{"id":10807,"date":"2014-01-27T01:05:32","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T05:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=10807"},"modified":"2014-02-03T00:59:42","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T04:59:42","slug":"donald-antrim-the-emerald-light-in-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/01\/27\/donald-antrim-the-emerald-light-in-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Antrim: “The Emerald Light in the Air”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here<\/a> to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0webpage. Donald Antrim\u2019s \u201cThe Emerald Light in the Air\u201d was originally published in the February 3, 2014 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a>
Click for a larger image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trevor<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m sorry that I didn’t get thoughts up sooner than now. Last week was a big week — we bought a house on Friday! I did read the story early in the week, and I liked it but not as much as every one else seems to. That said, I am going to step back and let those who love it speak for it. Which brings us to Betsy, who got her thoughts to me very early in the week. My apologies for holding them back.<\/p>\n

Betsy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Donald Antrim\u2019s title \u201cThe Emerald Light in the Air\u201d gathers much of his story to itself: it implies not only the other-worldly light of the Virginia summer forest, but also the other-worldly light of an on-coming storm, as well as the light of alluring, hallucinatory ideas. And, in the end, the title implies the lightning to the brain that an electric shock treatment provides — the relief.<\/p>\n

Antrim conveys complexity not just with the title. He opens this story with a brilliant, information packed, 200-word sentence that is balanced, cohesive, and worthy of Hawthorne. Suicidal Billy French had twice checked himself into a hospital, where:<\/p>\n

\u2026three mornings a week, he\u2019d climbed onto an operating table and wept at the ceiling while doctors set the pulse, stuck electrodes to his forehead, put the oxygen meter on his finger, and then pushed a needle into his arm and instructed him, as the machines beeped and the anesthetic dripped down the pipette toward his vein, to count backward from a hundred\u2026<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In that long, majestic, first sentence, we learn that for the past two years Billy French has been in a dangerous way: he has been sick enough that he\u2019d been treated with electroshock therapy (the help of last resort for the suicidal). We know from this first paragraph that the deaths of his mother and father, very close together, were the first shocks, and they were followed by losing Julia, \u201cthe love of his life.\u201d Grief abounds.<\/p>\n

A little reading (here<\/a>) tells me that electric shock therapy, while quite therapeutic in the short term, wears off. Then it must be done again; as Billy tells us, he\u2019d had two series, about eight months apart. Now it is even later, a year after the last treatment.<\/p>\n

It does not actually bode well for Billy that he cannot bring himself to say the actual words — electric shock therapy — that we must deduce the treatment from his description of the treatment. That the patient forgets the incident of the treatment itself meshes with his not using the word; that he might be near needing a re-up is something we might also deduce, but which he doesn\u2019t mention. What he does mention in that first paragraph is that he had been looking for a box of ammo.<\/p>\n

The entire story is so masterfully told that I couldn\u2019t put it down. We learn that Billy has not slept the night before, that he\u2019d been drinking \u201chis mother\u2019s drink,\u201d and that he\u2019d been going through the paintings his lover had left behind, that he\u2019d called her, and she was alarmed at his drinking. Shortly into the story, we learn that he also has weed and Ativan in the glove compartment.<\/p>\n

Here I must digress. Anyone who has had a friend or relative in Billy\u2019s state learns pretty quickly that the emperor has no clothes. The mental health system, though well-meaning and vast, has an incomplete understanding of psychotic illness, is hampered by well-intentioned laws, and has, due to its lack of knowledge about the brain, only the most blunt of therapies to treat the sick. Patients find their own methods of comfort. It is not unusual for patients to mightily complicate their illness with alcohol and drugs of their own choosing.<\/p>\n

So — what about that box of ammo? Most of us are very uncomfortable with the severely mentally ill; we are fearful. What is unusual about this story is Antrim\u2019s vision. In a different kind of story, with a different sort of author, the mentally ill man looking for a box of ammo would lead to terror. The surprise of this story is the compassion with which Antrim imagines Billy and the journey he actually takes.<\/p>\n

Billy, despite his gun, his ax and his saw, commits no horrific crime, unleashes no terror. Instead, his hallucinations lead him to an act of compassion — one which most of us wish we could perform.<\/p>\n

Most likely, he actually does nothing but have a hallucination, although the storytelling is so deft that his experience seems as if it is real. It is as if Billy is lured into hallucination by an intense desire to \u201csave\u201d something (although Antrim never uses such a clumsy word) — and that is what the hallucination accomplishes. \u00a0He does some good.<\/p>\n

Any of us who have lived through a long death with a parent remembers the suffering we could not alleviate. It\u2019s enough to drive you crazy, especially if there\u2019s one death after another. Billy\u2019s name reminds me of that childlike, helpless state, where nothing you do is enough to reach the parent who used to be — before the pain set in. Billy\u2019s name also suggests to me the possibility he had not really made the leap to adulthood, had not really separated — his drinking \u201chis mother\u2019s drink\u201d the biggest clue. Billy\u2019s name also reminds me of Billy Budd, Melville\u2019s mysteriously self-sacrificing sailor, though I don\u2019t know quite what to do with that.<\/p>\n

This story is magnificent: it captures the dislocation of grief, and it captures the yearning that must accompany psychosis. And it captures the desperation that would lead a person to consent to electro-shock therapy. In this story, shock therapy is the story, is the emerald light in the air. It is as if the story itself is the collapse and recovery surrounding the treatment, perhaps the delirium that can occupy the patient for the hour or so following the seizure. The story telling is deft; the slights of hand between reality and hallucination are fascinating. But the real magnificence is the compassion Antrim shows for Billy.<\/p>\n

Billy\u2019s girlfriend Julia is a painter; she says of her work:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m searching for something that isn\u2019t quite there.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You could say that of psychosis; you could say that of Billy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker\u00a0webpage. Donald Antrim\u2019s \u201cThe Emerald Light in the Air\u201d was originally published in the February 3, 2014 issue of The New Yorker. Trevor I’m sorry that I didn’t get thoughts up sooner than now. Last week was a big week — we bought … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[256,94],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-antrim","category-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-2Oj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10807"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10834,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10807\/revisions\/10834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10807"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}