Monday, June 08
“ You’d like to think that nearly getting killed would be a major, permanently life-altering experience, but in truth it was less painful, and occasioned less serious reflection, than certain breakups I’ve gone through. If anything, it only reinforced the illusion that in the story of my life only supporting characters would die, while I, its protagonist and first-person narrator, would survive. I’ve demonstrated an impressive resilience in the face of valuable life lessons, and the main thing I seem to have learned from this one is that I am capable of learning nothing from almost any experience.
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Tim Kreider in the NYT. Make sure to read this essay, easily the cleverest I’ve read in the Times in a long time and one sure to remain near the top of my personal best essays read in 2009 list. It begins thus: “Fourteen years ago I was stabbed in the throat. This is kind of a long story and it’s not the point of this essay. The point is that after my unsuccessful murder I wasn’t unhappy for an entire year.”
He never describes the stabbing. It’s a brilliant twist on what the Greeks used to call αὔξησις. For more of the same, read his comic about telling the stabbing story.
