From his New York Times obituary:
"In one way at least teaching is a good profession for a writer, because it gives him a sharp sense of futility."
Say no more.
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4 comments:
Oh what, and writing 100 cover letters of the course of three years doesn't? Especially when it dawns on you that they never get read, that you're writing letters that are full of half-truths and outright falsehoods, and they might as well be addressed to nobody, and they effectively are.
so for almost 18 months now, I've been semi-obsessed with the idea of going to medical school. I tried it out for awhile by telling people I was going to do it and gauging the rightness of the idea by the level of disbelief in their reactions. This whole idea came about after I read Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. You should read it. It's about Dr. Paul Farmer (check him out at www.pih.org) who, after a whole tale of helping provide free health care for destitute people around the world explains, in answer to a question about the sustainability & the relative naievete of his life's work says, "What is I told you my whole life is a long defeat."
I don't mean to bring down the tenor of conversation, but the stakes are a little bit higher in his case (I do believe, yes they are), and of course, naively myself, it seems better to do something in cause of a long defeat than no to do it at all.
I'm not going to medical school though. I'm just not going to worry about how obscure my poems are or how many people throw my cover letters in the trash.
I made a lot of typos. I get so hot under the collar I can't type. Obviously it's "What IF I told you my whole life is a long defeat." And also "It seems better to do something in the cause of a long defeat than NOT to do it at all" although the former sounds sort of sexy & Cuban, like Ricky Ricardo. They have an excellent health care system, by the way.
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