An anti-autobiographical story by Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux's story in the current New Yorker called I think I'm the Meat, You're the Knife seems to be an autobiographical pieces, based on the pieces of information that Theroux's readers know about his life - Medford upbringing, years working and traveling in Africa - but the story folds in upon itself and defies us to treat it as an autobiographical piece as it's very subject, it's first-person narrator, is a guy who has learned how to survive trauma by telling stories and inventing stories. In short, the narrator superficially seems to be much like Theroux, an 60ish man visiting family in Medford, Mass., who learns from a chance encounter with a schoolmate he has not seen in many years that their old English teacher is in hospice and dying; this bit of info releases a series of emotions in the narrator, and we pretty quickly understand that he had been abused, sexually probably, by this teacher. He goes to visit the man in the hospice and proceeds to tell him rather cruel and violent stories, tormenting the dying man and gaining a modicum of revenge. Teachers are hugely influential on children - every one of us remembers our teachers, good and bad, for life, and I know I have had some wonderful teachers - which is partly why I to this day work in the education field - and one or two absolutely awful teachers, on one of whom I would have exacted any sort of cruel revenge if I could have done so. The "irony" of the story is that the narrator is a professional writer her learned to invent in order to survive his trauma - so the cruelty and abuse steered him toward a vocation. He has another dimension as well, as we see him fabricate for his mother and sister and series of elaborate tales about the high-school acquaintance he's encountered - he obviously is a compulsive inventor - getting through life by making things up - again, as a strategy for trauma survival but also as a literary gift, even compulsion. I can't and won't speculate on how much of this story may be real - the boundaries of the story show me that "real" doesn't matter in this case - so rather than look at this as a way to understand the prolific and talented (and witty and cordial, too - I interviewed him once) Theroux, I see it as a story about where fiction comes from, the sad and troubling link that all of us who write do feel between beauty and pain, between creation and despair.