IJ study archive

Orin phones Hal about Himself's suicide — "Don’t feel bad. There’s no guarantee…"

quote

‘Don’t feel bad. There’s no guarantee anybody would have told you even if you’d popped in for, say, the memorial service. I for one wasn’t exactly a jabberjaw at the time. I seemed to have been evincing shock and trauma throughout the whole funeral period. What I mostly recall is a great deal of quiet talk about my psychic well-being. […]

Context

Hal's memory of his own grief is spectatorial: he "seemed to have been evincing" shock — remembering his thirteen-year-old self from the outside, as a performance observed, not an experience had. What the famous memory "mostly recall[s]" of the funeral period isn't the father at all but other people's hushed talk about Hal.

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