Helping
"One gray November day, Elliot went to Boston for the afternoon." This is the first sentence of a story by Robert Stone. Not an auspicious start, to be honest. Grayness and the past tense of "go" aren't exactly eye-catching, but then again, we live in a world now where everything is supposed to be screaming for your attention, so perhaps there's nothing wrong with a quieter approach (especially from a man who won the National Book Award and was a finalist, twice, for the Pulitzer).
Either way, Stone quickly picks up. "The wet streets seemed cold and lonely. He sensed a broken promise in the city's elegance and verve. Old hopes tormented him like phantom limbs, but he did not drink. He had joined Alcoholics Anonymous fifteen months before."
He's a drunk! (It's okay, I can say that, I come from deeply entrenched alcoholic stock. I can also say "lush," but I've never heard anyone outside a jewelry-encrusted WASP in a movie say that.) Anyway ...
"Day in, day out, he was sober. At times it was almost stimulating." I feel the humor in this, the quiet, sad, very battered comedy of a man who has ruined himself with alcohol. Maybe some empathy here for our hero.
"Sober, however, he remained, until the day a man named Blankenship came into his office at the state hospital for counseling." So, like the unperceptive reader I am, I totally missed the importance of this information the first two times I read it. Stone tells us right here where the action of the story is, and how, presumably, Elliot will change in front of our eyes: he's gonna drink.
Boozy booze booze
"Blankenship had red hair, a brutal face and a sneaking manner." In other words, he's gross. It turns out that Elliot is a Vietnam vet, and Blankenship, while undoubtedly a wreck of a human being, is only posing as a service member, all the way down to specific dreams about "The Nam." At this point we consider him a liar, a scammer, a legitimately mentally ill man, or all three. Certainly annoying, but one of the people you treat at a hospital, because it's a fucking hospital. Yet in Stone's words: "Elliot had had enough of him."
Our counselor proceeds to say things like "Dreams are boring" to his admittedly unlikeable patient. This isn't at all ethically approved or useful, but we know Elliot is not in a helping mood.
So, after he botches his psychology session, Elliot proceeds to leave work early and purchase booze (oh no!). No one had taken away his house or shot at him: he just felt anxious, restless, alert to "possibility." Occasionally it's those little nothing problems, and not the house-losing or shots fired that, for whatever reason, send us off on our shitty tangents.
Said tangent translates to him getting drunk, going home, and having a half-fight with his wife, who throws a bowl at his head and misses. There follow sentences like, "Stiff with shame, he went and took his bottle out of the cabinet into which he had thrust it and poured a drink."
If parts of this scene feel clichéd, both Elliot and Stone are aware of this. That's the source of the story's humor and sadness, the knowing eyebrow raise of: we've all seen this before.
As part of the plot, Elliot's lawyer wife Grace has lost a case in which two young parents were abusing their child. The victorious snot of a father telephones her house to gloat, but Elliot, hammered, answers instead. He more or less goads the man into threatening him, and then readies his shotgun after he hangs up, having invited the man to come on by. Our hero has served in Vietnam, and he might be old, but he's apparently not someone to fuck with.
This isn't Robert Stone, it's just a snazzy stock picture, kids.
Then Elliot falls asleep and nothing happens (oh no?). In the morning he drinks some more, then goes out with his gun and walks through the snow until he meets his neighbor: a dapper, happy professor named Anderson, who, seen through the lens of cynical Elliot, you kind of want to punch in the face--since the guy is friendly and likes to ski. (Elliot is not friendly and hates skiing, and in fact has a violent fantasy about stringing razor wire along the trail behind their houses so the Anderson family gets decapitated.)
Elliot threatens his neighbor, perhaps more subtly than he does the plaintiff, but afterwards feels badly about it (which means I feel badly, too, since I kind of identified with the Asshole and wanted the other harmless guy to get hurt).
"Getting drunk was an insurrection, a revolution--a bad one. There would be outsize bogus emotions. There would be petty blackmail and cheap remorse. He had said dreadful things to his wife. He had bullied Anderson with his violence and unhappiness, and Anderson would not forgive him."
Elliot has been here before, has been educated through AA to the point where he knows all the tropes of addiction. This reminds me of a passage from Azar Nafisi's The Republic of Imagination, in which she tells the story of an alcoholic Sinclair Lewis, who, while being wheeled away to a hospital for his sickness, and while obviously drunk, looks at his wife and says in a nasty imitation of her voice, "You're a monster, what are you doing, you're ruining our family, you promised me you wouldn't drink!" In effect, savagely having his wife's side of the conversation for her, since he knows her reactions to his old, shitty behavior. The difference here is Elliot is better off--potentially--because he's only mulling these ideas in his head, and seems ready (at the moment, at least) to not act like a total dick.
As evidence for redemption, at the very end we get: "Elliot began to hope for forgiveness." A simple, bald statement that makes sense, given the balls we've just been through with him. Now he waves to his wife, whom he spies in the window of his little house. At this point, tired and hungover, all he wants, or needs, is a single response from Grace (significant name, by the way, right? Elliot made a joke about it earlier, prompting her to say, "You're really good at this ... You make me ashamed of my own name.") ... "It seemed to him that he could build another day on it." The story ends before we know if she waves back.
At least Elliot isn't trapped here in a Hateful-Eight-type situation.
One obvious point is that Blankenship is not responsible for Elliot drinking. No part of his shitty, yet entirely normal and unremarkable day is responsible. Not the snow, not the boil on his asscheek, etc. The dude, and only the dude himself did it, and he understands this perfectly, even during his rather spiteful conversation with his wife, or his dickish threatening of various people.
The title "Helping," then, carries a bitter irony. Elliot is supposed to assist people and he doesn't. We see him act like a bad counselor, a bad husband, a bad neighbor. Yet, by my account, he's not a complete shit, if only because of his self-awareness (although you could make the case that knowing something is bad and doing it anyway is worse than being ignorant and fucking up, except this would belittle the horrible power of addiction, which is literally a neurological disease).
Elliot's "fuck-you" attitude has become tired, because he is old, he has been through this before, and, not even that deep down inside, he doesn't want to do any of this. At some point he even says, "It's out of my hands," which is true, because he's an addict under the power of his substance, and once he starts he literally, physically can't stop: although I'll hammer home that he first decided to start drinking, so he's gotta own up to that (can you tell I've been around these sweet recovery programs? ; )))))
Elliot does manage to say some halfway decent things to his wife, but that doesn't give him any points, since this logic sounds a lot like an abused partner insisting, "Sometimes he's really nice!"
Still, I have to call out my own judgments of him as an "asshole," "not a total shit," etc. When I see a character, or a person in real life, I consciously try to avoid judging her (not all the time, actually I judge people constantly and just try not to, and sometimes it works), so this guy Elliot deserves the same; even more so because I relate to his struggles with a substance, with his violent fantasies of axing cheery, pleasant pillars of community, too (which I then feel badly about). I've even put my life partner through some similar shit, although it ends up much less dramatic than it is here, and I'm not an alcoholic (I pass out after three or four shots). But I come from addicts, and I have to face that particular train track for the rest of my life, which seems obvious when you consider I picked this story to write about.
And while Elliot fucks up helping, and so does Grace (losing the case), it's not all bad. Maybe she'll wave back! And maybe this man won't drink again.
Eh. Better him than me if he does. (The extent of my Darwinist impulses.) I wish him well ...? I definitely wish you well, whether you read this or not.
Hope it helps!
Either way, Stone quickly picks up. "The wet streets seemed cold and lonely. He sensed a broken promise in the city's elegance and verve. Old hopes tormented him like phantom limbs, but he did not drink. He had joined Alcoholics Anonymous fifteen months before."
He's a drunk! (It's okay, I can say that, I come from deeply entrenched alcoholic stock. I can also say "lush," but I've never heard anyone outside a jewelry-encrusted WASP in a movie say that.) Anyway ...
"Day in, day out, he was sober. At times it was almost stimulating." I feel the humor in this, the quiet, sad, very battered comedy of a man who has ruined himself with alcohol. Maybe some empathy here for our hero.
"Sober, however, he remained, until the day a man named Blankenship came into his office at the state hospital for counseling." So, like the unperceptive reader I am, I totally missed the importance of this information the first two times I read it. Stone tells us right here where the action of the story is, and how, presumably, Elliot will change in front of our eyes: he's gonna drink.
Boozy booze booze
"Blankenship had red hair, a brutal face and a sneaking manner." In other words, he's gross. It turns out that Elliot is a Vietnam vet, and Blankenship, while undoubtedly a wreck of a human being, is only posing as a service member, all the way down to specific dreams about "The Nam." At this point we consider him a liar, a scammer, a legitimately mentally ill man, or all three. Certainly annoying, but one of the people you treat at a hospital, because it's a fucking hospital. Yet in Stone's words: "Elliot had had enough of him."
Our counselor proceeds to say things like "Dreams are boring" to his admittedly unlikeable patient. This isn't at all ethically approved or useful, but we know Elliot is not in a helping mood.
So, after he botches his psychology session, Elliot proceeds to leave work early and purchase booze (oh no!). No one had taken away his house or shot at him: he just felt anxious, restless, alert to "possibility." Occasionally it's those little nothing problems, and not the house-losing or shots fired that, for whatever reason, send us off on our shitty tangents.
Said tangent translates to him getting drunk, going home, and having a half-fight with his wife, who throws a bowl at his head and misses. There follow sentences like, "Stiff with shame, he went and took his bottle out of the cabinet into which he had thrust it and poured a drink."
If parts of this scene feel clichéd, both Elliot and Stone are aware of this. That's the source of the story's humor and sadness, the knowing eyebrow raise of: we've all seen this before.
As part of the plot, Elliot's lawyer wife Grace has lost a case in which two young parents were abusing their child. The victorious snot of a father telephones her house to gloat, but Elliot, hammered, answers instead. He more or less goads the man into threatening him, and then readies his shotgun after he hangs up, having invited the man to come on by. Our hero has served in Vietnam, and he might be old, but he's apparently not someone to fuck with.
This isn't Robert Stone, it's just a snazzy stock picture, kids.
Then Elliot falls asleep and nothing happens (oh no?). In the morning he drinks some more, then goes out with his gun and walks through the snow until he meets his neighbor: a dapper, happy professor named Anderson, who, seen through the lens of cynical Elliot, you kind of want to punch in the face--since the guy is friendly and likes to ski. (Elliot is not friendly and hates skiing, and in fact has a violent fantasy about stringing razor wire along the trail behind their houses so the Anderson family gets decapitated.)
Elliot threatens his neighbor, perhaps more subtly than he does the plaintiff, but afterwards feels badly about it (which means I feel badly, too, since I kind of identified with the Asshole and wanted the other harmless guy to get hurt).
"Getting drunk was an insurrection, a revolution--a bad one. There would be outsize bogus emotions. There would be petty blackmail and cheap remorse. He had said dreadful things to his wife. He had bullied Anderson with his violence and unhappiness, and Anderson would not forgive him."
Elliot has been here before, has been educated through AA to the point where he knows all the tropes of addiction. This reminds me of a passage from Azar Nafisi's The Republic of Imagination, in which she tells the story of an alcoholic Sinclair Lewis, who, while being wheeled away to a hospital for his sickness, and while obviously drunk, looks at his wife and says in a nasty imitation of her voice, "You're a monster, what are you doing, you're ruining our family, you promised me you wouldn't drink!" In effect, savagely having his wife's side of the conversation for her, since he knows her reactions to his old, shitty behavior. The difference here is Elliot is better off--potentially--because he's only mulling these ideas in his head, and seems ready (at the moment, at least) to not act like a total dick.
As evidence for redemption, at the very end we get: "Elliot began to hope for forgiveness." A simple, bald statement that makes sense, given the balls we've just been through with him. Now he waves to his wife, whom he spies in the window of his little house. At this point, tired and hungover, all he wants, or needs, is a single response from Grace (significant name, by the way, right? Elliot made a joke about it earlier, prompting her to say, "You're really good at this ... You make me ashamed of my own name.") ... "It seemed to him that he could build another day on it." The story ends before we know if she waves back.
At least Elliot isn't trapped here in a Hateful-Eight-type situation.
One obvious point is that Blankenship is not responsible for Elliot drinking. No part of his shitty, yet entirely normal and unremarkable day is responsible. Not the snow, not the boil on his asscheek, etc. The dude, and only the dude himself did it, and he understands this perfectly, even during his rather spiteful conversation with his wife, or his dickish threatening of various people.
The title "Helping," then, carries a bitter irony. Elliot is supposed to assist people and he doesn't. We see him act like a bad counselor, a bad husband, a bad neighbor. Yet, by my account, he's not a complete shit, if only because of his self-awareness (although you could make the case that knowing something is bad and doing it anyway is worse than being ignorant and fucking up, except this would belittle the horrible power of addiction, which is literally a neurological disease).
Elliot's "fuck-you" attitude has become tired, because he is old, he has been through this before, and, not even that deep down inside, he doesn't want to do any of this. At some point he even says, "It's out of my hands," which is true, because he's an addict under the power of his substance, and once he starts he literally, physically can't stop: although I'll hammer home that he first decided to start drinking, so he's gotta own up to that (can you tell I've been around these sweet recovery programs? ; )))))
Elliot does manage to say some halfway decent things to his wife, but that doesn't give him any points, since this logic sounds a lot like an abused partner insisting, "Sometimes he's really nice!"
Still, I have to call out my own judgments of him as an "asshole," "not a total shit," etc. When I see a character, or a person in real life, I consciously try to avoid judging her (not all the time, actually I judge people constantly and just try not to, and sometimes it works), so this guy Elliot deserves the same; even more so because I relate to his struggles with a substance, with his violent fantasies of axing cheery, pleasant pillars of community, too (which I then feel badly about). I've even put my life partner through some similar shit, although it ends up much less dramatic than it is here, and I'm not an alcoholic (I pass out after three or four shots). But I come from addicts, and I have to face that particular train track for the rest of my life, which seems obvious when you consider I picked this story to write about.
And while Elliot fucks up helping, and so does Grace (losing the case), it's not all bad. Maybe she'll wave back! And maybe this man won't drink again.
Eh. Better him than me if he does. (The extent of my Darwinist impulses.) I wish him well ...? I definitely wish you well, whether you read this or not.
Hope it helps!
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