A Little Life

JB, whom Willem, Jude, and Malcolm have been increasingly worried about in Part 3, has become addicted to a variety of drugs, encouraged by the influence of an obnoxious friend named Jackson. JB recognizes that Jackson is not a good friend or even likeable, but he has become depressed by the reality that his old friends have grown predictable and boring, settling down into comfortable middle-aged lives. His family stages an intervention, but he does not take them seriously.

After months of JB’s further drug use peppered with occasional failed attempts to quit, Willem, Jude, and Malcolm decide to stage their own intervention. At the end of a July 4th weekend that JB spends in an intoxicated haze, he wakes to find his three friends in his apartment. He lashes out at them, not wanting to hear that he needs help. He does a cruel impression of Jude, one he once saw Jackson doing, “his mouth open as Jackson had done it, making an imbecile’s moan, dragging his right leg behind him as if it were made of stone” (280). Jude, whose worst fear is that people perceive him this way, is deeply wounded that his friend would do such a thing, even while intoxicated.