“Better cold than sentimental,” Thurston said.

“Do you think? Why?”

“Because we’ve read the sentimental, filial account of a cherished dead parent before. We’ve read it a million times. It doesn’t have any power anymore.”

“I’m doing a little thought experiment here,” Leonard said. “Say my mother killed herself. And say I wrote a book about it. Why would I want to do something like that?” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “First, I’d do it to cope with my grief. Second, maybe to paint a portrait of my mother. To keep her alive in my memory.”

“And you think your reaction is universal,” Thurston said. “That because you’d respond to the death of a parent a certain way, that obligates Handke to do the same.”

“I’m saying that if your mother kills herself it’s not a literary trope.”

Madeleine’s heart had quieted now. She was listening to the discussion with interest.

Thurston was nodding his head in a way that somehow didn’t suggest agreement. “Yeah, O.K.,” he said. “Handke’s real mother killed herself. She died in a real world and Handke felt real grief or whatever. But that’s not what this book’s about. Books aren’t about ‘real life.’ Books are about other books.” He raised his mouth like a wind instrument and blew out bright notes. “My theory is that the problem Handke was trying to solve here, from a literary standpoint, was how do you write about something, even something real and painful—like suicide—when all of the writing that’s been done on that subject has robbed you of any originality of expression?”

What Thurston was saying seemed to Madeleine both insightful and horribly wrong. It was maybe true, what he said, but it shouldn’t have been.