An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [138]
SP: Again with the memoir. Again with the writers. What makes this book different than mine?
BC: Well, for one, you're not in it. And no one burns down anything in it, I don't think. And there are no bond analysts running around, making life more difficult for the narrator of the new book. It's a totally different book, except, of course, that I'm the one writing it.
SP: What is up with those bond analysts, anyway? What are they doing in the book? They speak as a group. They steal other people's stories and try to pass them off as their own. They're ridiculous.
BC: That's why they're there. I wanted them in the book so that you would look better by comparison. It's easier to love someone if you have someone around who is so obviously less worthy of love.
SP: You're speaking in aphorisms again, just like you had me speak in aphorisms in An Arsonist's Guide. Are you going to use aphorisms in Exley, too?
BC: No, that was the very last time.
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The novel makes fun of reader's guides found in the backs of books, the kind of reader's guides that ask questions like, "How does this book make you feel about the Human Condition?" (page 85). What, if anything, is objectionable about those sorts of questions, those sorts of guides? What questions might we ask instead of those questions? And what is the "Human Condition," anyway?
2. The novel is interested in New England, in the way Sam sees it, the way other people see it, the way it's been portrayed in books, and the way Sam portrays it in the book(s) he's writing. What are the clichés associated with New England, its people, its landscape, its literature? Is the problem with these clichés that they have no foundation in reality or that they're so familiar that they prevent us from seeing what New England is, or might be, beyond the clichés? Does the novel help you see New England (and the literature about it) in ways that the Writer-in-Residence and his story (page 204) do not?
3. Why doesn't Sam just tell his wife and kids the truth about his past? He says, on this subject, "Because this is what you do when you're a liar: you tell a lie, and then another one, and after a while you hope that the lies end up being less painful than the truth, or at least that is the lie you tell yourself" (pages 40-41). Does this kind of claim make you sympathize? Do you believe that because Sam lies to his family, he doesn't really love them?
4. The novel explores stories, why we write them, why we read them, what we hope to get out of them, and whether we can (or should) get out of them what we want to get out of them. How would you describe the characters' (Lees Ardor, Peter Le Clair, Sam Pulsifer, Elizabeth Pulsifer, the bond analysts) feelings about books? What do they want, or not want, to get from reading and writing? Why do we read books? What do we want to get from our reading? And if we don't get what we want, does that mean the book is a failure?
5. Memoirs are everywhere in An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. Are they as unavoidable in real life as they are in this book? What is the author saying about memoirs, about their place and role in our culture? When he satirizes memoirs, is he also satirizing the people who read them? If so, why? What might novels in general ― and this novel in particular ― do that memoirs cannot, or should not?
6. On page 249, Thomas Coleman says of Sam's parents, "They're not bad people." Do you feel the same way ― not only about Sam's parents, but also about Sam, Thomas, and all the people who want Sam to burn down writers' homes? After all, these characters do, or want to do, awful things. If those things don't make them bad people, then why not? How does the novel help you see these people beyond some of the bad things they do?
7. Sam receives letters from hundreds of people asking him to burn down various writers' homes in New England. And yet (with the exception of Lees Ardor) the anger people express toward the writers' houses seem to have little to do with the writers'