House Call #14

Let's Talk About What We Can't Talk About

Mar 21, 2026

Revisiting Sous-Conversation

Don’t get me wrong, a good strong “Horizontal” is crucial in a story. For instance, things need to happen, people to take action, conditions to change. But eventually the reader will demand an emotional “Vertical” to the story. From Macbeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Yeah, no. We want emotional progress. Insight must happen. Objects must be introduced, accrue meaning, morph in meaning, and be resolved. Which brings us to this week’s House Call. The story is Haley’s 24 Hours, which rolls along with the energy of the best Irvine Welsh fiction. The characters take relentless action, making poor choices at every step. The Horizontal is flawless. The circular structure works. The voice works. Everything escalates to chaos. Thank you and Bravo to Haley.

However, the ghost of Tom Spanbauer still haunts me, and Tom’s ghost asks, “Why do these characters take so many drugs?” Tom would look across the workshop table and clear his throat and adjust his eyeglasses and ask, “Haley, what’s the sous-conversation?” Meaning, what’s the undercurrent that’s not being said?

It can be an undercurrent specific to the characters: Some unexpressed emotion they must keep suppressed by using drugs, or some trauma they likewise can’t face.

But on a big, deep, cultural level the sous-conversation can be something enormous, something the entire culture is afraid to recognize… like the ghost of Thalidomide that haunted the book and film Rosemary’s Baby. Perhaps the author Ira Levin wasn’t even aware of this undercurrent. Thalidomide had been introduced as a treatment for morning sickness in 1957. If taken during a specific window of a pregnancy it lead to birth defects — similar to the defects we eventually see on Rosemary Woodhouse’s newborn. In real life, tens of thousands of infants were affected, but the overall culture had to keep a brave face and soldier on. Thalidomide was still available in many countries, with better guidelines for usage. This left — unexpressed — all the rage and grief the world felt. Vulnerable women had blindly trusted their doctors, and there was no universal way to vent and exhaust that rage. Like Rosemary Woodhouse, each mother had to accept her child despite how it differed from her expectations.

Yes, there is the moment of shrieking horror and denial and thoughts of murder/suicide. In the book Rosemary considers grabbing the baby and leaping from the window. But acceptance and peace eventually prevail. Rosemary embraces what is.

It’s the sous-conversation of Thalidomide and anger at technology that made the story a landmark in the culture. Otherwise, it would’ve simply been a drive-in theater flick like It’s Alive or The Brood. Odds are that Levin didn’t realize his subtext until he’d finished at least one draft. After that, it was too late to change course, he’d get slaughtered if the world caught him writing a horror novel about Thalidomide. Readers and movie goers had their emotional reaction, but they never realized why the story had hit so hard, and Levin wasn’t about to tell them.

This week, let’s give Haley’s story 24 Hours a good read. Read it several times, and chime in with your feedback in the Comments. Let Tom’s ghost keep asking, “What’s the subtext here? What’s the sous-conversation?”