if you ignore it long enough, it might disappear.

Admittedly, being preoccupied with the upcoming holiday, reading “Hearing Voices” wasn’t on the top of my list; which actually might be a good thing with the entire break reading I’ll get to do in the car ride to Iowa. Four hours of fun with a pile of books.
Anyways, the main part of the story I reached this week was about Smith’s father’s major hallucinatory experiences and Smith’s emotions about his father’s condition. The author took the reader back into a (I couldn’t tell if it was a childhood memory or a teenage memory) remembrance. Smith recalled his father arguing with his mother, and his father shouting at his mother to “shut up” when she was not talking. Smith wondered why the memory stuck with him for such a long time. He analyzed it as a weak point in his father’s paternal career, and his young mind felt vulnerable without a strong father figure. Later, Smith finds it strange that his mind seemed to “pick out” the one idea of his father hearing voices. The author also theorized that the memory might not have been so dominant in his brain until after he became fascinated with the subject of hearing voices, and his brain called upon a familiar memory. Smith feels very aggravated over his lack of control of his brain and fears slipping into insanity like his father.
I have also decided that I quite enjoy Smith’s style of writing. He has a very subtle way of combining facts with the plotline that most fiction writers cannot master.