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Jonathan Rosen explores ‘the tragedy of good intentions’ a heartbreaking memoir.

On this week’s episode, Jonathan Rosen joins us to discuss The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions (Penguin Press, April 18), a profound exploration of a formative friendship marred by tragedy.

Rosen (The Talmud and the Internet, Eve’s Apple, etc.) was 10 years old when his family moved to New Rochelle, New York, in 1973. Almost instantaneously, he befriended Michael Laudor, a preternaturally intelligent boy his age who lived down the street. The two grew up together—talking books and culture, attending each other’s bar mitzvahs, competing to be editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper. Both graduated from Yale and into bright futures, but tragedy struck soon after: Laudor had a psychotic break, resulting a monthslong institutionalization and diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Despite these adversities, Yale Law School honored Laudor’s deferred acceptance upon his release. An outpouring of support from the dean, professors, and fellow students helped Laudor finish the program and graduate with a Juris Doctorate. He also began a romantic relationship with a kind, compassionate computer whiz named Caroline Costello. The couple moved together to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and, eventually, Hollywood and the publishing industry came calling, wanting to tell his extraordinary story. A feature film and memoir were underway in 1998, when Laudor, in the grip of psychosis, murdered Costello.

Here’s a bit from Kirkus’ starred review of The Best Minds: “Rosen captures many worlds in this attentive, nuanced narrative, evoking boyhood discovery, the life of post-Shoah Jews in America, the rise of predatory capitalism, and the essential inability of one friend to comprehend fully the ‘delicate brain’ of the other. It’s an undeniably tragic story, but Rosen also probes meaningfully into the nature of mental illness. Throughout, he is keenly sensitive, as when he writes of the perils of self-awareness, ‘The flip side of the idea that writing heals you, perhaps, was the fear that failing to tell your story, and fulfill your dreams, cast you into outer darkness.’ An affecting, thoughtfully written portrait of a friendship broken by mental illness and its terrible sequelae.”

Rosen introduces listeners to his friend, Michael Laudor, and tells host Megan Labrise that he sees the book, which took 10 years to write, as a reckoning with both the tragedy and the friendship. He shares the advice he received from editor Scott Moyers to “write it like a novel”; the challenges of telling Laudor’s story; the story of how he and Laudor became friends; Rosen’s interest in exploring liminality in his work; deinstitutionalization; where the title comes from; the importance of telling Costello’s story with care and complexity; and much more.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, Eric Liebetrau, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

Editors’ picks:

The Bones of Birka: Unraveling the Mystery of a Female Viking Warrior by C.M. Surrisi (Chicago Review Press)

Calling the Moon: 10 Period Stories From BIPOC Authors, ed. by Aida Salazar and Yamile Saied Méndez (Candlewick)

Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming by Ava Chin (Penguin Press)

Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny (Knopf)

Also mentioned on this episode:

Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price (Basic)

The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking WarriorWomen by Nancy Marie Brown (St. Martin’s)

Code Red by Joy McCullough (Atheneum)

How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang (Riverhead)

You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House)