In an introduction to The Vintage Book of Amnesia editor Jonathan Lethem writes about identifying a genre of memory loss, “amnesia turned up more, the harder I looked and meant more the harder I thought about it… Amnesia, it turned out, when I began to pay attention is a modern mood.” He called Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett the very soul of amnesia inhabiting a body made up of pop-culture’s appropriation of Freud, and he really nailed it here, “Amnesia is Film Noir, too, a vehicle made of pure plot that gobbles psychoanalysis passingly for cheap fuel… haunted, desperate protagonists wandering the black and white streets of the Noir Metropolis wondering if they really did something terrible during their boozy binge… Amnesia plots are, however inadvertently, often stories about guilt.”
Marcus Sakey’s latest The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes fits neatly into the form, as we follow a man without memory washing up naked on a cold, deserted beach in Maine. We know as much about him as he does about himself and learn alongside him as he slowly reveals things about himself; he possesses a stubborn survival instinct, he is a quick-thinking liar, has more than a passing familiarity with fire arms and a fixation on a particular actress, the star of a prime-time soap opera. He assumes that his name is Daniel Hayes (having found an unclaimed I.D. bearing that name), and checks himself into a motel for a couple of days to see what might come back to him. He doesn’t get much time to think though. Daniel flees from a local policeman who arrives at his motel room with his gun drawn and drives almost non-stop across the country fueled by adrenaline and paranoia. Along the way he finds out a couple of disturbing things, the actress from the TV show is dead and the prime suspect is her husband, a man named Daniel Hayes. He’s missing.
You’ve perhaps heard the writing advice that ‘character is action,’ and it’s never more so than in an amnesia story. The protagonist has been stripped of the memories that they clothe themselves with and the carefully constructed persona that they show to the world, perhaps even the many personae that they show to the different spheres of their day to day existence in order to control their image and reflect their ideal, here’s who I am at work, here’s who I am at home, here’s who I am with my friends, family etc. They can be told who they are by any number of sources (in Daniel’s case he reads about himself in the scandal rags and watches tabloid TV), but ultimately must observe their own behavior and scary emotional terrain to establish a new true-north to guide them, (though that is often a carefully constructed delusion - how very noir.) It’s important, therefore, to surround them (the blank slate) with some boldly drawn characters, and Sakey has done that.
He’s given us three intriguing supporting players to ground us: the detective who’s investigating the murder, plus one of Daniel’s close friends who’s being terrorized by an equally interesting shadowy, cold-blooded figure who quickly reveals himself to be capable of many terrible acts. So, as the narrative progresses beyond the limits of Daniel’s perspective, and we begin to surpass his understanding of his place in the story, we have some worthy accompaniment.
Gonna go back and look at some more amnesia stories I think. Here are some favorites - Shattered by Richard Neely (looks like it's out of print, but you can check out Wolfgang Petersen's film adaptation Shattered), Patricia Highsmith's Edith's Diary, David Goodis' Nightfall, William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel (and c'mon, you love it too - Alan Parker's Angel Heart which is based on it.) Maybe I'll also re-watch Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, the pulpy goodness of Renny Harlin's Long Kiss Goodnight or get right to the heart of the matter with Christopher Nolan's Memento. I might even re-take Todd Phillips' The Hangover. I think it fits.
What's your favorite Amnesia story?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
