Bibliotherapy

Diem Perdidi, by Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka creates a compelling, heart-wrenching portrait of an elderly woman’s character and life story as she begins to lose her memory.

It might be more accurate to call Diem Perdidi an inventory rather than a narrative. In sentences beginning with “she remembers” and “she does not remember,” Julie Otsuka unfolds a portrait of an elderly woman with dementia, capturing her personality and personal history even as she begins to forget. The story invites us to reflect on what makes up individual identity––our experiences, our habits, our relationships––and what happens to them when they slip out of our grasp.

Talking points

1. Do you notice patterns in what the woman remembers, or doesn’t?
2. What do we learn about the “you” in the story? Why would Otsuka choose to use the second person pronoun here?
3. Why does Otsuka tell a story about memory in the present tense?
4. The philosopher John Locke claimed that the continuity of “personal identity” was grounded on memory: the consciousness of having been the same person at two different points in time. Is the woman in the story the same person she used to be? Does memory loss affect one’s personhood or personal identity?

About the author

Julie Otsuka is the author of two novels focusing on the historic experience of Japanese Americans. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Asian American Literary Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Otsuka grew up in California before studying art at Yale University and later pursuing an MFA at Columbia. More from julieotsuka.com.

Sleeping and Waking, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald's short piece about insomnia is what we might today call "autofiction" -- a story that might or might not be based on his own experience.

In a first-person, confessional tone, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story explores chronic insomnia: an unnamed narrator struggles each night to fall asleep.  From the mosquito he blames for first disrupting his bedtime routine to the escapist fantasies he uses to try and lull himself to sleep, the narrator draws us in with self-deprecating wit — but as the night goes on his desperation boils over into a personal crisis, only to collapse with exhaustion and wake up to face another day and night of the same.  Fitzgerald, a heavy drinker for most of his short life, portrays insomnia as a vicious cycle of self-reproach and oblivion eerily reminiscent of addiction.

Talking points

1. What might be different about each person’s insomnia?
2. Why does the mosquito disrupt the narrator’s ability to sleep?
3. What kind of relationship does the narrator seem to have to sleep?
4. What are the dreams in the story like?

About the author

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), known professionally as F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist and short story writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. [Wikipedia]

Where is Here? by Joyce Carol Oates

A couple opens their home to a stranger who says he lived there as a child. Joyce Carol Oates narrates the couple’s growing unease with the stranger’s visit in a restrained, matter-of-fact style, capturing the anger and dread lying just behind the appearance of middle-class respectability. Part comedy of manners, part bourgeois tragedy, “Where Is Here?” poses the question of what makes a house into a home in ways that no greeting card or throw pillow would dare!

Sample discussion questions

1. What might be “enormously exciting yet intimidating” about returning to your childhood house where a new family now lives?  What might be uncomfortable about watching a stranger who once lived in your house explore it?

2. The characters in this story are never named — they are referred to as “the mother,” “the father,” “the stranger,” and “the son.”  Why might Oates choose to refer to them this way?  What would feel different about the story if the characters were called by first names, or last names, or even “Mother” and “Father” as opposed to “the mother” and “the father”?

3. What does the stranger’s behavior suggest about his family life?  What do the mother’s and the father’s behavior suggest about theirs?

4. The basement, Oates writes, “was not a part of their house the father and mother would have been comfortable showing to a stranger.”  The basement is also the last thing the stranger asks to see as the father escorts him out.  What significance might the basement have?  Do all families have a “basement” that they would rather not show?

5. What do you make of the stranger’s riddles, and the father’s reaction to them?  Follow the stranger’s instructions to the son for the “mathematical riddle” of infinite triangles within a square — how might this image relate to the story as a whole?

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published 58 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019). Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000) and short story collections The Wheel of Love and Other Stories (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. [Wikipedia]

• Joyce Carol Oates, Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities, Princeton University
• Joyce Carol Oates at home - Profiles - The New Yorker (2013, video, 3:04 minutes)
• Celestial Timepiece (a Joyce Carol Oates patchwork maintained by a reference librarian at the University of San Francisco)
• Twitter - @JoyceCarolOates

Hurricane Season, by David Sedaris

After David and Hugh’s North Carolina beach house, the Sea Section, is destroyed by Hurricane Florence, David reflects on old-fashioned names, disturbed renters, his aging sisters, and Hugh’s stormy temperament. Through David Sedaris’ typical self-deprecating humor and wit, he reveals a story about relationships and resilience.