Vic Chesnutt noticed the little things. His songs were populated by humble characters from small towns as they went about their ordinary business. But it was through these stories that Chesnutt tackled the heavier subjects. It’s how a song ostensibly about watching "Speed Racer" could climax in Chesnutt shouting, "I am an atheist!," over and over again, as if realizing it now for the first time. Or how "Flirted With You All My Life" begins seeming like a standard love song, but culminates in Chesnutt coming to terms with his mother’s death, realizing that he himself is not yet ready to die. Chesnutt was a fan of the spiral—or, more visually, the free fall. At his best, Chesnutt wrote songs that felt both natural and inevitable: of course a song that begins with him cooing "I am so lonely" will end with him spitting, "I don’t have to be with no asshole anymore."
It is fitting, then, that Kristin Hersh—Chesnutt’s longtime friend and touring companion—has written a book, Don't Suck, Don't Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt, about her relationship with Chesnutt comprised almost entirely of these small, Chesnuttian moments, as she free falls into bigger revelations. Unassuming scenes—the book opens with Hersh shoving Jolly Ranchers through Chesnutt’s car window, later the two eating at a diner with their beleaguered spouses—float in and out of the dreamlike narrative. Even their dialogue represents the sort of half-formed, nonsensical banter that occurs between two people who know each other too well: conversation less for the sake of communication and more just to confirm that someone is there. Theirs is the type of friendship in which one picks up the phone only to hear the other say, "Bedspread jizz."
Through this familiarity Hersh illustrates larger themes: of Chesnutt as character, the struggles and triumphs of the touring musician, of the looming inevitability of death. Her observations range from grandiose ("You achieved every songwriter’s goal, cuz you made us think: ‘I’m not alone.’") to aphoristic ("Even when New Yorkers try to dress down they look dressed up, because they did it on purpose.") and always ring with a harsh lyrical truth.
Hersh is also careful in choosing what not to say. In her book, readers will find no traditional biography of Chesnutt. The most repeated stories throughout Chesnutt’s narrative—the teenage drunk driving accident that left him a quadriplegic, the major label deal that wrecked his life and almost did in his career, his suicide attempts—are background, not tentpoles of the story. They are referenced but never squarely addressed, adding only to Hersh’s authority as someone who knew the real person, and saw their life play out in minutes and breaths, not grand arcs. It’s as much her memoir as it is a character study of her friend.
So, during the years when Chesnutt had fallen out of touch with Hersh, leading up to his death on Christmas Day, 2009, he appears in the narrative only in fragments: in flashbacks, in quoted lyrics, and, in one pivotal scene, backstage at Carnegie Hall, texting "YOU SUCK" to Michael Stipe. Referring to Chesnutt consistently in the second person, Hersh, in these passages, writes with particular urgency, addressing, and therefore inventing, a "you" who no longer exists. The book’s strongest moments illustrate the void left when a loved one vanishes. It speaks to Hersh’s power as a writer that, when Chesnutt leaves the picture, the space he occupied is now gaping and unfillable.
In "When the Bottom Fell Out", one of Chesnutt’s simplest and greatest songs, he narrates from the perspective of a man free falling to his death. Yet, in a reversal of his characteristic technique, Chesnutt finds calmness in the hysteria, giving himself time to observe how the wind feels, how his body moves, how the onlookers react. Most pointedly, he takes the opportunity to offer a simple farewell: "So long," he shouts, "It’s been good to know ye." Hersh’s book looks for a similar moment of peace in Chesnutt’s free fall, but Hersh is less successful in finding resolution. Perhaps it’s a trick that only Chesnutt was capable of. Don’t Suck, Don’t Die serves as an eloquent, heartbreaking testament to that gift.