At one point several years ago I was reading Larry McMurtry’s novel, Duane’s Depressed. It’s a good book, but I had a “Hey, wait a minute” moment at the point where Duane—who’s, well, depressed, and has decided to change his life by breaking ties with his family and moving out to a cabin in the country—decides he needs a bicycle, and he whips out his wallet, which is stuffed with cash he’s won playing poker, and he buys the bike. Hey, wait a minute. Does Duane not realize how privileged he is? Does McMurtry? I couldn’t stop thinking about all the non-white, non-oilman depressed people in the world who didn’t have a pocket full of money or a place to go hide from their families.
I was writing my novel, That Demon Life, at the time, and so I put in a little passage reacting to Duane’s Depressed:
Linda almost laughed out loud thinking about it—start life over and do absolutely nothing. Why not? She had the resources—a trust fund from her mother left her in a position where she didn’t have to worry about a paycheck, ever. Linda knew how lucky she was to have a rich dead mother. There were plenty of other people out there who were sad and messed up and still had to soldier off every goddamn morning to work in some dreadful job or other. There were some brave people out there. Heroes. Linda was glad she didn’t have to be one of them (106).
So my book got published, and some people have read it (and more people should). One of them said the other day, “I finally figured Linda out—she’s just a trust-fund baby.” Well, no. The reader didn’t get it. Not “just.” Linda understands her privilege, and is in the process of developing a little bit of empathy. But as far as the reader goes, there’s nothing to be done. You write something down, and it’s not yours anymore—it belongs to the reader. And, of course, one of the main themes of That Demon Life is that you cannot control what other people think—and the book takes the further, Classical Stoic view that because you can't control what other people think, you shouldn’t care what other people think. But I’m not always a very good Stoic.
I was writing my novel, That Demon Life, at the time, and so I put in a little passage reacting to Duane’s Depressed:
Linda almost laughed out loud thinking about it—start life over and do absolutely nothing. Why not? She had the resources—a trust fund from her mother left her in a position where she didn’t have to worry about a paycheck, ever. Linda knew how lucky she was to have a rich dead mother. There were plenty of other people out there who were sad and messed up and still had to soldier off every goddamn morning to work in some dreadful job or other. There were some brave people out there. Heroes. Linda was glad she didn’t have to be one of them (106).
So my book got published, and some people have read it (and more people should). One of them said the other day, “I finally figured Linda out—she’s just a trust-fund baby.” Well, no. The reader didn’t get it. Not “just.” Linda understands her privilege, and is in the process of developing a little bit of empathy. But as far as the reader goes, there’s nothing to be done. You write something down, and it’s not yours anymore—it belongs to the reader. And, of course, one of the main themes of That Demon Life is that you cannot control what other people think—and the book takes the further, Classical Stoic view that because you can't control what other people think, you shouldn’t care what other people think. But I’m not always a very good Stoic.
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