READERS GUIDE

Questions and Topics for Discussion

INTRODUCTION
David Lovelace’s family is different. And not just because his father is an eccentric pastor who keeps reptiles for pets and likes to expound from the pulpit on pop culture items like Rosemary’s Baby or Bob Dylan. David’s family is different from their neighbors, and many American families, because four of its five members suffer from bipolar disorder (manic depression).

David grows up watching his mother suffer through two postpartum depressions as well as fits of the “whim-whams”, episodes in which she becomes increasingly paranoid, withdrawn, and incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her three children and husband. And as David enters adolescence, his father enters into a series of deep depressions, where he secludes himself in his bedroom and ceases to interact with his family or the world.

Then, as David enters adulthood, manic depression claims him, too. His first bout of depression ends relatively smoothly and before he enters college, but it returns with a vengeance later and often preceded by exhausting fits of mania. As David struggles to maintain jobs, relationships, and his place in the world, he tries to distance himself more and more from his troubled family. His attempts at distance are both physical and emotional, taking him to South America, where he discovers that he cannot hide from his illness, or his family, for long.

Scattershot, David Lovelace’s memoir about his family’s battle with manic depression, manages to be both brutally honest and incredibly loving. He recounts a childhood marked by his parents’ spells of depression and mania, and then his own struggle with the disease, from a point of view that is unflinching and candid and yet full of compassion. Without making excuses, he examines the behavior that results from this strange neurological disease and comes to the conclusion that the life of a manic depressive is both blessed and ill-fated, but one that cannot be ignored or run away from.

David Lovelace is a writer, carpenter, and former owner of the Montague Bookmill, a bookstore near Amherst, Massachusetts. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won mention in Patterson Review’s Allen Ginsberg Award. Lovelace lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and children.

Two or three weeks after the crisis that opens the book – my father’s break and my parents’ subsequent hospitalization – I wrote a really ferocious poem, four or five pages of raw description and manic rhythms distilling the experience. I was listening to a lot of Thelonius Monk at the time (his music is full of crazy, beautiful leaps) and it was called “Hearing Monk After Hospitals.” Anyway, I read it at an open mike I frequent and was really overcome, close to weeping when I finished. I mean my mother was out of intensive care by then but she was still close to death. My dad hadn’t recovered. So, I look up at a barroom of puzzled people – intelligent, well meaning poetry people and all of them had that quizzical, ‘that was pretty good but what does it mean’ face. Maybe the poem was opaque, maybe it was lousy, but it clearly didn’t pack the emotional punch I needed for a real catharsis. So, I went home wrote the first chapter, came back to the bar a month later and blew them out the back door. In a sense, I’d been dancing around the subject – my family’s disorder – for years, addressing it obliquely in my writing, using poetic end runs and whatnot. I realized I needed to confront it head on, in prose.

Q. Did you learn anything about yourself and/or your family by writing this book? Did you learn anything new about manic depression, or bipolar disorder, while writing it?

Much went unsaid in my family. No one in my family raised their voice; we never fought. If problems or issues were raised at dinner, they were most often abstract, even theological. We had plenty of questions for God, not much for each other. We didn’t discuss the illness as a family, even after 1986, when my dad, brother and I were hospitalized in short order; most of us took the pills and kept quiet. I ditched the medicine, denied the diagnosis and disappeared. My dad spiraled into depression, retreated to his room for years and we let it happen. We never confronted the illness, got pissed, shook it by the neck. It was shapeless, a ghost we refused to recognize, to believe. In writing SCATTERSHOT I acknowledged bipolar’s presence, gave it a body. Then I flipped it upside down and shook out its pockets.

All sorts of things fell out. After twenty years, my brother told me the details of his first break. My sister confided her fear of the disease, how difficult and alienating it was to be the only one unaffected. My father continued to deflect directly questions about bipolar disorder; my mom asked what the term meant. I harbored a great deal of anger toward my father as I began writing. I blamed him for the denial that allowed him to throw out his lithium, my mother’s lithium, the decision that led inexorably to their hospitalizations, my mother’s near death. Being bipolar myself, I knew that deep down I could understand what led to that decision, I could forgive him for it, forgive the disease. It took three hundred pages to get there.

In the end I learned to accept the illness, to own it. I’m proud of the lessons it’s taught me, the wild range of experience it’s provided. I can’t say I’ve embraced my illness – it’s more of an awkward hug – but I’ve leaned to own it, grow from it. I’m not a victim. My diagnosis doesn’t define me; it’s a small part of who I am. It’s the focus of this memoir, of course, and had a great impact on who I’ve become, but I’m fortunate because for me the disorder is easily managed. I acknowledge it each evening when I take my lithium before bed. And then I get up and get on with my life.

Q. At the end of the book, you thank your family for being supportive of this project. Has your father read the book, or your mother? What about your brother and sister? What has been their reaction to its publication?

It wasn’t very difficult for me to ‘come out’, to write about my experience with the disease. I’m proud of my war stories, of surviving. But it was incredibly difficult to write about my family’s struggle, to draft them into my decision. I found it extremely hard to write about my mother’s suffering in particular. Frankly, I didn’t consider the implications when I wrote the first chapter. I was reacting on a very visceral level to the horror I’d just witnessed: my mother’s near death, my dad’s madness. Later, I tried to stuff the genie back into the bottle, to keep the book focused on me, my experience alone. But that was impossible, of course. In the end, I knew the only way to justify my presumption was to write about my family with love and empathy, to write as a fellow traveler, to move towards understanding and forgiveness. That was a tall order, of course, but I kept these goals foremost and they made for a better book.

My brother, sister and cousin Joanna were supportive from the start. I’d send them chapter drafts and they’d correct details, give me feedback. My sister, brother and I became much, much closer through this process. A lot of these stories remained quite painful for my mother, who was quite frail, and so I tried not to pry. But my father and I traded emails throughout. He provided a lot of anecdotes, but none directly related to bipolar. I kept emphasizing the book’s subject was our family’s struggle, and by the end he fell silent. I know it caused him anxiety, and I’m sorry for that. But when the book finally appeared, both my parents were quite proud – clipping articles, buying copies. Still, when I assured my mom that she didn’t have to read it she seemed relieved. And my dad? The book’s kicking around his apartment; I’ve seen it. I don’t know if he’s read it, but if he has and doesn’t want to engage, that’s fine. I understand.

Q. Do you have any other books – fiction, nonfiction, or poetry – in the works?

Sure. I’m currently working on “The Prodigal Calls Collect,” a sort of wise ass spiritual memoir about growing up a preacher’s kid. My father and I are having fun going back and forth on this. I’m pulling together a collection of my poems, tentatively entitled “Skimcoat” and plotting a screenplay – a comedy set at the Bookmill, my old bookshop.