Asking why

By Jim Concannon, Globe Staff  |  June 30, 2009

Simply put, Joan Wickersham is a writer, tapping out everything from a novel, “The Paper Anniversary,’’ to short stories, NPR commentaries, even architecture columns.

But it was her most intimate narrative that proved the hardest, and took the longest. Last year Wickersham (above) published “The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order.’’ Her father, a Connecticut businessman, was a caring husband and loving parent. But one morning in 1991 he brought his sleeping wife a cup of coffee, sat down in an armchair in the study, and shot himself. Years later, Wickersham set out to learn why, and perhaps to find some peace through that search.

The result was an unconventional memoir, organized by indexed chapters. She learned that her father had been in debt from a failed business and had an unhappy childhood, but there was no clear cause for his suicide. The book also chronicled the upended lives of family and friends, forever changed by his death and the manner of it. The memoir was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award.

Wickersham’s writing is spare, wrenching, insightful. Here, she recounts her father’s last hour: “We have to watch him from the outside. He leaves no clues, his whole life is a clue. What is he thinking when he gets up that last morning, showers, and dresses for work? He puts on a blue-and-white striped cotton shirt, a pair of brown corduroys, heavy brown shoes. . . . He’s gone to his dresser and loaded his pockets: change, wallet, keys, handkerchief. Maybe he thinks he’s going to work. Or maybe he knows, hopes, that in forty-five minutes he’ll be dead.’’

Wickersham, who lives in Cambridge, will appear tonight at 7 at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Coolidge Corner. JIM CONCANNON

Musicologist Elijah Wald’s new book has a provocative title, “How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll.’’ Despite that head-turning premise, Wald doesn’t contend that the Fab Four ruined rock, exactly, but that when they stopped performing (while still making huge fortunes in recording studios), the music’s spontaneity faded, too. Wald also credits jazz pioneers such as Paul Whiteman as rock’s roots artists. He’ll discuss his findings tonight at 7 at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge.

Author Larry Tye, whose earlier book chronicled the lives of black Pullman train porters, is back with “Satchel,’’ a biography of baseball pitcher Satchel Paige, the Negro Leagues legend and barnstormer who was only allowed into the major leagues at 42. Paige, who still managed to play five years there and returned at 59 to throw three shutout innings, used to quip that he was so old “Methuselah was my first batboy.’’ Tye discusses the man and the legend (Paige loved to blur the two) tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.