Notes to My Biographer Adam Haslett

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Analysis of Notes to my Biographer
“Notes to my Biographer” by Adam Haslett is one of the most exciting stories I have read. Haslett uses a unique story to show the crippling effects a disease can inflict in a man’s life. The narrator also shows the reader how such a person can still under that condition to rectify an estranged relationship with his son. From the start of this story the protagonist, Mr. Franklin Caldwell delivers his opinions to us. Frank is an outspoken, serious man. In the beginning, Frank seemed to be a typical brassy character. However, using prose, characterization execution as well as punctuation, Haslett moves his audience through the mind of a man suffering from maniac depression during a full-blown manic episode as he bankrupts himself and torments other people in his life by refusing medication.
Haslett creates emotion through lively, clinical prose. This prose plunges the reader to experience the characters’ state of isolation who claims to be “completely lucid.” Consequently, psychoanalysis theory gives the reader a deeper insight into the text so that they can understand that Frank’s mental condition. This theory complements the reader response by underlining Frank’s manic traits and then links these behaviors to the emotional effect. We have a father who is trying to revitalize his long-estranged family relationship, but he begins by stealing a relative’s car. The reader can see his rapid switch of indecisiveness and emotion as he struggles with the decision on whether to return the car or keep driving. There is no need for focusing on the argument within the text because the story is about an emotional turmoil brought about by the argument between Frank and Graham.
Frank is a 70-years-old, cold man but the author brings him back to life. This makes the reader feel exceedingly uncomfortable in Franklin’s position but at the same time understand better what it feels like to live a different life from their own. This story is told by an individual who is in an abnormally elevated and arousal mood and with high levels of energy. However, Haslett does not intervene to explain what Frank is saying to the reader. However, Frank words do not need much of the explanation. Frank words are engaging because of the outrageous aspect he uses to describe things pragmatically. After visiting his gay son, Frank claims, "Nonetheless, I am briefly shocked by the idea that my twenty-nine-year-old boy has never seen fit to share with me the fact that he is a fruitcake- no malice intended- and I resolve right away to talk to him about it when I see him,” (Haslett 2) From this statement, the reader can undergrad the reason Graham never shared his sexual orientation with his father before. This narration is peppered with this irony technique of writing in this text.
In the meantime, this recitation gains a tragic aspect from Graham’s actions. Graham only makes clumsy, ineffective efforts to reach out to his father. Through this, the reader can reflect on the on living and madness. Haslet...