Life Stories #61: David Stuart MacLean

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photo: Heather Edison

In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I talk to memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, David Stuart MacLean and I discuss The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, a “memoir of amnesia” that begins with a cold open as MacLean snaps into consciousness with no idea where he is… or even who he is. His condition turns out to have been a particularly strong adverse reaction to the anti-malarial drug Lariam, but having an explanation didn’t make the task of rebuilding his identity any easier. One of the things we discussed is how, though he has a rough sense of life before his amnesia, some memories are lost forever—but then, as he’s discovered, even those of us who haven’t suffered amnesia can forget many of the details of our own lives:

“It’s one of those things that almost becomes an existential question: How do I know what I don’t know? So people will say, do you have all your memory back? And I’m like, I have no idea. I have a pretty good sense of who I am now. I still have people who I bump into who I can’t place who are from before that time, but I’m not sure if that would be normal anyway. I’ve spent time in my home town talking to people for an hour, and not know who they are. I’m not sure if that would be true usually.”

Listen to Life Stories #61: David Stuart MacLean (MP3 file); or download this file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click). Or subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes, where you can catch up with earlier episodes and be alerted whenever a new one is released. (And if you are an iTunes subscriber, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast!)

5 February 2014 | life stories |

Life Stories #60: Scott Stossel

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photo: Michael Lionstar

This episode of Life Stories is a slight deviation from the usual format of talking to memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, in that Scott Stossel’s My Age of Anxiety isn’t, strictly speaking a memoir. But one of the first things we discuss is how, once Stossel started telling people that he was writing a medical and cultural history of the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety disorders framed by his own experiences, they became much more intrigued by the topic. And the finished book is thoroughly suffused with Stossel’s life story, as he lays bare his worst phobias, the effect that they’ve had on his life, and the ways that he and his therapists have sought to bring them under control over the decades.

We met just a few days after Michael Bay’s walk-off in the middle of a trade show presentation when the teleprompter went off track—to Stossel, it sounded like a nightmare he’s lived through before, when his anxiety gets so amped up he just have to leave. The fear associated with public speaking is so great that, as he writes, he has to begin bracing himself hours ahead of time with a regimen of pills and scotch or vodka—not, he concedes, a solution he’d recommend to anyone, but one that enables him to function. Recently, though, he contemplated a change:

“My plan all along has been to do my pre-game regimen, as it were, to make sure I’m appropriately medicated. But, given the topic of the book, at some point I probably oughta try doing it, in effect, pharmacologically naked… to not take anti-anxiety medications, not take a shot of alcohol beforehand. With the thing being, maybe I’ll manage it just fine, and that would be great for me, and people may then wonder, ‘Wait, you don’t seem that anxious,’ which is what they say all the time, or maybe I’ll have a visible manifestation of my anxiety, in which case what I hope I’ll be able to do is say, ‘Well, at least you’re getting your money’s worth, ’cause you can see, this is what it’s like.'”

Listen to Life Stories #60: Scott Stossel (MP3 file); or download this file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click). Or subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes, where you can catch up with earlier episodes and be alerted whenever a new one is released. (And if you are an iTunes subscriber, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast!)

26 January 2014 | life stories |