BOOKS
The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder
/ Michael Miller
08.07.09
The Adderall Diaries
by Stephen Elliott
coming September 1 2009
Graywolf Press
224 pgs.
Although Stephen Elliott’s The Adderall Diaries is in part a memoir, we learn early in the book that while the author was working on it, friends gently urged him to stop writing about himself. Elliott had already published four works front-loaded with autobiographical content, novels that the author admits were based on his own experiences. The best of those early books, Happy Baby, revisited his youth in Chicago, where he fled his abusive father, became a homeless teen, and wound up a ward of the court. It was time to move on, the friend said, to rake over some new literary soil, and Elliott was in a good position to do just that. He was pursuing a new story that, on its surface, had little to do with him: a live-wire 2007 Bay Area murder case that grew so bizarre that even shows like 20/20 wanted a piece of it. The author had become an expert on the trial. His friends, for the most part, thought he was fine, well-adjusted. Maybe it really was time to move on.
This was sensible advice, but The Adderall Diaries, Elliott’s most autobiographical work yet, is not a sensible book. It’s ambitious and emotional and brilliantly orchestrated, an embroidery of memoir and true-crime reportage that’s so stunning that I can’t imagine Elliott writing about the above-mentioned murder case without also confronting his past (or vice versa). The book takes major risks, particularly with its range. Subtitled 'A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder,' it’s also about writer’s block, Elliott’s father, the friends from his troubled youth (some of whom die in the course of the book), his past of drug addiction, local and international politics, and child abuse. Most important, its about the thorny complexities and potentially soul-stealing powers of storytelling itself. Elliott handles all of these topics with charisma, emotional depth, and a raconteur’s gifts, but what’s stunning is how subtly he causes all of the book’s individual elements to interact. Each strand is insightful and lucid; woven together, they form a thriving work of art.
It turns out that murder and memoir aren’t so distinct after all, and in fact they’re wound together in Elliott’s own historical DNA. We learn in the prologue that his father, once a struggling author, wrote a never-published autobiography in which he suggests that he killed a man in 1970, less than a year before Stephen was born. In Chicago, Elliott’s dad had hit a sassy teenager who was setting off fireworks. Later, the injured boy’s father and other men beat Elliott Sr. badly. He didn’t fight back. In his account, he quietly seethed, planned his revenge, until one day he found his attacker and murdered him with a shotgun. Elliott’s father, we learn in The Adderall Diaries, is an abusive control freak, a swaggering, moody man with delusions that alternate between victimhood and grandeur. He is also, we find out, a liar. Maybe he did kill a man, but despite Elliott’s extensive research, he can find no record of it.
Cut to May 2007, when Elliott is living in San Francisco. Hans Reiser, a Bay Area computer programmer, has been charged with killing Nina Sharanova, his estranged wife, who he met through a matchmaking service in Russia. Nina left Hans for his best friend, Sean Sturgeon (and later left Sean for another man). Just after Hans is accused of murder, Sean himself claims to have killed nine people (or 8.5—it’s complicated), but won’t say who they were, only that they abused him when he was a child.
Elliott has ties to Sean. The author is a masochist, and Sean, though now a born-again Christian, used to be a “heavy player.” The author meets Sean, but nothing about his confession makes sense (he is never arrested). It’s an inversion of spooky proportions: Hans denies a murder that he did commit, while Sean takes credit for murders that seem, to all the investigators involved, to have never occurred. Fact turns out to be a very unstable category. But it’s here, in the blurry territories between truth and falsehood, that Elliott begins to find his energy—his voice.
* * *
by Stephen Elliott
coming September 1 2009
Graywolf Press
224 pgs.
Although Stephen Elliott’s The Adderall Diaries is in part a memoir, we learn early in the book that while the author was working on it, friends gently urged him to stop writing about himself. Elliott had already published four works front-loaded with autobiographical content, novels that the author admits were based on his own experiences. The best of those early books, Happy Baby, revisited his youth in Chicago, where he fled his abusive father, became a homeless teen, and wound up a ward of the court. It was time to move on, the friend said, to rake over some new literary soil, and Elliott was in a good position to do just that. He was pursuing a new story that, on its surface, had little to do with him: a live-wire 2007 Bay Area murder case that grew so bizarre that even shows like 20/20 wanted a piece of it. The author had become an expert on the trial. His friends, for the most part, thought he was fine, well-adjusted. Maybe it really was time to move on.
This was sensible advice, but The Adderall Diaries, Elliott’s most autobiographical work yet, is not a sensible book. It’s ambitious and emotional and brilliantly orchestrated, an embroidery of memoir and true-crime reportage that’s so stunning that I can’t imagine Elliott writing about the above-mentioned murder case without also confronting his past (or vice versa). The book takes major risks, particularly with its range. Subtitled 'A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder,' it’s also about writer’s block, Elliott’s father, the friends from his troubled youth (some of whom die in the course of the book), his past of drug addiction, local and international politics, and child abuse. Most important, its about the thorny complexities and potentially soul-stealing powers of storytelling itself. Elliott handles all of these topics with charisma, emotional depth, and a raconteur’s gifts, but what’s stunning is how subtly he causes all of the book’s individual elements to interact. Each strand is insightful and lucid; woven together, they form a thriving work of art.
It turns out that murder and memoir aren’t so distinct after all, and in fact they’re wound together in Elliott’s own historical DNA. We learn in the prologue that his father, once a struggling author, wrote a never-published autobiography in which he suggests that he killed a man in 1970, less than a year before Stephen was born. In Chicago, Elliott’s dad had hit a sassy teenager who was setting off fireworks. Later, the injured boy’s father and other men beat Elliott Sr. badly. He didn’t fight back. In his account, he quietly seethed, planned his revenge, until one day he found his attacker and murdered him with a shotgun. Elliott’s father, we learn in The Adderall Diaries, is an abusive control freak, a swaggering, moody man with delusions that alternate between victimhood and grandeur. He is also, we find out, a liar. Maybe he did kill a man, but despite Elliott’s extensive research, he can find no record of it.
Cut to May 2007, when Elliott is living in San Francisco. Hans Reiser, a Bay Area computer programmer, has been charged with killing Nina Sharanova, his estranged wife, who he met through a matchmaking service in Russia. Nina left Hans for his best friend, Sean Sturgeon (and later left Sean for another man). Just after Hans is accused of murder, Sean himself claims to have killed nine people (or 8.5—it’s complicated), but won’t say who they were, only that they abused him when he was a child.
Elliott has ties to Sean. The author is a masochist, and Sean, though now a born-again Christian, used to be a “heavy player.” The author meets Sean, but nothing about his confession makes sense (he is never arrested). It’s an inversion of spooky proportions: Hans denies a murder that he did commit, while Sean takes credit for murders that seem, to all the investigators involved, to have never occurred. Fact turns out to be a very unstable category. But it’s here, in the blurry territories between truth and falsehood, that Elliott begins to find his energy—his voice.
* * *
