719 your tradition is, like most religions, and most traditions kind 0:33:29.760 --> 0:33:32.680 of fail us when it comes to suicide, or they 0:33:32.840 --> 0:33:34.800 have a few terse words to say and you're not 0:33:34.840 --> 0:33:37.400 allowed to be buried in the cemetery or whatever. But 0:33:38.280 --> 0:33:42.360 my family was particularly poorly equipped to deal with any 0:33:42.360 --> 0:33:44.920 of it because we you know, we don't have that 0:33:45.000 --> 0:33:47.760 as at our fingertips at all. We don't have those traditions. 0:33:47.800 --> 0:33:50.600 So yeah, I found myself trying to grapple with what 0:33:50.680 --> 0:33:53.880 it meant, whether you could invent a ritual, whether that 0:33:54.040 --> 0:33:56.840 counted as a ritual, what a ritual was intended to do, 0:33:56.880 --> 0:33:59.240 and who it was for, and how it was meant 0:33:59.240 --> 0:34:01.120 to be carried out. Like, all of these things were 0:34:01.840 --> 0:34:07.160 adding to my state of distress, particularly the feeling that, 0:34:07.400 --> 0:34:11.319 in the absence of a regimented path, I was going 0:34:11.400 --> 0:34:16.239 to do it wrong. This idea that if you sort 0:34:16.280 --> 0:34:21.600 of mourned incompletely, like pushed it away, didn't deal with 0:34:21.600 --> 0:34:25.200 it fully whatever, that meant that the grief would somehow 0:34:25.680 --> 0:34:29.120 gree group and come back stronger. And if you didn't 0:34:29.160 --> 0:34:33.000 sort of face it now, it would become more and 0:34:33.040 --> 0:34:36.680 more unbeatable later. And and I remember, like I kind 0:34:36.680 --> 0:34:40.879 of internalized that and let it scare me even even more. 0:34:41.640 --> 0:34:43.759 And I don't think that was a useful thing to 0:34:43.760 --> 0:34:45.920 to have put in my in my mind. Like I 0:34:46.000 --> 0:34:48.000 think the opposite is true. I think that people grieve 0:34:48.000 --> 0:34:50.200 in all kinds of different ways. Certainly there are ways 0:34:50.239 --> 0:34:54.799 to not fully grieve. But the idea that that there 0:34:54.920 --> 0:34:57.319 is one way, I think for me it was a 0:34:57.400 --> 0:35:03.319 very damaging idea. And remember, this terrible grief is now 0:35:03.400 --> 0:35:07.719 coinciding with the crazy roller coaster ride of Adam's book publication. 0:35:08.600 --> 0:35:12.000 The high point of his career is now underscored and 0:35:12.120 --> 0:35:17.120 forever tied to his agony over his brother's suicide. In 0:35:17.160 --> 0:35:20.040 the midst of all this, Adam struggles to understand his 0:35:20.120 --> 0:35:25.040 brother's life and his brother's death. One of the ways 0:35:25.080 --> 0:35:28.919 I think in which for me anyway, suicide is so 0:35:30.360 --> 0:35:34.520 difficult to deal with and difficult to mourn, is that 0:35:35.800 --> 0:35:40.680 it effectively rewrites everything you thought you knew about a person, 0:35:40.840 --> 0:35:43.920 at least in the case of my brother. I am 0:35:44.000 --> 0:35:46.520 someone who, if I'm trained in anything, I'm trained to 0:35:46.800 --> 0:35:51.680 kind of create and craft narrative and pulled together threads 0:35:51.680 --> 0:35:56.120 and weave together something that makes sense and tells a story. 0:35:56.880 --> 0:36:02.279 And in trying to understand my brother's life and my 0:36:02.320 --> 0:36:07.160 brother's death, I was sort of torn between these warring impulses, 0:36:07.800 --> 0:36:10.680 one of which was to create narrative, create a narrative, 0:36:11.080 --> 0:36:14.560 and one of which was to resist the creation of narrative, 0:36:14.600 --> 0:36:17.600 even my own narrative, because fundamentally I knew that I 0:36:17.680 --> 0:36:21.279 did not understand and probably could not understand what had 0:36:21.320 --> 0:36:25.040 happened and at certain things about his actions. We're going 0:36:25.080 --> 0:36:29.160 to just be resistant to the project of creating a 0:36:29.200 --> 0:36:32.520 coherent story. Um. So, I mean, there's a lot of 0:36:32.640 --> 0:36:34.719 there's a lot of parts to that, Right, there's the 0:36:34.840 --> 0:36:40.399 part where a person can both be planning to live 0:36:40.520 --> 0:36:45.839 and planning to die, and these are simultaneous impulses, and 0:36:45.920 --> 0:36:49.479 you kind of just have to understand that his mind 0:36:49.560 --> 0:36:51.920 was running on both those tracks at once. Like I 0:36:51.960 --> 0:36:55.080 went to his apartment with my cousin, and among other 0:36:55.120 --> 0:36:58.720 things that we found there, we found in his email 0:36:59.040 --> 0:37:03.319 the receipts for the chemicals that he had ordered that 0:37:03.400 --> 0:37:08.760 he would mix together and use and breathe to kill himself. 0:37:08.800 --> 0:37:11.440 He had ordered those, and after he had ordered those, 0:37:11.719 --> 0:37:15.839 he had ordered an expensive skateboard that still hadn't arrived. Um, 0:37:15.880 --> 0:37:19.000 he had printed out directions to a memorial service for 0:37:19.080 --> 0:37:23.879 our grandfather, which wasn't for a couple of months. So 0:37:23.960 --> 0:37:26.160 like he was planning to live and he was planning 0:37:26.160 --> 0:37:29.000 to die. And you know, there's a part of you 0:37:29.080 --> 0:37:33.000 that might see all that evidence laid out and turn 0:37:33.080 --> 0:37:35.760 it into a detective story and say, something is amiss, 0:37:35.800 --> 0:37:38.839 something is a rise, something doesn't add up. Why would 0:37:38.840 --> 0:37:40.279 he do this if he was going to do that, 0:37:40.840 --> 0:37:42.919 I suspect foul play. You know, you could, you could, 0:37:42.960 --> 0:37:46.239 you could spin up any kind of narrative but the 0:37:46.280 --> 0:37:48.279 struggle for me was to understand that all of these 0:37:48.280 --> 0:37:50.200 things were kind of true at once, that this was 0:37:50.560 --> 0:37:53.799 a paradox that I was not going to resolve, but 0:37:53.960 --> 0:37:57.040 that instead I merely had to kind of hold and 0:37:57.160 --> 0:38:01.440 look at and not try to on ravel, not try 0:38:01.520 --> 0:38:05.480 to turn the two things into one thing. There was 0:38:05.520 --> 0:38:08.480 also the way in which everything I thought I knew 0:38:08.480 --> 0:38:13.560 about my brother was now rewritten by his act of 0:38:13.640 --> 0:38:16.319 killing himself, and by the revelation that he had been 0:38:16.320 --> 0:38:21.080 depressed for years and years. So, you know, things he 0:38:21.120 --> 0:38:24.240 had done and said that I had described one meaning 0:38:24.280 --> 0:38:27.000 to suddenly took on a different meaning. Even something as 0:38:27.040 --> 0:38:29.680 simple as looking at a photograph. You know, it's like 0:38:30.280 --> 0:38:33.239 a photograph in which he up until now seemed to 0:38:33.280 --> 0:38:36.680 be looking at the camera. Now he no longer seemed 0:38:36.719 --> 0:38:38.239 to be looking at the camera. He seemed to be 0:38:38.320 --> 0:38:41.399 staring into sort of the abyss, you know. I mean. 0:38:41.440 --> 0:38:45.959 It sounds dramatic and melodramatic and maybe dumb, but there's 0:38:46.000 --> 0:38:48.920 a way in which even looking at a simple artifact 0:38:48.960 --> 0:38:51.720 which has not changed in any way, it feels different 0:38:51.760 --> 0:38:56.880 now that this life has concluded. In this way, Adam 0:38:56.960 --> 0:39:00.399 also suspected looking back that perhaps has brought or had 0:39:00.440 --> 0:39:04.280 Asperger syndrome. As David's character bore some of the hallmarks 0:39:04.320 --> 0:39:08.800 of being on the spectrum. He was extremely intelligent, high achieving, 0:39:09.120 --> 0:39:12.120 and academically gifted, but it was hard for him to 0:39:12.160 --> 0:39:16.280 connect to have an emotional conversation. The type of questions 0:39:16.320 --> 0:39:19.320 one might expect to elicit an emotional response from him 0:39:19.440 --> 0:39:24.359 often did not. I remember one time, you know, at 0:39:24.400 --> 0:39:26.880 the time he and I were both involved with partners 0:39:26.920 --> 0:39:30.360 who were from other countries. His wife was Brazilian, my 0:39:30.400 --> 0:39:32.560 partner at the time was Swedish, and I remember sort 0:39:32.560 --> 0:39:35.520 of trying to talk to him about being somebody who 0:39:35.719 --> 0:39:38.040 sort of has a foot in two different cultures, and 0:39:38.080 --> 0:39:39.920 you know, do you think you'd ever moved to Brazil? 0:39:40.040 --> 0:39:42.600 How does she feel about living in America? Blah blah blah, 0:39:42.800 --> 0:39:45.680 And his response was sort of just a recitation of 0:39:45.880 --> 0:39:49.000 crime statistics in Rio, and I was like, huh, that's 0:39:49.400 --> 0:39:52.799 that's a that's a weird response. But like, you know, 0:39:52.840 --> 0:39:56.440 with the revelation of this crippling depression and the suicide, 0:39:56.440 --> 0:39:59.680 it's like I found myself looking back on things and saying, well, 0:40:00.160 --> 0:40:03.440 maybe it's not that that was the response that like 0:40:04.440 --> 0:40:07.640 made the most sense to him. Maybe that was the 0:40:07.680 --> 0:40:12.200 response that prevented him from opening up the Pandora's box 0:40:12.280 --> 0:40:19.600 of his own emotions and quickly getting lost. We'll be 0:40:19.640 --> 0:40:37.319 back in a moment with more family secrets. Adam's book 0:40:37.360 --> 0:40:41.800 is hurtling towards existence, picking up speed in the midst 0:40:41.840 --> 0:40:45.239 of all his grief and family turmoil. He's thrust into 0:40:45.280 --> 0:40:47.640 the public eye in a way that's highly unusual for 0:40:47.680 --> 0:40:51.040 a writer. He's the subject of many interviews and it's 0:40:51.040 --> 0:40:54.640 booked a coveted spot on morning television. He's worried that 0:40:54.760 --> 0:40:58.000 some interviewer is going to learn about David's suicide and 0:40:58.080 --> 0:41:01.400 ambush him, forcing him to talk publicly about his loss. 0:41:02.160 --> 0:41:07.160 He's caught between two selves, needing simultaneously to perform and 0:41:07.239 --> 0:41:13.319 to retreat. It's almost like there's another there's another Atom 0:41:13.400 --> 0:41:16.840 who is suffering and his grief stricken, and that Atom 0:41:16.880 --> 0:41:19.840 needs to kind of sit out right and not be 0:41:19.880 --> 0:41:24.959 the one who's talking to Matt Lower on the Today Show. Right. Yeah, 0:41:25.080 --> 0:41:27.440 I knew even at the time that it was not 0:41:27.600 --> 0:41:30.319 a rational fear that like Matt Lower is going to 0:41:30.400 --> 0:41:33.160 blindside me in the middle of this fluffy interview and 0:41:33.840 --> 0:41:38.759 asked me about my brother's Nason death. Nobody actually is 0:41:38.880 --> 0:41:41.840 invested in doing anything of the kind, right, It's completely 0:41:41.840 --> 0:41:46.239 outside the narrative that all of us are agreed upon 0:41:46.719 --> 0:41:49.240 in the in that setting and in every every setting. 0:41:49.560 --> 0:41:52.640 At the same time, weird ship was happening on a 0:41:52.719 --> 0:41:59.040 daily basis, like bizarre, somewhat unthinkable, certainly implausible stuff was 0:41:59.120 --> 0:42:03.280 continuing to fold day by day. One day, a bunch 0:42:03.320 --> 0:42:06.680 of topless photos of me quote unquote leak and are 0:42:06.760 --> 0:42:09.520 like on the internet. I mean, what this was was me. 0:42:09.840 --> 0:42:12.319 What this was was like me playing basketball with a 0:42:12.360 --> 0:42:14.960 bunch of friends and students at a summer program in 0:42:15.000 --> 0:42:17.040 Anne Arbor that I taught at every summer. They did 0:42:17.040 --> 0:42:20.239 not leak. Somebody took him and they existed. But I 0:42:20.320 --> 0:42:24.200 was just famous enough for somebody to think that anybody 0:42:24.360 --> 0:42:27.000 might give a ship and to like put them out 0:42:27.040 --> 0:42:29.760 there and be like, go to funk to sleep. Author, 0:42:30.040 --> 0:42:32.680 you know whatever it was, You're like, that didn't make 0:42:32.680 --> 0:42:35.080 any sense either. It didn't make any sense of like 0:42:35.480 --> 0:42:38.120 there was a censorship fight over the book New Zealand, 0:42:38.160 --> 0:42:40.680 it didn't make any sense that Sam Jackson was reading 0:42:40.680 --> 0:42:42.879 the book on the Dave Letterman show like nothing made 0:42:42.880 --> 0:42:47.879 any sense. So it seemed just barely plausible enough that 0:42:48.320 --> 0:42:51.120 in a moment where everybody was rushing to find some 0:42:51.239 --> 0:42:53.040 angle in some way to write about go to Funk 0:42:53.080 --> 0:42:55.600 to sleep and use it as fodder for their think 0:42:55.680 --> 0:42:59.320 pieces and their takedowns and their handwringing about the sorry 0:42:59.360 --> 0:43:02.760 state apparent and whatever it was, that somebody might find 0:43:02.760 --> 0:43:04.920 this more sol of information and think to use it. 0:43:05.440 --> 0:43:08.719 But I mean, more than anything, I think, what I 0:43:08.800 --> 0:43:11.840 felt and what I was aware of was that just 0:43:12.200 --> 0:43:16.720 as David had sort of chosen to wear a mask 0:43:17.080 --> 0:43:20.120 and chosen to obscure his real feelings and hide them, 0:43:20.680 --> 0:43:23.720 and then in some real sense, this, as much as anything, 0:43:23.800 --> 0:43:26.720 was the thing that had killed him, that he chose 0:43:27.760 --> 0:43:32.080 hiding and chose that shame and that secrecy over telling 0:43:32.120 --> 0:43:35.440 anybody what was really going on and living in that 0:43:35.640 --> 0:43:39.040 and allowing us to help him. It was very real 0:43:39.120 --> 0:43:42.560 to me that I was making a not entirely dissimilar 0:43:42.640 --> 0:43:49.720 choice in putting on this different mask, but still a mask, 0:43:49.920 --> 0:43:53.800 and sort of cleaving my public persona from my real 0:43:53.880 --> 0:43:58.520 persona and going on this kind of like victory tour 0:43:59.040 --> 0:44:04.560 of American media and then international media and repeatedly telling 0:44:04.600 --> 0:44:08.960 a story about my life and my current circumstances that 0:44:09.040 --> 0:44:11.360 we're not in any way reflective of what I was 0:44:11.400 --> 0:44:14.920 really going through. That felt on one hand, it felt 0:44:14.960 --> 0:44:19.600 disrespectful to my brother to be out here pretending that 0:44:19.640 --> 0:44:23.240 I was indeed like the happiest, luckiest shmuck in the world. 0:44:23.960 --> 0:44:26.680 And it also, in an uglier and darker way, felt 0:44:26.680 --> 0:44:29.920 to me like there was a way to spend it 0:44:29.960 --> 0:44:33.160 as an affirmation of everything that he had thought and 0:44:33.200 --> 0:44:36.200 the choices that had led him to kill himself, because 0:44:36.239 --> 0:44:39.360 you don't I think a thing if the literature is 0:44:39.400 --> 0:44:43.640 to be believed, a thing that suicidal people convinced themselves 0:44:43.719 --> 0:44:47.200 of is that everybody will be better off without them, 0:44:47.200 --> 0:44:50.480 that everybody will be okay, will survive, will recover the loss, 0:44:50.960 --> 0:44:55.200 and it will be okay. And in presenting this public 0:44:55.200 --> 0:44:58.360 face to the world, it's like I was turning myself 0:44:58.400 --> 0:45:02.080 into a walking dramatization of that fact, Like I was 0:45:02.120 --> 0:45:05.960 walking around being like I'm okay um. And at the 0:45:06.000 --> 0:45:08.080 same time, I knew that my family very much needed 0:45:08.120 --> 0:45:11.160 to see me be okay and do all of these things, 0:45:11.239 --> 0:45:14.800 like they very much were of the opinion that I 0:45:14.800 --> 0:45:17.000 should go out and promote the book. And then there 0:45:17.040 --> 0:45:19.480 was the part of me that was struggling because I 0:45:19.520 --> 0:45:22.080 wanted to at least feel more conflicted about whether I 0:45:22.120 --> 0:45:24.319 should go out and promote the book. But on a 0:45:24.400 --> 0:45:28.560 very basic level, I wanted to. And I was ambitious 0:45:28.760 --> 0:45:33.200 and desirous of all of the success and the fame 0:45:33.360 --> 0:45:37.440 and the money that would come with this book being 0:45:37.480 --> 0:45:41.799 successful and sort of achieving escape velocity. Right, this was 0:45:41.840 --> 0:45:46.200 the moment where with enough booster fuel, the thing could 0:45:46.200 --> 0:45:49.360 get into orbit and potentially just kind of circle the 0:45:49.400 --> 0:45:51.719 planet forever. And I knew this this was that time, 0:45:51.719 --> 0:45:55.799 and I knew that I could play a role in 0:45:55.840 --> 0:45:59.200 that because all of these opportunities were available and we 0:45:59.239 --> 0:46:02.719 could see the results from them, like you know, when 0:46:02.719 --> 0:46:06.440 you're tracking a project that closely, you actually see the 0:46:06.520 --> 0:46:09.759 sales bump after you do the Today Show or the 0:46:09.800 --> 0:46:11.879 sales bump after you do this thing or that thing. 0:46:12.000 --> 0:46:16.520 So like it was all right there at my fingertips, 0:46:16.920 --> 0:46:18.719 and I was sort of struggling with all of those 0:46:18.760 --> 0:46:22.759 things and taggling between all of those things. Yeah, And 0:46:23.080 --> 0:46:29.239 I think also there's a kind of self protection involved 0:46:29.360 --> 0:46:33.040 there too. I mean, you're right, something that struck me 0:46:33.080 --> 0:46:38.080 as really a very universal feeling there, which was, if 0:46:38.120 --> 0:46:41.520 tragedy was ever allowed to step into the winner's circle, 0:46:41.920 --> 0:46:46.480 triumph would be incinerated. You know that somehow the magical 0:46:46.560 --> 0:46:51.680 thinking feeling of there are two worlds and they can't coexist, 0:46:52.239 --> 0:46:55.520 which of course they can and they do, but that 0:46:55.520 --> 0:47:01.600 that feeling. Yeah, Adams an event for his book in Georgetown. 0:47:02.160 --> 0:47:04.680 He knows the woman who's organized it. She had gone 0:47:04.680 --> 0:47:07.839 to the same school as him and David, so he 0:47:07.880 --> 0:47:10.520 knows it's going to come up. She's going to ask 0:47:10.560 --> 0:47:13.680 how David's doing, what he's up to. Adam can feel 0:47:13.719 --> 0:47:17.760 it coming, and then there it is. She finally asks, 0:47:18.320 --> 0:47:22.520 and he flat outlies. He tells her David is married 0:47:22.600 --> 0:47:26.040 and living in Brookline. I knew I wasn't going to 0:47:26.120 --> 0:47:28.520 get out of this without accounting for him in some way, 0:47:28.560 --> 0:47:31.440 like it was, you know, no matter how how I 0:47:31.560 --> 0:47:35.040 deflected or flipped the conversation. I sort of knew the 0:47:35.200 --> 0:47:38.359 entire evening that this woman was going to ask him 0:47:38.360 --> 0:47:42.080 about my brother, and I truly did not know what 0:47:42.200 --> 0:47:45.600 I was going to do when she did. Like, you know, 0:47:45.640 --> 0:47:48.000 We're at some dinner with a whole bunch of people. 0:47:48.160 --> 0:47:51.320 I didn't know anybody. This is her event. So I 0:47:51.760 --> 0:47:53.520 just lied to her. I just told her he was 0:47:53.680 --> 0:47:56.480 he was fine, And you know, it felt like it 0:47:56.560 --> 0:47:59.879 felt like it cost me something. It felt deeply unco 0:48:00.000 --> 0:48:03.720 comfortable to me. But also I think I think better 0:48:03.760 --> 0:48:06.879 than better for all of us than me telling her 0:48:06.920 --> 0:48:12.240 that actually, three weeks earlier, he had killed himself. Suicide 0:48:12.280 --> 0:48:15.160 is also so different than every other kind of of 0:48:15.160 --> 0:48:17.359 death and every other kind of grief. That was something 0:48:17.360 --> 0:48:19.719 that also struck me again and again. You know, I 0:48:19.719 --> 0:48:22.919 would be sitting down to remember getting back to California 0:48:23.239 --> 0:48:25.680 months and months later and sitting down for dinner with 0:48:25.719 --> 0:48:28.400 two very good friends of mine, both of whom in 0:48:28.480 --> 0:48:31.239 the in the previous six months had lost a grandparent 0:48:31.840 --> 0:48:33.640 and listening, you know, and they both knew about David, 0:48:33.680 --> 0:48:35.640 and we had talked about it already, so I wasn't 0:48:35.680 --> 0:48:38.239 in the same situation. But I just remember sitting and 0:48:38.280 --> 0:48:43.680 listening to them each talk about the funeral and all 0:48:43.719 --> 0:48:48.960 of the surrounding activity and emotion and how it feels 0:48:48.960 --> 0:48:51.040 when an elder dies in the way that everybody gets 0:48:51.080 --> 0:48:53.160 a bumper here, just all of this stuff that that 0:48:53.280 --> 0:48:59.360 was very like recognizably in line with the natural flow 0:48:59.400 --> 0:49:03.759 of life. Sad but not unnatural in the way that 0:49:03.840 --> 0:49:07.600 suicide continued and continues to feel to me, and just 0:49:07.640 --> 0:49:09.960 feeling like the three of us are at this table 0:49:10.360 --> 0:49:15.400 talking about death, and yet I can't talk, you know, 0:49:15.560 --> 0:49:20.000 I can't contribute. My story does not intersect with these stories, 0:49:22.920 --> 0:49:26.319 and so life continues. Adam's riding the wave of his 0:49:26.360 --> 0:49:31.440 public success while privately contending with his grief. Many opportunities 0:49:31.480 --> 0:49:35.520 are coming his way. It's now and he's at a 0:49:35.560 --> 0:49:39.200 storytelling event at the Moss in Boston. The evening is 0:49:39.200 --> 0:49:42.280 a turning point for Adam. He feels in this moment 0:49:42.320 --> 0:49:44.319 that he wants and needs to tell the story of 0:49:44.400 --> 0:49:47.640 his brother. The other writers participating in the event are 0:49:47.680 --> 0:49:51.520 being vulnerable, and he feels like a fraud. But first 0:49:51.520 --> 0:49:54.600 he needs to shed his mask, the protected shield that 0:49:54.640 --> 0:49:58.719 has kept him well shielded for so long, and he 0:49:58.760 --> 0:50:01.160 also needs to find the length which to write about David. 0:50:01.960 --> 0:50:06.879 He's written in all sorts of forms and genres, supernatural thrillers, screenplays, 0:50:07.040 --> 0:50:10.720 literary novels, but now he feels the pull to return 0:50:10.760 --> 0:50:13.879 to where he began, with a form he'd inherited from 0:50:13.880 --> 0:50:19.160 his grandmother, poetry. Perhaps in poetry he can begin to 0:50:19.280 --> 0:50:22.400 unpack the story that needs unpacking to tell the story 0:50:22.440 --> 0:50:27.520 that needs telling the story of his brother David. I 0:50:27.640 --> 0:50:32.840 certainly think that that moment in Boston was a touch point. Well, 0:50:33.160 --> 0:50:37.320 it was the closest that I probably came to even 0:50:37.840 --> 0:50:42.360 thinking or attempting to, certainly to attempting to talk about 0:50:42.440 --> 0:50:47.080 or write about David. I think that from very soon 0:50:47.160 --> 0:50:49.400 after his death, I always knew that I would have 0:50:49.480 --> 0:50:53.640 to write something about him. This is It's just it's 0:50:53.719 --> 0:50:56.160 just too central and too critical to the way that 0:50:56.200 --> 0:51:00.040 I processed the world to not um And yet I 0:51:00.120 --> 0:51:03.520 continued to not do it, and to not really even 0:51:03.560 --> 0:51:06.200 attempt to do it. I thought about doing it. I 0:51:06.239 --> 0:51:09.400 never stopped thinking about doing it. I never stopped thinking 0:51:09.400 --> 0:51:13.520 about it, and I never stopped being stymied by things 0:51:13.560 --> 0:51:17.040 like what the form would be, what the architecture would be, 0:51:17.080 --> 0:51:19.080 what the kind of scaffolding of it would look like. 0:51:19.600 --> 0:51:21.880 I never considered doing it as a poem until I 0:51:21.920 --> 0:51:24.600 did it as a poem. I thought about a novel, 0:51:25.200 --> 0:51:29.560 a screenplay, an essay. I wrote one half of one 0:51:29.600 --> 0:51:33.560 scene of a screenplay, which was basically me djaying in 0:51:33.600 --> 0:51:36.080 a club and my phone ringing, and I don't even 0:51:36.080 --> 0:51:38.000 think I answered the phone, and seeing that I wrote, 0:51:38.160 --> 0:51:41.120 that's as far as I got um. But you know, 0:51:41.600 --> 0:51:44.759 I never stopped thinking about writing about him, and I 0:51:44.840 --> 0:51:49.520 never stopped feeling like something was out of whack, like 0:51:49.600 --> 0:51:52.319 my my life and my my creative life was out 0:51:52.360 --> 0:51:55.640 of balance for not having written about him. That, like 0:51:55.719 --> 0:52:00.320 everything else I was writing, was relatively easy, was light work, 0:52:00.680 --> 0:52:04.759 was trivial because there was this thing that I had 0:52:04.840 --> 0:52:07.600 to write about it and was not even really spending 0:52:07.640 --> 0:52:10.600 any time thinking about writing about you know that that 0:52:10.640 --> 0:52:14.080 moment that the Moth in what got me to that 0:52:14.600 --> 0:52:18.600 producers door at you know, ten o'clock the night before 0:52:18.600 --> 0:52:21.319 the performance was the fact that earlier that night we'd 0:52:21.360 --> 0:52:25.160 rehearsed and I've heard all these other stories, and everybody's 0:52:25.239 --> 0:52:29.480 story was so honest and raw and vulnerable, and there 0:52:29.520 --> 0:52:32.360 was so much bravery in them getting up and talking 0:52:32.400 --> 0:52:36.040 about whatever the thing was. Because you know, the Moth 0:52:36.160 --> 0:52:42.240 doesn't typically do too many light breezy stories, like often 0:52:42.960 --> 0:52:45.440 they take a dark turn. The classic Moth story is 0:52:45.520 --> 0:52:47.880 four or five minutes of fun and games and laughter 0:52:48.040 --> 0:52:51.160 and light, and then somebody is diagnosed with something or 0:52:51.280 --> 0:52:54.440 somebody goes through something horrible and the rest of the 0:52:54.560 --> 0:52:59.839 story is really dealing head on with whatever that turn 0:53:00.040 --> 0:53:02.960 that tragedy is. The story I was telling was none 0:53:02.960 --> 0:53:05.040 of that. The story I was telling was basically a 0:53:05.080 --> 0:53:09.160 stand up comedy routine. Now they needed that to end 0:53:09.160 --> 0:53:12.120 the night with so that everybody walked out of there. 0:53:12.360 --> 0:53:15.799 You know, able to operate heavy machinery. But yeah, I 0:53:15.880 --> 0:53:19.000 felt newly dishonest in the face of all this other 0:53:19.360 --> 0:53:23.400 courage and bravery from my other co storytellers. And it 0:53:23.480 --> 0:53:26.719 also felt very different to me. Three years later, I 0:53:26.800 --> 0:53:29.239 felt like it was one thing to do my go 0:53:29.400 --> 0:53:31.759 to Focus League tour and bullshit with Matt Lower and 0:53:31.800 --> 0:53:35.759 whoever else and promote the book and the way it 0:53:35.800 --> 0:53:38.400 needed to be promoted, and keep my grief and my 0:53:38.480 --> 0:53:41.800 pain to myself. But it felt like a new level 0:53:41.960 --> 0:53:47.120 of dishonesty, and maybe an unhealthy one. Two three years later, 0:53:47.840 --> 0:53:51.720 be crafting my own story in my own words, under 0:53:51.800 --> 0:53:56.640 my own sort of motor, and still be telling the 0:53:56.719 --> 0:53:59.880 story that didn't include my brothers, still be telling the 0:54:00.040 --> 0:54:02.880 fun and Games version. I went out and told that 0:54:02.920 --> 0:54:05.839 story exactly as I was supposed to, and got big 0:54:05.960 --> 0:54:08.839 laughs and had a ball, and they kept bringing me back, 0:54:08.840 --> 0:54:11.319 and I ended up telling that story and probably you know, 0:54:11.600 --> 0:54:15.080 ten different cities and sort of subsuming the part of 0:54:15.080 --> 0:54:17.879 me that felt like, I, you know, shouldn't be telling 0:54:17.960 --> 0:54:19.960 that story, but should instead be working on telling the 0:54:20.000 --> 0:54:25.520 real story. In many ways, Adam's book about his brother 0:54:25.640 --> 0:54:29.840 reads like a ritual itself, even though Adam is not religious. 0:54:29.920 --> 0:54:33.880 It has an incantatory quality like the Jewish mourner's prayer 0:54:34.160 --> 0:54:38.879 the Kaddish. Another staggering moment begins with an amber's hand, 0:54:39.560 --> 0:54:42.320 Adam writes, and so all I can do is grapple 0:54:42.400 --> 0:54:46.320 my way back? Is right this or maybe I mean mine, 0:54:47.040 --> 0:54:50.000 make ritual of being known as he would not build 0:54:50.000 --> 0:54:54.480 a bridge, I do rapple a lot in this book 0:54:54.520 --> 0:54:58.960 with the idea of telling his story, this notion of 0:54:59.000 --> 0:55:03.720 being resistant to narrative versus deeply deeply dependent on narrative, 0:55:04.400 --> 0:55:08.160 the idea that the fundamental thing David refused to do 0:55:08.440 --> 0:55:11.920 was tell his story like live in the honesty of 0:55:11.960 --> 0:55:14.440 what he was going through and who he was. And 0:55:14.520 --> 0:55:17.000 so I think I say those lines in the context 0:55:17.800 --> 0:55:22.160 of my own children and thinking about what tools I 0:55:22.200 --> 0:55:26.080 want them to have that David didn't in the event 0:55:26.280 --> 0:55:29.359 that they ever deal with any of the things he did. 0:55:29.880 --> 0:55:33.520 You know, I've been lucky enough to sidestep the genetic 0:55:33.600 --> 0:55:38.799 inheritance of depression, but it runs on both sides of 0:55:38.800 --> 0:55:43.520 my family, my mother's and my father's, through the generations. 0:55:44.120 --> 0:55:48.920 So I look at my own three children, and what 0:55:49.000 --> 0:55:51.440 I really want more than anything is for them to 0:55:52.719 --> 0:55:56.640 not feel the kind of shame that would lead them 0:55:56.680 --> 0:56:01.920 to keep something like depression or mental illness a secret. 0:56:02.560 --> 0:56:05.120 So the building of a bridge, I think, is the 0:56:05.200 --> 0:56:11.800 idea of helping them construct a language of framework, a 0:56:11.960 --> 0:56:17.160 life in which they never feel the need to hide 0:56:17.200 --> 0:56:24.399 that really characterized David's life. Suicide is so particular there 0:56:24.400 --> 0:56:27.359 are no natural bridges to it, like nothing connects to it. 0:56:27.719 --> 0:56:30.040 It's sort of an island, and to get there you 0:56:30.080 --> 0:56:40.040 have to swim. Here's Adam reading one last passage from 0:56:40.080 --> 0:56:47.560 his beautiful, powerful book. I had a brother once. Soon 0:56:47.640 --> 0:56:50.160 after his death, my mother tried to make me promise 0:56:50.239 --> 0:56:54.120 I would never write about David. I said nothing, and 0:56:54.200 --> 0:56:57.680 continue to say nothing until now, and still do not 0:56:57.800 --> 0:57:00.360 know what she asked, because it is nobody's business, or 0:57:00.400 --> 0:57:03.000 would be too painful to see rendered on the page, 0:57:03.680 --> 0:57:06.800 or simply because when my mother was a girl, Felicia 0:57:06.880 --> 0:57:10.160 promised never to write about her, and this, she feels, 0:57:10.640 --> 0:57:13.680 is what a writer owes his family. But I will 0:57:13.719 --> 0:57:17.000 make a different plea to my children. I will implore 0:57:17.040 --> 0:57:20.280 them to write it, speak it all, shed light, and 0:57:20.320 --> 0:57:48.680 who knows what else you might shed. Family Secrets is 0:57:48.680 --> 0:57:51.840 a production of I Heart Radio. Molly's A Core is 0:57:51.880 --> 0:57:55.000 the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. 0:57:56.280 --> 0:57:58.280 If you have a family secret you'd like to share, 0:57:58.680 --> 0:58:01.120 please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear 0:58:01.120 --> 0:58:06.120 on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight Secret zero. 0:58:06.520 --> 0:58:09.560 That's the number zero. You can also find me on 0:58:09.640 --> 0:58:14.000 Instagram at Danny writer. And if you'd like to know 0:58:14.040 --> 0:58:16.960 more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out 0:58:16.960 --> 0:58:45.160 my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, 0:58:45.360 --> 0:58:48.200 visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever 0:58:48.360 --> 0:58:49.800 you listen to your favorite shows.