Problems with People (18 page)

“No.”

A week passed, and then Vivian did something out of character. On a whim, not intending to, she went to see Lou at his hospice. He was almost dead. He was on his side, with his
face turned toward the wall. In fact, his face was touching the wall, which didn’t seem right to her. “Why aren’t they taking better care of him?” she thought. She tried moving his head for him by pulling on his pillow. It stirred Lou a little—small bubbles formed at his lips, and then his tongue slid out of his mouth like a dead fish. Lou said, “Uuhhhhh,” followed by sleepy gurgling. They’d taken his bridge out, but he still looked like Kirk Douglas. Vivian sat in a chair pulled close to Lou’s bed. There was nothing to do. There was no reason to be here. What could you say to someone who was dying: Don’t worry? Relax? It’s all good? No problem? She remembered Kirk Douglas in a movie called
The Vikings
. She must have been ten or so, at the theater in Leland—the Rex, she remembered, sixty-five cents. They put him on a ship and shot it full of flaming arrows. Going out like a Viking. This hospice wasn’t that. In fact, what was happening to Lou seemed terribly ignominious. He didn’t even have a window, she noticed. He was dying to the tune of his own smell here. And he was dying alone. Where was that granddaughter? Where were the straight-arrow and the alkie sons? Vivian said, “Hey, Lou, are you there, can you hear me?” She shook him next, but touched his covers, not him. “Lou!” she said, and he gurgled again. What did it mean, this gurgling he was doing? Was he trying to communicate from a hundred leagues under? If so, it must be something important. “Lou!” she said again. “It’s me, Vivian Lee. If you’ve got something to say, you should go ahead and say it.” And, holding her nose, she put an ear to his lips. “I wuv you,” whispered Lou, bridgeless, doped up.

Vivian sat back. This was something to think about,
because she didn’t want to say the wrong thing in reply. Her words could be the last words he heard. Between now and the time he shut down completely, Lou was going to be thinking about them—maybe. The thoughts of a dying man—that was one of the few remaining mysteries. The moon was mapped, the Voyager probe was beyond Neptune, Robert Ballard had visited the
Titanic
—but what was Lou thinking right now, while he died? One thing for sure, he was down to just thoughts, there was nothing else, so her answer could be important. Erring on the side of caution, then, Vivian said, “Hush.” By which she meant what? She didn’t know, actually. “Hush,” she said again, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to say more, she needed to explain it—she who walked dogs and did errands for rich people. “At least I wasn’t nothing in your eyes,” she said, then put a hand on Lou’s wrist and squeezed it. “Hush,” she said, one more time.

David Guterson is the author of five novels:
Snow Falling on Cedars
, which won the PEN/Faulkner and the American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award;
East of the Mountains; Our Lady of the Forest
, a
New York Times
Notable Book and a
Los Angeles Times
and
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Best Book of the Year;
The Other;
and
Ed King
. He is also the author of a previous story collection,
The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind;
a poetry collection,
Songs for a Summons;
and two works of nonfiction,
Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense
and
Descent: A Memoir of Madness
. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Washington State.

by David Guterson

The questions, discussion topics, and other material that follow are intended to enhance your group’s conversation about
Problems with People
, David Guterson’s stirring new collection of stories that explore questions of identity, communication, and heritage through the kaleidoscopic lens of characters whose longings and misgivings bring them to unfamiliar landscapes, both geographical and emotional.

Problems with People
comprises ten sharply observed, funny, and wise stories from David Guterson, the best-selling author of
Snow Falling on Cedars
. Ranging from youth to old age, its voices offer tender, unexpected, and always tightly focused accounts of our quest to understand one another, individually and as part of a political and historical moment. The stories are shot through with tragedy—the long-ago loss of a young boyfriend, a son’s death at sea; poignant reflections upon cultural and personal circumstances—whether the subject is Jewish, overweight, and single or a tourist in a history-haunted land; and paradigmatic questions about our sense of reality and belonging. Spanning diverse settings—all across America, and in countries as distant as Nepal and South Africa—
Problems with People
showcases Guterson’s signature gifts for characterization, psychological nuance, moral suspense, and evocations of small-town life and the natural world. They celebrate the ordinary yet brightening surprises that lurk within the dramas of our daily lives, as well as the return of a contemporary American master to the form that launched his astonishing literary career.

1. The man in “Paradise” takes comfort in the fact that on online dating sites, “The people you met were just like you” (
this page
). How can this idea be applied to all of the stories in this collection? What were some areas of common ground—such as family secrets, personal insecurities, or questions of faith or national pride—among individuals, but also things we keep to ourselves?

2. How do the older man and woman who begin dating in “Paradise” exemplify the way that meeting new people creates insecurities and awkwardness, regardless of one’s age or experience? How does Guterson use the past and memories in their story to affect a present relationship?

3. In “Tenant,” Lydia Williams is called a “cryptic nonpresence … invisible, an abstraction,” yet her presence very much shapes the story (
this page
). How does this paradoxical description fit other characters in the book, especially those without names and who do not speak in the first-person “I”?

4. What do you think is the real reason the renter is bothered by how Lydia changes his apartment? Does her excessive décor seem similar to any part of his personality?

5. When Shawn reveals to Lydia that he is Indian, he does so “without knowing exactly what that meant about himself” (
this page
). What do you think is meant here, and how might this be true of other ethnicities, cultures, and religions featured in the book?

6. What is the importance of different forms of travel—by car, foot, boat, or plane—and the general sense of dislocation in the stories? Does traveling help the characters gain a stronger sense of identity or further their feelings of isolation?

7. Discuss some of the tonal and thematic differences that arise from stories with male versus female protagonists. Compare, for example, “Politics” and “Feedback.”

8. How does learning that the woman in “Pilanesberg” has cancer change your reading of the story? Does ending the story with this kind of surprise, twist, or reveal—as Guterson does in some other stories in this collection—give these snapshots of a complete life?

9. Why do you think the woman in “Feedback” is so stressed by meeting Hamish McAdam on the track? How does the dissection of his name—its seemingly incongruous ethnicities—contribute to that stress? Are other characters’ names in different stories, or the fact that they go unnamed, laden with similar expectations and preconceived ideas?

10. Discuss the significance of the title of the story “Feedback.” In particular, what do you think the woman takes away from reading the plaque in Hamish’s exhibit, defining feedback as “a way of looking, ultimately, at ‘self’ ” (
this page
)?

11. How does the theme of Jewishness affect characters’ identities and relationship to history, especially in the latter half of the collection?

12. Is there a correlation between age and a character’s sense of his or her running out of time? Compare stories in which missed opportunities are experienced by people of different ages, such as “Photograph” and “Paradise” versus “Shadow” and “Hush.”

13. What are some of the major ideas about father-son bonds that you take away from the collection? Consider “Hot Springs,” “Shadow,” and “Photograph.”

14. What does the snapshot of Hutchinson’s son at the end of “Photograph” illustrate about the nature of memory, and how emotions are preserved and revised over time? How do photographs function in general throughout the collection? Consider “Pilanesberg” and “Feedback” as well.

15. The young tour guide in “Krassavitseh” notes that there are many “ghosts” throughout Berlin, which has obvious references within that story (
this page
). What are some other ghosts in the collection that are resurrected by forces such as memory, age, and illness? How do other characters, including those of different generations, confront these ghosts, which may or may not be specters of specific people?

16. Guterson has written in a variety of genres and forms: novels, short stories, poetry, memoir, and nonfiction. Do you think that the stories in this collection demonstrate fluidity in shifting among modes, especially in their tone and style? Which stories seem to you to be more clearly influenced by his writing outside of fiction? How does he use these other styles to achieve a sense of realism?

Sherwood Anderson,
Winesburg, Ohio;
Willa Cather,
Collected Stories;
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; Denis Johnson,
Jesus’ Son;
James Joyce,
Dubliners;
Claire Messud,
The Woman Upstairs;
Alice Munro,
Dear Life;
Edith Pearlman,
Binocular Vision;
George Saunders,
Tenth of December
.