David Milch discusses his Alzheimer's in The New Yorker
May 24, 2019 4:25 AM   Subscribe

David Milch's Third Act. The NYer's Mark Singer gives some background on Milch's writing process on Deadwood and interviews him about his current memory problems. "I've always said that he writes novels set like plays, and shot like movies, that air on television," Milch's daughter says.

Deadwood (and Milch) previously.
posted by Paul Slade (6 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh, my. Alzheimer's runs through my family like a terrible current, and it's so enlightening to hear from someone who can articulate what's happening to him as it's happening, and yet so frightening to know that people I know, and probably I, will be going through the same type of thing someday.
posted by xingcat at 5:52 AM on May 24, 2019 [5 favorites]


Milch: "You just move through the day experiencing a series of awarenesses of what’s gone in terms of your capacities. ...There’s an experience you have as every day goes on of what you’re no longer capable of and . . . it’s an accumulation of indignities. At a more fundamental level, it’s an accretion of irrevocable truths: this is gone, and that’s gone. And you try to restrict the induction of self-pity, which is one of the complications of the illness. Apart from what’s gone because of physiological change, there’s a change of spirit. You awaken and inventory where you are on this day in terms of what you can’t do, what you can’t think....More than anything else, one would like to think of oneself as being capable as a human being. The sad truth, imposed with increasing rigor, is you aren’t. You aren’t normal anymore. You’re not capable of thinking in the fashion you would hope to as an artist and as a person. ...And then there are compensatory adjustments that you make in anticipation of those rigors, so that you can conceal the fact of what you can’t do. It’s a constriction that becomes increasingly vicious. And then you go on."

Candid and beautifully said. Thanks, Paul Slade.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:52 AM on May 24, 2019 [10 favorites]


This is so sad, and so beautiful, and so sad.
posted by PussKillian at 7:55 AM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


Is this the right time and place to point out how not even angry just frustrated I am the Milch continues to employ Jeffrey Jones?

Everyone's coming back for the movie! Ian McShane! Timothy Olyphant! Molly Parker! And the convicted child pornographer!
posted by thecjm at 9:56 AM on May 24, 2019


No it is not really appropriate in my opinion.
posted by Pembquist at 3:22 PM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


I love that Milch is speaking about how own disease in his own way with his own dignity and sets of parameters and the focus on his work...not sure quite how to express this in a better way than in terms of personhood we treat people with any kind of dementia like shit, in terms of the ability to articulate their own lives especially. You have Alzheimer's you're written out of the larger narrative. But this is just, two guys talking with a great deal of respect and honesty, having a conversation that isn't as they say themselves, sentimental or manipulative in the way a profile like this could be. I'm glad to have read it.
posted by colorblock sock at 11:01 PM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


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