January 24, 2014

Quick Reads: “The Answer to the Riddle Is Me” by David Stuart MacLean


The Answer to the Riddle Is Me

By David Stuart MacLean

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT

David MacLean awoke one day in 2002 to find himself in an Indian train station without passport or memory. Delivered to a mental hospital, where he was assumed to be a junkie, he was eventually diagnosed with amnesia—a bad reaction to an anti-malarial drug. Written in terse, vivid prose spiked with blackouts and violent hallucinations reminiscent of a Ken Kesey classic, MacLean’s story of the yearlong quest to regain his life reads like fiction, and reminds us that while memories may be painful, truth is all too often elusive.

This review originally appeared in our January/February 2014 issue of Mother Jones.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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