^^^ Mandel may still have her day job. At least she had it in Nov. according to the article Mary linked - post #202. Mandel mentions making the National Book Award rounds while still employed as an administrative assistant:
Okay, that would fall into my “worst nightmare” category. And I’m not even claustrophobic. I wonder if for certain players, the game triggers panic attacks and/or sudden, hysteria-induced needs to use the bathroom. 
I read a review of Station Eleven in which the writer stated (referring to the Museum of Civilization), “It will not escape the reader that these very objects are the things that drive our lives today. And that’s the point the author seems to be making. Appreciate it now. This could all go away.”
I’m not convinced that “appreciating” those items is what the author had in mind. To me, the objects are almost a shameful curiosity–i.e., how could we have cared so much for things that have so little importance in the grand scheme of our lives? I think Arthur begins to sense this near the end of his life. As if he has had a premonition of his death, he vows to give everything away–“I don’t want more things”:
It occurs to me that there is another parallel here between Arthur and King Lear. Shortly before his death, Lear disrobes, casting off his last kingly remnant. (It doesn’t hurt the analogy that “Arthur” is the name of another famous king–things didn’t end too well for him either.)
LOL–worlds colliding–After I wrote the above, I stumbled across a review of a novel (with embedded play) called, The Tragedy of Arthur, King of Britain, Newly Corrected and Augmented by William Shakespeare, with the review written by Jane Smiley, author of A Thousand Acres, which is a modern re-telling of King Lear.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/21/tragedy-arthur-king-arthur-phillips-review
Haha, I never thought of that. I mentioned the game to a friend who actually has PTSD and he was not horrified at the thought of it. But then he would never play the game unless he were with a group he totally trusted, and he doesn’t trust many people.
There is an Escape the Room in New York where the son of a woman I know works. The NYC cluemasters occasionally get big tips and celebrities like Stephen Sondheim sometimes play.
Some versions of Escape the Room have a chained “zombie” whose chain gets longer and longer throughout the hour. If you don’t escape the room, he (or she, I guess) “gets you.”
My son’s friend auditioned for the zombie Escape the Room, but it didn’t fit his schedule, and he would have had to provide his own zombie costume!
NJTM–that “Escape the Room” job sounds great! I see that Boston has one of those places, too, and my son needs a job, so I just suggested he contact them. 
How did he get the job?
SJCM–I’m glad you’re becoming more a fan of the book!
I love hearing everyone’s memories and “short films.” Some of mine:
When I was about 4 I ate a whole bottle of baby aspirin (my dolls were sick!) and had to have my stomach pumped out. What I remember: The car to the hospital had a crack in the window and the light made pretty patterns. My mother at my bedside–but all I remember is the steam coming from her coffee.
Our younger son, laughing hysterically while on an amusement-park bumper car ride.
Our older son, running to meet me at the door at school, jumping into my arms with a big smile.
What I would miss:
Air conditioning
Ice cream
The internet
Libraries
^I would miss everything. I can’t even begin to make a list.
buenavista, my son found out about the job at ETR through a theatre jobs listserv. Your son should just contact Escape the Room. They might not have a position immediately, but they might soon. The Boston ETR is run by the same people as the NYC and Philly ones. The Philly one is expanding to have more and different versions of the game at the same site. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were the same in Boston. The people in charge are a little bit disorganized, but it is a good job with flexible hours and kind of fun. My son and two other BU alums are working at Philly ETR together; he got them the job. NYC pays $12/hour, Philly pays $15! I don’t know about Boston. Good luck to your son! If he by any chance gets the job, I’d love it if you would PM me and let me know. I would be interested in hearing about his experiences with ETR Boston.
It’s amazing that you had to have your stomach pumped and only remember the light patterns in the car and the steam coming from your mother’s coffee!
My oldest book memory is getting Green Eggs and Ham.
What would I miss? Google for sure! Chocolate. Coffee.
The things I learn after coming here 
We have a Great Escape Room in our city which claims a 20 percent success rate for participating groups. I’m afraid I might be done in by a zombie in the corner.
It’s fun to hear the memories!
Like NJTM, I’d miss so many things. As I was doing lunch dishes, I thought about what I’d miss most of all though, and have only to think about what we lose when we’ve had a hurricane or a relatively common power outage. We want lights and the AC. Then there’s also protection from tropical rain, insects, and wind…and snakes. I’d miss my house. My everyday indulgence is the cup of hot tea (preferably jasmine green). I NEED it! I’d also plentiful and readily available hot/cold water, water that’s been purified. Most of all, I would miss our easy communication via the internet with family and friends far away. I’d miss a car. Although I love being alone, the forced solitude and silence would make me impossibly lonely.
My earliest book memories are of Little Golden Books. We had a ton of them. One was about an animal called a “churkendoose.” I have reissued copies of a few of the Little Golden Books… Some I have never been able to find. There was one about a cow getting stuck in a silo that intrigued and kind of scared me. One of my favorites was “Mr Bear Squash You All Flat” (better that it sounds).
A real treasure was the “The Tall Book of Make Believe,” with illustrations by Garth Williams and stories by the likes of Carl Sandburg. It is basically unobtainable now, which is a crime. I am lucky to have a copy that I picked up on a sale table in New York in the 70s.
It would be such a delight to read “The Tall Book of Make Believe” or other wonderful children’s book to grandchildren, but that’s not going to happen very soon, if at all.
Next CC Book Club selection?
^^^HAHAHA
Emily St. John Mandel:
buenavista:
Once again, proof that we are all poets and authors at heart!
I think successful novelists are able to capture bits and pieces of life that resonate with readers because they have a familiar, universal quality to them.
Although this may be a corrupted memory since my mother also gave my kids the same book, the first book I remember is Pat the Bunny–touching the father’s unshaven face. Whisker burn at such a young age!
I don’t know about being a poet, Mary, but I agree with you that Mandel’s descriptions of little memories really resonated with me. I’ve always been fascinated by the snippets of memory I have–why some and not others? Why seemingly minor events, but not bigger ones (which I can often recall, but they aren’t one of the recurring little film clips)?
I once read an article on brain development which said that we don’t have the ability for “continuous memory” until about age 6 or so–maybe this article?
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/07/science/why-are-earliest-memories-so-fragmentary-and-elusive.html
That would explain why I (and Kirsten) would remember patterns of light but not our mothers’ faces. (And why memoirs that include detailed remembrances from age four drive me crazy!)
So many memories are sense memories and not fully formed narratives in our minds. And sometimes those literary memories make their way to real life. When my mom was told that her cancer had recurred, I remember sitting there and being fascinated with a pattern on a chair in the doctor’s conference room, and while I was puzzling over that, I remembered the passage in “Sophie’s Choice” where Sophie remembers being focused on the grain of rice on the SS officer’s collar, left over from his lunch, while he doomed her to make her fateful choice. Meta meta meta…
Wow, jaylynn.
I know. And another layer of weird was thinking, “Why am I thinking about a book right now??” But now I realize my brain (and young heart) were a bit overwhelmed and some of us go right to books or literature or poetry in our heads when we’re overwhelmed…
One of my first book memories is my Mom reading to me–the book was Heidi, which I loved. I haven’t thought about that in a million years. Another vivid childhood memory–our first house with a huge garden and a grape arbor. I can still see myself sitting under the arbor eating grapes and pulling off the skins and tossing them to the birds. There was a coal bin in that house, which scared me. The coal went down into the basement and there was a huge pile of coal and a roaring furnace. Something about it scared me because I would never go to the basement.
I also remember moving in fourth grade, which was really difficult for me–mean girls in my new neighborhood. I went to my 40th high school reunion a few years ago and saw one of the mean girls, who was really friendly. She remembers us being great friends!
Speaking of childhood friends who are mean girls…
I’m not going to touch the Yeats poem (don’t understand it, but love the title–“Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks at the Dancers”). I think Arthur is just trying to say, in his dramatic way, that each time he finds love, it turns around and bites him. At the point he writes the letter, he has one divorce under his belt and is rapidly becoming disillusioned with his second wife.
What was the point of the Dear V. tell-all book? It’s one part of the novel that feels off to me. Since Victoria is an off-screen character, it was hard for me to care about her relationship with Arthur or his feelings of betrayal. I know the V. book ends up meaning something to Kirsten–it “had belonged to her mother, purchased just before the end of everything” (p. 152)–but was it necessary to the story in some way that I’m missing?
Well according to something I dug up in Google books (A Commentary on the collected Plays of W. B. Yeats) Yeats’ poem was inspired by a dream which he thinks reflects Blake’s notion that sexual love is founded on spiritual hate. Did Arthur somehow become sexually attracted to people who weren’t good matches for him? Was his real love Mark?
It seemed to me that Arthur used his letters to V as a diary a way to express feelings he didn’t dare to express in real life. Somehow he forgot they were going to a real person. I couldn’t decided whether the imminent publication precipitated his heart attack or at least got him to reflect on his life and realize that at has no real friends, though at least he is kind to Kirsten who he recognizes as a lonely soul.