the accident - peter ferry
excerpted from mcsweeney's 17 (the one that looks like a bunch of mail. this one was packaged along with an ingenious spoof of the african spam money scam):
And in recent years I had done a good bit of travel writing, mostly for the Chicago Tribune because I had become interested in what we do and where we go to give our lives meaning when we don't or can't find it at home, when life there becomes too staid and certain and we have to create challenges, even dilemnas, for ourselves because problems are interesting and important and life without them is neither. It is the reason that people join the circus, I think, drink too much, drive too fast, jump off things, jump into things, climb things, run away from home and paddle canoes into the wild. It is also the reason they tell stories....
Time has passed. I am miles and months away from the the stuff you just read, and now it strikes me as at least rationalization. I need to tell you two things. The first is that of course I loved Lydia Green. I loved her quite a bit for quite a while. The second thing I need to tell you is that I stopped loving her. I'm not sure I knew that could really happen, but it did, and it scared me. It scared the shit out of me....
Now in order to keep writing, I have to believe that what I am writing is important. Kurt Vonnegut says a writer has to believe that what he's writing right now is the most important thing ever written. That was hard for me in the beginning because my Presbyterian minister father taught me to be modest and humble and circumspect. At potluck suppers in the church basement, we always waited to be the very last in line. I never learned how to be important....
And in recent years I had done a good bit of travel writing, mostly for the Chicago Tribune because I had become interested in what we do and where we go to give our lives meaning when we don't or can't find it at home, when life there becomes too staid and certain and we have to create challenges, even dilemnas, for ourselves because problems are interesting and important and life without them is neither. It is the reason that people join the circus, I think, drink too much, drive too fast, jump off things, jump into things, climb things, run away from home and paddle canoes into the wild. It is also the reason they tell stories....
Time has passed. I am miles and months away from the the stuff you just read, and now it strikes me as at least rationalization. I need to tell you two things. The first is that of course I loved Lydia Green. I loved her quite a bit for quite a while. The second thing I need to tell you is that I stopped loving her. I'm not sure I knew that could really happen, but it did, and it scared me. It scared the shit out of me....
Now in order to keep writing, I have to believe that what I am writing is important. Kurt Vonnegut says a writer has to believe that what he's writing right now is the most important thing ever written. That was hard for me in the beginning because my Presbyterian minister father taught me to be modest and humble and circumspect. At potluck suppers in the church basement, we always waited to be the very last in line. I never learned how to be important....