Loving to Read 
By Vicki Gundrum

The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder
By Stephen Elliott

Graywolf Press, 2009, 208 pages
On the New Arrivals shelves of the Biblioteca Pública

Take two pills and call a dominatrix I could not read Stephen Elliott’s The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder without admiring the author for his courage, honesty and brilliant writing. The seemingly simple first line of the prologue sets the stage: “My father may have killed a man.” Further on, we read that Elliott’s father might have falsely confessed the murder to his son.

What we do know for certain is that the father has stolen attention from his son’s own desperation, a selfish thievery that leaves his introspective offspring suffering and searching for his own identity.

Elliott weaves together two memoirs and a true crime story within the book. The two memoirs tell the story of his shattered youth and his present-day struggle to end a two-year writer’s block through the haze of the prescription psychostimulant Adderall. He scrutinizes his own feelings as he tracks an acquaintance named Sean, who first crossed his path within San Francisco’s S&M community. Like Elliott’s father, Sean had admitted alternately to murder and to falsely confessing to murder, and Elliott comes to identify with him. Sean tells Elliott he has killed “8 and ½ people.” Elliott’s reflection on his youth and contemporary life comprise Book 1, “Preliminary Motions.” 

Book 2, “The Trial,” is about the murder trial of Hans Reiser, who in 2007 was accused of murdering his estranged wife, Nina. If you lived in the Bay Area during the time Nina Reiser went missing from her Oakland home, you would remember the tragedy of the beautiful Russian wife and mother and that her gifted computer programmer husband was the key suspect.



Truth Telling

The author recounts his troubled youth simply, as a series of facts. His mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when the boy was 8 and died when he was 13. He ran away two weeks later and became a ward of the state of Illinois. Elliott bore beatings by his father, attempted suicide, ate out of Dumpsters, came back from one serious drug overdose, and had an encounter with a pornographer. An engaging story emerges from these unembellished facts, in the way reading an old ship’s manifest in an elegant, cursive hand can put you on deck.

These are facts, but his father disputes them; at one point he tells a journalist that his son is a liar, that he “only handcuffed him to a pipe one time and look how many stories he got out of that.” He leaves bad reviews of one of his son’s earlier books on Amazon under the moniker “Gladiator,” and on whatever websites that he can mention his son Elliott’s book. The Adderall Diaries includes a screen shot of his father’s Amazon review, which begins with the single word “Disappointing.”

Elliott the son writes: “He was trying to obliterate me. He was stealing my past and I was trying to hold on but felt it slipping through my fingers. I started to disappear.” He confronted his father about the bad reviews, and the son’s writer’s block began after that conversation.

Part of the power of the book comes from Elliott’s selective use of the present tense. He uses it when making a breakthrough in his thinking or to draw attention to something, to make it stand out from what else might have been beside it in time: “I wonder if I have to quit Adderall soon. I keep upping my dosage with diminishing effects. Sometimes I feel so angry I can’t recognize myself.”

The Adderall Diaries explores the author’s thoughts about his writing: writing as a life activity, the writing on the page before the reader and the author’s identity as revealed through his writing. “People often feel exploited when they find themselves in my work. It doesn’t matter if I call it fiction, I know as well as they do that’s not an excuse. I don’t bother defending myself. It’s not defensible; it’s just what I do. I spend years crafting a two hundred-page story, all the time my life sits next to me like a jar of paint.”



True Crime

As in other true crime books, Elliott’s book includes reproductions of verifying documents. The black-and-white photos, screen captures, psychiatric notes, courtroom drawings and other pieces of “evidence” here are tangentially related to the subject matter but are on target with its tone.

Memory, honesty, confession, facts, doubt—the author explores these subjects around the crimes recounted in The Adderall Diaries, but only Hans Reiser’s crime gets the true-crime treatment and trial.


Real Life

The author also recovers from his writer’s block, thinks he might have fallen in love, recalls success at a job during the Internet boom years. He mentions his roommate in The Mission neighborhood and meeting friends to play basketball. Elliott writes about players in the world of S&M and the inscrutable Sean, who considers sharing his own life story, including his past relationship with Nina Reiser, but then pulls back. But Sean’s need to tell pushed Stephen Elliott to tell his own story. The weave of true crime and memoir and confession, facts, and doubt in the pursuit of truth is tight.

Elliott’s readers are witnesses to his introspection, deep and sorrowful for its anguish and injustice. His book is brave and honest—a beautifully written account of a life in progress that is moving forward. You root for him. The author’s tale of his own humanity surpasses the sensational crime recounted in the book, but all the interwoven stories are gripping and moving. 

I noticed on Stephen Elliott’s culture site (www.rumpus.com) a link to a review of his book in Time Out New York. I clicked through and read it. A rave. At the end there’s a place to write comments. There is one comment by his father, under his real name, Neil Elliott: “Thanks for the nice review.”

Now what does that mean?

Vicki Gundrum reads and edits books in her San Miguel apartment. You can reach her at Vicki.Gundrum@excite.com.