Saturday, September 20, 2008

Writers and depression

Why did David Foster Wallace kill himself?

Why did Michael Dorris? Louis Owens? Why did Hemingway shoot himself? What drove Sylvia Plath to shove her head in the oven as her children slept?

I just showed Adam a snippet of what I'm writing, and I connected to how all these writers must have felt. It hurts. It's like hitting some sort of truth, some element of bottom. And we love the writing. We either can't stop or don't want to.

In my next life, I'd like to be a plumber.

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