The Book of Malcolm: My Son’s Life with Schizophrenia by Fraser Sutherland. A Rare Machines Book.Dundurn Press. January 2022. 200 pages
Mayank Bhatt
F
raser Sutherland died just over a year ago in March 2021. His contribution to the world of Canadian literature consists of a few books of poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction. From common friends, I learnt that he had an amazing knack of annoying influential people in the literary world, which is why he never got the recognition he deserved.
His frankness was motivated by his strict rules about writing and writers. In his last poetry collection Bad Habits (Mosaic 2019), he says, “Somehow a good writer has to work aslant to the existing order. For a writer to be popular, to win prizes, to be feted by the media – those to me are grounds for suspicion. If the trappings of public success, however welcome, began to descend on me, I’d start to suspect myself.”
I knew Fraser professionally – as a diligent, meticulous editor; sharp, acerbic, and relentlessly unsparing in his criticism of indifferent writing. I met him after Malcolm, his son,had died in 2009.
Jasmine D’Costa, a mentor to newcomers to Canada with aspirations to publish their writings, introduced me to him at a bistro in Islington, where she was a featured speaker at a reading series.
Fraser seemed affable and warm. I told him about my attempts to write a novel. He smiled sympathetically and offered to help for a nominal fee. We didn’t meet for many months thereafter, because my manuscript was incomplete. I asked him to evaluate it when I was still struggling with it.
He invited me to his home at 39 Helena Avenue, an address familiar to many in the literary and immigrant world in Toronto. I had expected a meeting at a pub or a bistro, and was hopeful to discuss the book over drinks.
Instead, he led me to his kitchen, where he had a Frankfurter. He offered me fruits. A large part of our discussion was about my manuscript, but he also spent considerable time explaining to me the concept of deux ex machina, which was irrelevant to my manuscript.
Fraser said he wasn’t too impressed with the manuscript; and gently suggested that perhaps I should consider abandoning it. I persisted, and Beliefturned out to be a beautiful novel, thanks largely because of the inputs from MG Vassanji, who gave it structure and form. It met the fate of many debut novels – good reviews, not enough sales.
In addition to the first edit, Fraser contributed in small ways to the manuscript. For instance, he told me that the police interrogation of prisoners in Canada is done differently, in a humane manner, instead of the routine third degree that is adopted in India. I had depicted the interrogation of the lead character of my novel based on my understanding of the procedure in India.
We became friends, or so I thought. It was easy to be friends with him. He had a large and ever-growing circle of friends, who met at least once annually at his backyard party in summer. I preferred meeting him alone. He wrote for a couple of pieces for my blog Generally About Books, which revealed his wide interests, and his depth of reading.
Reading: Enough for a lifetime
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I recently read The Book of Malcolm My Son’s Life with Schizophrenia, published posthumously earlier this year by Dundurn Press. It is a memoir of Malcolm’s battle with mental challenges, which unfortunately led to his death when he was just 26.
As an editor, Fraser was objective. It is a quality that is in ample evidence in his memoir, too. Fraser successfully creates and maintains a distance between his subject (his son Malcolm, his wife Alison) throughout the narrative that is divided into three parts.
During the time I knew Fraser, not once did he speak about his son or the embattled circumstances that had defeated him. It was assumed that I would have known about the tragedy from common friends.
To me his reticence to talk about his son’s death seemed odd, unnatural. The only time he let the world know of his terrible loss was in the poem Remembering, which was part of Bad Habits.
Remembering
“I don’t want to forget him!”
his mother said.
As if remembering would bring him back, as if thinking what he would say or do
could make him say and do.
But is it about him at all?
Is remembering only proof that we lived
with him during years, 26 of them?
Asking to remember only the good things, laughter and delight what ldnd of life was that? Without the misery and craziness, a life half-lived. A celebration of the life…” That formula.
Thanks loads for having lived.
Suppose we do remember everything,
the joy and grief, the boredom and anxiety, what room is left for us to live,
what’s left for others to remember us?
But Fraser’s reluctance is evident in the memoir, and it gives the memoir a tenuous tone. He admits, “The thought of writing a misery memoir about him (Malcolm) seemed obscenely exploitative. To write anything about him seemed to betray the emotions I felt, at the very least it felt glib and inadequate.”
Then, why does he persist with writing it? He explains, “As a writer it seemed more important to me to register this event than to embarrass or inconvenience anybody.”
He almost seems circumspect describing the loss. “At some point I told people there was Malcolm, and there were Malcolm’s problems. And that, though the problems were gone, somehow one still wanted them. They’d mean he was alive. Where there were problems it meant they could be resolved. When they asked me if I wanted company, I said it was hard to talk to people. It was harder still to be alone.”
At one point, unable to bear the pain, Fraser plaintively asks, “What could pain mean in such circumstances, when you were no longer aware you were you?” Of course, he has no answer, nobody has an answer to understanding and coping with a loss of such magnitude.
But the question summarizes in simple terms what grievous loss means, and how it isn’t necessary to deal with it, or try to resolve it. Living with pain, loss is a difficult but necessary lesson one must learn in life, and not all of us succeed in that endeavour.
Fraser could have talked about the loss with Alison, and I’m sure they did. But immediately after his son’s death, Fraser finds it impossible to discuss it with her. He confesses, “I couldn’t bear to share memories of Malcolm with Alison. To me they were excruciating shards of what had been lost. They were too painful to touch. To her they were something she wanted and needed to embrace. She shrieked at my unresponsiveness. Tottering into depression, she said she was no good to anyone and that I, everyone, would be better off without her.”
He tries to cope with it on his own terms but fails. “For me, once the crowd of visitors had thinned, his absence was physical, a void that was also an ache, a hole that should have been be filled with him.”
◄●►
And yet, Fraser doesn’t let the tragedy dominate the narrative. Underpinning every incident in the memoir is Malcolm’s death, but that is never allowed to overwhelm.
He vividly describes Malcolm’s growing up from childhood, boyhood to youth. “He was also the funniest, gentlest, smartest, most affectionate son anyone could wish for,” he says about Malcolm, and takes pride in his intellectual development, his eclectic interests, his friends, his relationships.
“Losers,” Fraser advises Malcolm, when he breaks off a friendship, “are often more interesting, and more fun to be with, than winners. To say so reflects my bias as a writer, because losers make for great material.”
Throughout the memoir, Fraser maintains a light touch, a detachment that is both rare and endearing but also a bit unsettling, especially when he describes Malcolm’s sudden but irreversible mental breakdown, and the trauma that it inflicted on both the young man and his parents. He says, in a matter-of-fact manner, “To experience a son, daughter, brother, or sister go crazy was to some extent to go crazy oneself.”
Alison, Fraser’s wife, died in 2018. I met her a few times. She carried on with her life, but to me she seemed like a crushed bird, unsure of herself. I learnt about her passing a little later, and immediately emailed Fraser.
We met for dinner at a local restaurant on St. Clair W, started by an immigrant Syrian family, who had a flourishing restaurant in their now destroyed country. He seemed pleased that I had taken the effort to meet and spend time with him. I had expected him to talk about Alison. But he chose to talk about pollution by plastic water bottles.
We walked the way back to his home to his pets, and he sat at the dining table, listening to me talk about my attempts at writing my collection of short stories. “These are linked short stories,” I said. And he retorted, “Are they linked short stories, or is it a manuscript of a novel that has missing parts in between which you are too lazy to fill?”
I think of that every time I work on my manuscript.
When he was alive, I could claim that I knew him; at least he gave that impression – of being friendly – but after reading the memoir I realize that I didn’t really know him. There was so much pain that he was hiding from the world, or perhaps, he shared it only with a close circle of friends.
Clearly, I wasn’t in that circle. Today, I wish I was. I could have shared his pain, helped him by my presence and my silence, my understanding of the tragedy that his life had become, and admired him a bit more for his resoluteness, resilience.
But I didn’t ever see him sad, or overcome by circumstances. In 2015, he accepted a job as a lexicographer in China; from there he wrote a series of letters that could well be turned into a book.
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I will leave you with an excerpt from one of his letters from China, which, to me, reveals the quintessential Fraser – open, candid, humorous.
“Charismatic in his own not so quiet way, Rod brought along fellow students. One was a handsome young Iranian who told me he was taking anti-depressants and, though not suicidal, didn’t see any point in living. At some length I tried to persuade him otherwise. He adopted me as his guru, spiritual adviser, or moral tutor and from time to time planted a kiss on my cheek to signify his esteem. He was wearing a very nice suit and tie and had paid US$150 for the privilege of attending a party at which he could meet, or at least see, Leonardo DiCaprio. He decided to give up the party and stay at my side. This brought forth monotonous derision from Rod, who kept reciting, “He gave up Leonardo DiCaprio to be with Fraser. He gave up Leonardo DiCaprio…” I didn’t know what all the fuss was about. It seemed like a perfectly sensible decision to me.”
Farwell, my friend. You were much loved and admired when you were alive. I hope you now find peace.
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Mayank Bhatt is a Toronto-based author. His debut novel, Belief was published in 2016. He is also on the panel of Editors with The Beacon
Mayank Bhatt in The Beacon
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