Do not read that story.

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I didn’t know what I was in for, reading that story, but I know that it is the single most tragic thing I’ve read, including Hemingway’s famous six word story, and that the final line is eight hundred thousand times more (just more—more everything—more compelling, more shocking, more evocative, more terrifying, more conclusive, more emotive, more beautiful, more provocative) than any last line, including the last line of Infinite Jest. And I wish I had never read it, because this is now seared in the softest part of my mind.

I can’t quote it and I can’t bear to recommend it. Please don’t read it if trauma haunts you.

Incarnations of Burned Children at Equire and in Oblivion.

6 thoughts on “Do not read that story.”

  1. Pingback: Do not read that story. « Writing at Naptime | Famed Story

  2. You said not to read it but then there’s the link…so temptingly THERE. Ahhhhhhhh! Am making myself go do something else so as not to read it…at least right now.

  3. Ok. I got a few sentences in. This post is like knowing your own death isn’t it. You’re a braver woman than I. Let me know if you want to talk about it, to exercize the demons.

    • @faemom and ink: there are those out there who could handle this story. You may be such people. i am not. I don’t look at accidents as I drive by; I look to the other side of the road so I can’t see anything even in my peripheral. I read this David Foster Wallace piece by accident, and got caught up and got HORRIFIED and cannot warn you enough. But it’s beautiful and the final line is so heart wrenchingly painful that at least it offers closure, in a horrible, this-will-haunt-you-forever kind of way. I wasn’t trying to tease you. I was trying to spare you my inadvertent read. I wish there were a disclaimer on that chapter of Oblivion, and that issue of Esquire.
      Let me put it this way. You know how Sophie’s Choice never leaves you, never ever? This is worse because there are no outside forces. The trauma, the horrifying failure was humanity, and nothing more. Ugh.

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