"As is always the case when I write anything, I didn't know what problems the story would pose until it started posing them. I truly believed that "Understanding the Science" would focus on Maria, and that we would get to know more about her brush with death and get access to her wisdom (or her disappointment at not having gained more of it, maybe), but then her character kept resisting me."
"She didn't want to be known. She became a sort of Bartleby-like figure, and I felt I had to respect that. I was treating her the same as her friends in the story were treating her, a little bit too reverently. I expected everything she said to have deeper meaning just because of what she'd been through, and it was an unfair weight to put on her. So, I let her be herself: not a saint, a little judgmental, and mostly quiet."
A group of friends sit around a Chicago dinner table celebrating Maria's cancer remission. The conversation remains general and mildly boring; Maria feels disaffected and stays mostly quiet. Maria resists being known and becomes a Bartleby-like figure, prompting others to treat her with undue reverence and to expect deeper meaning from her words. Her friends' attention shifts when Katherine's boyfriend, Adrian, a famous actor, arrives and captures the group's focus. Adrian's arrival redirects the evening's energy and leads the viewpoint to move toward him. The unfolding momentum is followed rather than forced into a preconceived shape.
Read at The New Yorker
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