by Roz Chast
Bloomsbury 2014
224 pages Graphic
Memoir
First a disclaimer: This is not a good book to read when you
are almost 72 years old, have just had an accident that cracked your pelvis, are
using a walker, and feeling very vulnerable.
That being said, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant is a remarkable memoir
of parental decline and death through Roz Chast's eyes.
Chast is one of The New
Yorker's premier cartoonists, and in trying to memorialize her parents, she
does what she does best and tells her story as a graphic memoir. An only child, she was raised by educator parents—an
overbearing mother and a sweet, but ill-defined father. Now, when they reach
their 90s, she has to figure out a plan for their care and their eventual
death. She must deal with the Brooklyn apartment where they have lived for many
years. She must deal with their co –dependence, something her parents
celebrate. She must deal with her anger toward what she sees is the unfair way
she was treated by her mother. The story, itself, is not so different from what
most of us experience as we watch our parents decline and die. What makes
Chast's book so special is the format and the tremendous impact made by Chast's
style of writing and drawing.
The New York Times review says: "Cartoons, as it
happens, are tailor-made for the absurdities of old age, illness and dementia,
the odd dramas and grinding repetition expertly illustrated by copious
exclamation points, capital letters and antic drawings. They also limit the
opportunity for navel gazing and self-pity, trapping you in the surreal moments
themselves. The recurring, maniacally angry face of Chast’s mother, which Chast
eventually mimics, is one I have seen in my own mirror all too often."
Indeed there is much to learn from Can't We Talk About
Something More Pleasant?. First, we learn that there is a need to have a
discussion about these important things—not pleasant, but necessary. There is a
need to declutter households. (This is one of my big deals.) There is a need to
grieve what isn't, wasn't, or what could have been. There is a need to come to
terms with life and with death. The most important moments of the book are at
the end when Chast sketches her dying and then dead mother, because "I
didn't know what else to do." By
allowing herself to bare her feelings in the best way she knows how, Chast has
given us all an opportunity to allow our own feelings to emerge.
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is the winner of
numerous awards. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, named one of
the New York Times best books of 2014, and the winner of several other awards.
New York Times
review.
Here is a sketchbook from the New Yorker with
pieces from Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
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