AN ARSONIST'S GUIDE

"Pilate asked Jesus, 'What is truth?'"
—John 18:38

"If you tell the truth, you will start crying and never stop, and what good will that do you, or anyone else for that matter? Besides, would anyone want to read a true story that made you start crying and never stop? Would you want to read such a story? Would you read it because it was true, or because it made you cry? Or would it make you cry because you thought it was true? And what would you do, what would you feel, who would you blame, if you found out it wasn't?"
—page 296, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

The truth makes a mess of Sam Pulsifer's life. Or, perhaps, as he states on a few occasions, it finally makes him a "grown-ass man." Either way, the truth sends Sam's life, along with the lives of many people around him—his wife Anne Marie, his daughter Katherine, his son Christian, his mother, his father—into directions that he could have never predicted.

He tries so hard not to be a bumbler, which comes naturally to him. He tries to be a detective and figure out just what is going on with his life. He bumbles that line of work, just as he has bumbled everything else in his life. He pays for the bumbling, in ways that he could not imagine. His bumbling is made even more egregious by the blunders of others.

This comedy of errors makes for a book that entices even as it wallows in the sufferings, ennui, and loneliness of one man. I shouldn't look, but I do. I shouldn't read, but I do. I recognize myself in Sam, in his father, in his mother. The truth is ugly. I look anyway. Then I put all the façades and masks back into place to pretend once again that everything is just fine. Just fine.