The 45th birthday of Malcolm "Mal" Ede's life marks twenty years since he climbed into his bed, his childhood bed, the one at his parents' home, and never left it. He now weighs over half a ton and his bed is now three beds--two king-sized and one single--tied together. Even though Mal can't get out of bed, can't even move, he really doesn't want to. He's satisfied to stay put, a choice which has attracted some oddly favorable attention. His condition has fostered a sort of perverse notoriety with a cult of followers convinced he's making a bold statement about modern life. Meanwhile his family, his mother and father, younger brother and fledgling girlfriend, passively stand by, observing the "truck-size block of sausage meat packed into a pair of cheap tights" that he's become.
Why won't he get out of bed? As a child, Mal was always the one who "liked to be the first to do things", the one with the wondrous curiosity about life who never felt that anything abnormal was unacceptable. He'd stand in the rain all day staring upwards until catching pneumonia. He'd go nude for hours, sometimes days at a time, refusing to wear clothes, even on outings to the supermarket or the park. And while his father, a morosely put-upon figure--"Dad didn't work, he toiled"--cursed his son's peculiarities and made solid attempts to rectify his behavior, he lost too many battles to Mal's willful insistence. The boy just wouldn't conform to standards; he loved the novelty of different experiences. But over time as the whimsicalities of childhood gave way to the mundane responsibilities of adulthood, Mal's spirits faded and his spunky resolve to live differently turned to disillusionment. Any incentive to live at all promptly went with it. His ultimate decision to remain in bed permanently, an act much enabled by his incredibly accommodating mother, was simply a reaction to what was expected of him as he grew older. The situation hasn't been popular with everyone of course. Along with his father, Mal's younger brother, who used to love but now loathes his morbidly obese counterpart, can't help but wish ill on his elder sibling--"Mal's death is the only thing that can save this family because his life has destroyed it".
With a well-crafted story narrated in first person by the protagonist's unnamed younger brother, Whitehouse has debuted a novel which is not only rich in acerbic wit and humor, but soul-searching in its existential implications. Bed isn't all satire, nor is it a serious allegory or gimmicky fable. It's a subtly poetic anecdotal piece highlighted by the obligations of familial love under extreme circumstances. As the narrator jumps back and forth in time, relating how all of this came about, we're introduced to a family very much like any other middle class English household where the natural developmental characteristics of children failed to apply to someone. Mal's condition (note the pun on the name) may be clinical depression or some other mental disorder (Peter Pan Syndrome possibly) though it's never indicated. But details of his life, the origins of his behavioral irregularities and his steadfast determination to remain immobile aren't so odd as to warrant exclusive attention. Mal's simply a product of his own, sound choices and his family's the affected party, something the book elucidates with incredibly amusing drollery and candor. (FIC WHITEHOU)
Judith Guest grew up as an aspiring writer throughout high school and college, majoring in English and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her first and still best-regarded book Ordinary People originally began as a short story, eventually growing longer as Guest continued to explore the characters in greater depth. After winning the Kafka Prize for best first novel in 1976, the book was adapted for the big screen by director Robert Redford (his directorial debut) and would go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Redford and then teenager Timothy Hutton would also win Oscars for Best Director and Best Actor respectively.
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."They are people of good taste. They do not discuss a problem in the presence of the problem. And, besides, there is no problem. There is just Phase Two. Recovery. A moving forward." (p. 4)
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Conrad Jarrett is 17 and a student at Lake Forest (IL) High where in addition to academics, he participates on the swim team and sings in the choir. He's a seemingly well-adjusted youth, having been brought up in a priveleged home with two loving parents, an established group of friends, college on the horizon and even a few flirtatious love interests. But Conrad is anything but alright. The same goes for his parents, Calvin and Beth Jarrett, who not only have no idea how to deal with Conrad, but are visibly becoming unhinged themselves in the wake of two recent family tragedies--the accidental death of the Jarrett's older son "Buck" and Conrad's own attempted suicide just under a year ago.
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Things are in a bad way for the Jarrett household which is shaky at best, the trio weighed down by emotional tension, more or less isolated from each other since Conrad's return from the hospital some months ago and at a loss to forge any continuity or mutual intimacy. Mom Beth scampers a
bout, busybodying herself with a myriad of social functions, trying to suppress her still cavernous grief over Buck's death, all the while behaving in a passively-aggressive, even dismissive manner towards Conrad, the less-favored son. And while Calvin is openly warm and affectionate toward all, his own naieve efforts to change things usually end in failure. Though his one notion, getting Conrad to see a psychiatrist, does finally garner some feedback and, if not family togetherness, then at least some insight into what's actually going on.
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Several things set Ordinary People at a level above the montage of suburban soap operas, semifactual docudramas or depressing after school specials. There's the integrity of the story, its matter-of-fact but not stereotyped people and situations, and its development of the characters. Circumstances don't change a whole lot between the time the novel begins sometime in autumn and when it concludes around late winter: Conrad's still depressed, Beth's still decimated with grief and Calvin's still rankled at the inertness of his life. The affluence of the Jarrett's surroundings is clearly apparent but never promoted as a reason for each character's turmoil. Pain, problems and grief originate within each individual and flow outwards; and though all three protagonists are provided with the opportunity to examine themselves, pinpoint the source of distress and push forward towards a resolution, not all are up to the task. (FIC GUEST)
A native of the American South, Walker Percy (1916-1990) was born into a family of distinguished lineage and one which held particularly tragic heritage. When he was thirteen his own father committed suicide and then, two years later, his mother was killed when she drove off a bridge (an act Percy also considered a suicide). Throughout his life, Percy would feel the impact and impression these events had on his youthful conscious and subsquent life, struggling for years to come to terms with his family's tragic legacy. His second-to-last novel, The Second Coming, is a book--among his most autobiographical works--which explores the themes of clinical depression, existensialism, semiotics and faith in a cleverly entertaining way.
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"The lives of other people seemed even more farcical than his own. It astonished him that as farcical as most people's lives were, they generally gave no sign it. Why was it that it was he not they who had decided to shoot himself?" p. 4
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Fed up with what he feels is an utterly useless existence, wealthy bachelor Will Barrett decides on a course of action which, conceivably, will bring about his end on earth. Rather than shoot himself, he moves from his comfortable existence in his opulent house situated on the green of a golf course to a cave, where, without food and only a little water, he plans to extinguish his life through natural deprivation. Figuring that, if there is a God, his life and faith will be somehow restored, Will follows through on his plan, living out his literal 'dark night of the soul', gradually, as the hours then days, then weeks pass by, growing weaker, fainter and less in touch with reality. At long last when he's brought to the point of no return and as hallucinations begin overtaking his sanity, he inadvertently tumbles out of the cave, down the hill and into the backyard of a neighbor where a peculiar, memory-challenged young woman named Allison, herself having just escaped from a mental institution, sits watering the plants in a greenhouse.
Percy's 1980 novel was actually a sequel to his earlier book The Last Gentleman, which concerned Will Barrett at an earlier point in his life. And while this volume presents many of the same characteristics and quirky running narrative about its protagonist which were prominently featured in the first book, The Second Coming sits at a higher intellectual plane. Much more of the author's own existential and spiritual consternations highlight the story as Will's inner turmoil, his philosophical assessments of his life--deeply rooted in suicides of both his father and grandfather--and that of the world around him resonate from page one till the final dialogue between Will and Allison. The world of internal emptiness which depression evokes is uniquely manifested through Percy's prose.
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At the age of 60, William Styron, world-renowned author of Sophie's Choice and Confessions of Nat Turner, succombed to a life-threatening depressive
episode; one so severe that all faculties of his life were essentially disengaged as his mind became consumed by detrimental, even dangerous thought patterns. Insomnia was constant, his mood was one of perpetual "dank joylessness", his appetite diminished and he experienced a particularly odd aversion to alcohol--which had previously been, in his own words, "an invaluable senior partner with my intellect". Also absent was any initiative or ambition to work, play, participate or basically interact with others. Unable to apply himself to his profession, several projects and works-in-progress were abrubtly abandoned and lay gathering dust for months on end.
While his wife and family were sympathetic to the situation and various remedies were prescribed and proposed--all ineffective--little change came. In fact it got worse. Months into his illness, Styron began to have recurring self-destructive fantasies and was finally admitted to the psychiatric ward of a hospital for observance. It wasn't until a sustained period of drug treatments and psychotherapy that Styron's despair was ultimately lifted and his world began to be more accommodating. Personalized memoirs and essays focusing on mental illness don't always connect readers who, often times, tend to be either unsympathetic, dispassionate or unmoved by the unseen afflictions described by the narrator. But Styron's melodramatic recollections on his plight offer a genuine glimpse at his helplessness, the inner turmoil and fragmented mental capacities of his condition, not to mention the legitimately dire medical implications the "disease" ultimately instigated. (616.8527 STYRON)
