Clues in John O'Brien's 'Better'

In the spring of 1990, while my brother, John O'Brien, was reveling in the impending publication of his first novel, "Leaving Las Vegas," he was also writing another novel, "Better" (Akashic Books: 198 pp., $15.95 paper). John, profoundly alcoholic, took his life in April 1994, a few weeks after signing off on the film rights for "Leaving Las Vegas." Although the movie based on his book eventually earned Nicolas Cage an Oscar for his portrayal of Ben, who goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death, the story behind "Better," which will be the last of John's books to be published, is only as big as a single molecule.

To explain what I mean, I must return to the summer of 1986. During a visit with John and his then-wife Lisa at their Laurel Canyon home, I witnessed my brother's shaking hands and clandestine slugs of 5 a.m. vodka. Nonetheless, John and I renewed our bond and when I returned to Cleveland, we were closer than we had ever been. I was 21. He was 26. He wrote me a few weeks later.

"I strongly urge you to move very far from Ohio," he told me. "Anywhere in the Northeast is too close, and you won't be changing your cultural experience." Ohio was code for home; cultural experience meant Mom and Dad. Yet by the time he wrote "Better," even California didn't seem to be far enough. Or maybe it was that the miles John had put between himself and his family were just a superficial substitute for the true split he desired and couldn't have -- the severing of the genetic cord.

"Better" is narrated by William, a musing drunk who spends his days having unfulfilling sex, watching "Love Boat" reruns and drinking vodka supplied by his benefactor, a kind of sugar daddy named Double Felix. William represents everything my father -- also named William -- detested and the reason he never liked "Better." John's use of the name was no coincidence, but some combination of symbolism and payback.

In June 1978, John refused to attend his high school commencement. His diploma arrived unceremoniously in the mail, inscribed with the name John Dylan O'Brien. John's given middle name was Steven, in honor of our maternal grandfather, and his nod to the musician he idolized led to a ferocious and definitive fight between my father and brother. Names mattered to these men.