When I read a great memoir, it takes over. And for a few days, everything looks different. I begin to see my life through the lens of the book, as if the author has hijacked my senses. Not every memoir changes my awareness this way, but it’s worth reading a whole pile of books to find the rare one that does. This week, I thrashed around inside Alex Lemon’s mind while he suffered a brain hemorrhage in his debut memoir, Happy. And like Lemon, I was taken on a hallucinatory ride that left me feeling wired, debilitated and temporarily insane.
In his freshman year of college, Alex Lemon’s life is all planned out. He’s the star catcher on the school baseball team and he’s used to being the best. Lemon’s friends call him “Happy,” because he’s always ready to party, smoke a bowl, or throw a few shots back with his buddies from the team. When Lemon crashes into a wall or face plants into the grass, his friends laugh and blame it on his drinking. But Lemon knows something is wrong. “The world whirls when I crack open,” he writes. “Bookshelf, poster board, the windows wink their eyes. The digital clock is a red blur. Every light pulses yelloworange [sic] and brilliant, and the TV is a blue splash.” On the outside, Lemon is the drunk college baseball player, but on the inside, he’s panicking. He has constant vertigo, his eyes twitch back and forth and he’s unable to hit a baseball. “I go hours without being able to feel my body,” he writes. “Confused, trying to figure out what’s happening around me. Inside me.” (more)
