“Like anyone who’s a drinker knows, you borrow courage when you’re drinking; you are emboldened for the night but depleted in the morning. Addiction is about credit. That amazing thing you said at the bar last night, that thing you would never say in person to anyone, it’s a one-time occurrence because tomorrow, in the light of dawn, when you are separated from your wallet and your money, when your girflriend hates you, you’ll be unable to say that courageous thing again because you are wrung out and lying on a mattress without sheets. You borrowed that courage, and it’s gone.”
– p. 182
There’s something incredibly sobering (excuse the pun) about this passage, and Moody’s overall treatment of addiction. It places human characteristics within a context of limitations, and it pares down our outward attributes to concrete resources that are finite and fleeting. Albertine’s central role in the novella speaks to a base need for balance, in that it zeroes out time for those who take it – it allows intoxicated users to cancel out their current realities with bygone moments from the past, and in doing so, examines a deeply disturbing collective need for a return to history. The novel’s drug, however, is by no means presented as a healthy or emotionally viable substance – but Moody’s skillful depictions of abstract, complex subject matter rely on Albertine’s profound and disturbing effects.
“If you stood at certain corners and looked west in summer, at dusk, you would see that the city of New York had sunsets that would have animated the great landscape painters.”
– p. 161
Moody’s setting inevitably calls to mind 9/11 imagery, and whether intentional or not, his nuanced prose is a reflection of our simultaneously enlightened yet misguided collective understanding of that national moment of grief, shock, anger, and countless other reactions. It seems that the novella does little to supercede fears of emotional regression after a large-scale apocalyptic incident, but Manhattan, even as a radiation-contaminated pile of rubble, is still depicted as a site of unparalleled reverence and mystery. The final passages, which recount Kevin’s grievous, dreamlike view of a fallen Manhattan as he passes the Brooklyn Bridge and other places in Manhattan. While Moody’s implication of the city as a mecca is not always apparent, as he populates its past with frequent memories of despair and sadness. Nonetheless, the island is a utopia of sorts, particularly for Kevin. The novel places the setting at a junction between heaven and hell – but in an ethereal plane that exists only in lucid, drug induced memories.
The Albertine Notes is a moving yet unsettling piece of literatre – one that has a tendency to affect residually and in lingering succession. Moody shatters apocalyptic cliche and diverts into an engaging and highly perceptive narrative that sheds light on a distinctly modern, endlessly fascinating psyche.
photos: A posthumously released Polaroid by Dash Snow and Blue Falling, Ryan McGinley (2007).
