A conversation with Joan Wickersham,
author of THE SUICIDE INDEX: Putting My Father’s Death in Order
author of THE SUICIDE INDEX: Putting My Father’s Death in Order
(Harcourt, 2008)
What led you to write this book?
My father committed suicide in 1991. When I learned of his death, I thought, “That’s not possible.” And yet at the same time I thought, “Of course.” I didn’t understand how those two contradictory things could be true – how his death could seem at once impossible and inevitable – and that was the paradox I started trying to write about.
Memoirs are about memory, about recapturing experience – was it particularly challenging for you to recapture your memories of your father?
Yes, because his death called into question so much of what I thought I knew about him. I was close to him, at least I thought I was; but after he died my memories of him as gentle, strong, and considerate all seemed suddenly unreliable. I think this often happens after a suicide, and that it’s one of the most devastating things about the experience: you not only lose the person, you lose the memories you have of him. How can you simply miss him when you’re not sure you ever knew him? Writing was an attempt to grapple with the loss, and also to restore my father as a whole, complicated person – not just this idealized, adored father, but not just an enigmatic stranger, either.
But in addition to writing about your father’s death, you’re also writing about family life, aren’t you?
Absolutely. The book is about family secrets, all the stuff you know is there but can never talk about or ask about; and also the stuff you don’t know, the things that shock you and break your heart because you learn about them too late. It’s about love in families, and the kinds of damage that can happen in families, often inadvertently. It’s about grief, and how grief changes over time. And it’s about family money – having it, not having it, losing it, and never being able to talk about any of this because money is such a weird loaded subject that no one ever talks about it with perfect frankness.
What surprised you most while writing the book?
The funny parts. Remembering being at a restaurant with my mother about a week after my father died, and the waitress noticed she was looking sad and said, “Didn’t he give you what you wanted for Valentine’s Day?” And my mother said, “Not exactly.” Or remembering the silent power struggle my parents had after my mother had the family cat euthanized because he was sick; and my father never asked “Where’s the cat?” so my mother never told him what she’d done. It was an emblem of where they were in their marriage. They would sit at the dinner table, the cat hadn’t been seen in weeks, and the subject never came up. He didn’t ask, so she didn’t tell. There’s always a ridiculous black-comedy piece to any family tragedy – an illness, a death. People get punchy, and it’s a relief.
Why did you structure the book as an index?
The index was something I stumbled on after many attempts to tell the story in more conventional ways. For a long time I worked on it as a traditional chronological novel, but that was too lyrical and tidy. Suicide isn’t lyrical and it isn’t tidy. It’s a mess. You keep asking questions, and there are no real answers. Thinking about it chronologically doesn’t work: there’s no beginning, and no place to end. And because there is no one story, there’s no one way to tell the story. The index is a formal, almost ironic, way to bring order to something inherently chaotic. It expresses the disconnect I felt between my father’s violent action and my own numbness afterward. And I also think it gives a reader a little distance, and a safe place to stand.
Why is suicide such a hard subject for people to talk about?
Suicide is one of the great mysteries. Sadly, it happens a lot – every year in America, there are twice as many suicides as there are murders – yet we find it almost unimaginable. There is still a powerful taboo around the subject; people are embarrassed, or made deeply uncomfortable, by the idea of talking about it. That’s no longer true of other very difficult and painful topics, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or sexual abuse – we’ve found it’s better and healthier to talk about these things than not. I’d like to see more candid discussion of suicide, and especially of the impact it has on the people left behind.
Whenever I’ve given readings from this book, people have come up to me with their own stories of suicide – someone in their family, or a friend, or someone they heard about who died this way. They’re articulate and urgent, but at the same time baffled by how to talk about it. The idea of someone choosing to die is so deeply unnerving, and at the same time fascinating. Every story is unique, and yet the questions we wish we could ask someone who died that way – Why did you do it? How could you have loved me and yet left me behind? and Who were you? How well can we ever know another person? – are universal.
Up until now, you’ve mainly written fiction – a novel, short stories.
Are there things a memoir can do that fiction can’t?
Are there things a memoir can do that fiction can’t?
Well, the most obvious thing is that memoir packs the punch of telling a true story. When I tried writing this story as fiction, it was too muted and indirect. But when I went from saying “Her father killed himself” to “My father killed himself,” suddenly the tone of the storytelling changed. It’s not just about switching from third person to first person; it’s about coming out from behind the protective covering of fiction to say, “This happened.” But even though they are different, both memoirs and novels need to tell stories in a way that makes you care. That’s what I look for when I’m reading, and that’s what I’m aiming for when I write. As a reader, I’m not necessarily drawn to particular topics – I respond to the writing itself. If a book is beautifully written, if the voice is interesting to me, then I don’t care what the story is about. I’ll follow the writer anywhere.