The Answer to the Riddle is Me

176 Pages·2014·2.16 MB·English

by  David S. MacLean

Praise for The Answer to the Riddle Is Me
“A mesmerizing, unsettling memoir about the ever-echoing nature of identity, written in vivid, blooming
detail.”—Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
“A gripping medical mystery, a heartwarming personal journey, and a chilling indictment of the
commonly prescribed drug that upended MacLean’s life—but left his superb literary skills intact.”—
Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
“David MacLean’s highly engaging The Answer to the Riddle Is Me is a true tale of amnesia, but, more
than that, it is a story of having identity violently ripped away in a huge neurological chunk. Then we
witness the writer’s faltering salvage, reconstruction, and growing up. MacLean goes deep into the
shadowy, scary terrain of what “who” is— the existential and neurochemical as well as the
psychological nature of the self. Thoughtful, terribly honest, often funny, and utterly unselfindulgent,
this is a riveting work of narrative art.”—Tony Hoagland, author of Unincorporated Persons in the Late
Honda Dynasty and What Narcissism Means to Me
“The Answer to the Riddle Is Me is a harrowing account of a vanishing. What makes the book
extraordinary is that the vanished person is the author himself. Beautifully written and exquisitely
structured, it captures the adventure and torment of losing one’s memory while investigating the ultimate
significance of identity. What does it mean to be the person you are? How much can be stripped away
before you are no longer you? This is a thrilling, fascinating book that resides in the mind as if you lived
it yourself.”—Robert Boswell, author of Tumbledown, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, and The
Half-Known World
“What begins as a noirish recounting of a life-changing reaction to an antimalarial drug quickly turns
into a meditation on the inexplicable web of relations and contingencies that constitute a self: a singular
yet shared human life. One’s own relation to this self, this life—and how to experience that relation as
bearable—becomes David Stuart MacLean’s true subject. While his experience is unlucky indeed, the
luck becomes ours as he takes us with him on his harrowing journey, which is rendered with exactitude,
humor, and lyricism.”—Maggie Nelson
“Everyone is about to know who the hell David Stuart MacLean is: a writer who can break your heart,
terrify you, and make you laugh all on the same page. The Answer to the Riddle Is Me is a masterful
exploration of the funhouse of identity.”—Mat Johnson, author of Pym
“In The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, David Stuart MacLean has written a compelling personal account of
his experiences with the syndrome of intoxication physicians increasingly recognize as the ‘Lariam
toxidrome.’ MacLean’s vivid accounts of amnesia, anxiety, paranoia, and psychosis will resonate with
anyone familiar with mefloquine’s warnings. Yet where MacLean’s memoir truly shines is in its self-
aware description of the impulsivity, disinhibition, persuadability, shame, despondence, alienation, self-
loathing, frustration, and morbid and compulsive fascination with death that are less well-recognized but
which also define the toxidrome’s chronic — and all too often lethal — course. Reading his harrowing
descriptions will prove a bitter reassurance to others suffering from mefloquine’s chronic effects that
they are not alone in their struggles, and will serve as a frightful caution to physicians and travelers who
continue to place their faith in this inherently very dangerous drug.”—Dr. Remington Nevin, MPH
“If bad things are going to happen, we are lucky when they happen to someone with the wit, humanity
and sweetness — to say nothing of an eye for detail and a gift for pacing — that MacLean brings to this
wrenching tale… MacLean provides a clear and concise outline of the history of mefloquine without
attempting a book of medical journalism — a wise choice. To do so would have risked undermining his
powerful narrative… But it is not such evidence that makes this book ring so true; it is MacLean’s
writing and its ability to preserve the naked feelings and the odd and funny moments… But readers who
flip open the book will find MacLean, preserved between pages, goofy and serious, lost and found. Still
there. Right nearby. Just in case.”—Chicago Tribune
“[MacLean] writes eloquently about the bizarre and disturbing experience of having his sense of self
erased and then reconstructed from scratch.”—New Yorker Page Turner blog
“[A] riveting, sad, and funny memoir… Both a sharply written autobiography and an insightful
meditation on how much our memories define our identities.”—Booklist
“Incandescent… MacLean’s account is raw and unsparing, and will surely take you out of your comfort
zone — the reader is immersed in the writer’s oblivion and his vertiginous journey of recovery — but
the reward for sticking with it is the privilege of reading MacLean’s profound and finely nuanced
meditation on memory and identity.”—Seattle Times
“As harrowing as this territory is, Mr. MacLean makes an affable, sure-footed guide. In his descriptions,
you can recognize the good fiction writer he must have been even before amnesia forced him to view the
world anew; if the writer’s task is to ‘make it new’, then losing your memory turns out to be an
unexpected boon… Thanks to his raw, honest and beautiful memoir, readers will already have a clear
idea what his experience was like. We can be grateful Mr. MacLean has remembered so much, and so
well.”— Gregory Cowles, New York Times
“[A] vivid reflection on the 10 years following the Lariam-induced break with reality and the memory
problems that persisted in its wake… One author, a writer by trade, tells his story because it is a good
one: dramatic and unique.”—New York Times Book Review
“Written in terse, vivid prose spiked with blackouts and violent hallucinations reminiscent of a Ken
Kesey classic, MacLean’s story of the yearlong quest to regain his life reads like fiction, and reminds us
that while memories may be painful, truth is all too often elusive.”—Mother Jones
“A deeply moving account of amnesia that explores the quandary of the self… MacLean has written a
memoir that combines the evocative power of William Styron’s Darkness Visible, the lyric subtlety of
Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family and the narrative immediacy of a Hollywood action film. He
reminds us how we are all always trying to find a version of ourselves that we can live with.”—Los
Angeles Times
“MacLean fearlessly explores his journey to the edge of madness and his subsequent return to sanity in
an unsettling, sometimes riotous, memoir.”—Publishers Weekly

For my Mom and Dad
The answer to the riddle is me and here’s the question:

— De La Soul
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Postlude
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Part One
These then are some of my first memories. But of course as an account of my life they are misleading,
because the things one does not remember are as important; perhaps they are more important.
— Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being
I
was standing when I came to. Not lying down. And it wasn’t a gradual
waking process. It was darkness, darkness, darkness, then snap. Me. Now
awake.
It was hot. My thin shirt clung to my back and shoulders, and my
underwear was bunched into a sweaty wad. The heat left the ground in wavy
lines, and the air was tinged blue with diesel exhaust. A woman in a burqa
pushed past me. A small man in a ragged red vest ducked around me. He was
hunched under the massive steel trunk on his back; the corner of the trunk
nicked my shoulder as he maneuvered by. I was in the center of a crowd, half
surging for the train, half surging for the exits. I stood still. I had no idea who
I was. This fact didn’t panic me at first. I didn’t know enough to panic.
In front of me was a train. A heaving, shuddering train, its engine, half
submerged in smoke, painted a deep red. It blasted its horns, then clanked and
panted into motion. People waved to me from open windows as the train
shook itself free of the station. I waved back and noticed the whiteness of my
arm, covered in hairs the color of straw. I tracked the train’s slow-motion
progress. As I choked on the bursts of blue exhaust and stared at the receding
last car, I wondered if I should have been on that train.
I checked my front pockets for a ticket. Nothing. Not even a passport.
Now I began to worry. I had lost my passport. I was in a train station in a
foreign country without my passport. Then I realized that I couldn’t even think
of what name would have been on a passport if I had one or what foreign
country I was currently in. This is when I panicked.
A man in a small nearby stall clanked a pan against a propane burner. He
banged and scraped a spatula against the pan that clanged against the metal
burner. The sound was impossibly loud. Louder than the train had been. I
wanted to ask the man for help. I didn’t want the man to know I needed help. I
wanted him to stop banging the pan.
I could feel a heavy absence in my brain, like a static cloud. I couldn’t
remember anything past waking up. There was a thick mass of nothing up
there. My muscles were taut, caught in a constant flinch, waiting for someone,
anyone to punch me. I was alone, alone with no idea how far I was from
anyone who knew me. I was alone and empty and terrified. I wiped my face
with both palms. I blacked out.

woke up, and I was still standing there on the bustling concrete platform. Not