I posted this in response to a person who asked why I wrote such a--depressing story.
"To be honest, this is the first and probably the only time I'll do anything of the sort. Believe it or not, I'm actually a funny! kind of guy, but when I wrote this story it basically mirrored my life at the time.
I'll spare you the details, but Jimmy was based on a real person at school, as was Balantino. The incidents in the story, while science-fictionalized, were loosely related to stuff that happened to me.
Trust me, I will NEVER go postal like the narrator did. However, it's always been my belief that when life gives you shit, you can't just hide it inside you. That's why I wrote the story in the first place--just to get all of those feelings out of me. Since I did that, I've done better in school, I've made new friends, and I'm generally much more happy with myself.
The reason I don't delete this post is because, in its own strange way, I think it's one of my better works. It's brutally honest. For the first time in my story, the narrator is definitely NOT angelic, and I think that makes it all the more heartwrenching.
What makes tragedy tragedy is that humanity is shown to be resilient and strong. I don't think this is tragedy--it's more irony. In both "genres," humanity is crushed by strong overwhelming forces, but only in irony does the hero's death not matter at all. The ORDINARY narrator's doom doesn't change anything. As such, we feel more for the ordinary man, which is why I like this story the best of all of my works.
Just didn't want you to get the feeling that I was a depressed maniac."
"To be honest, this is the first and probably the only time I'll do anything of the sort. Believe it or not, I'm actually a funny! kind of guy, but when I wrote this story it basically mirrored my life at the time.
I'll spare you the details, but Jimmy was based on a real person at school, as was Balantino. The incidents in the story, while science-fictionalized, were loosely related to stuff that happened to me.
Trust me, I will NEVER go postal like the narrator did. However, it's always been my belief that when life gives you shit, you can't just hide it inside you. That's why I wrote the story in the first place--just to get all of those feelings out of me. Since I did that, I've done better in school, I've made new friends, and I'm generally much more happy with myself.
The reason I don't delete this post is because, in its own strange way, I think it's one of my better works. It's brutally honest. For the first time in my story, the narrator is definitely NOT angelic, and I think that makes it all the more heartwrenching.
What makes tragedy tragedy is that humanity is shown to be resilient and strong. I don't think this is tragedy--it's more irony. In both "genres," humanity is crushed by strong overwhelming forces, but only in irony does the hero's death not matter at all. The ORDINARY narrator's doom doesn't change anything. As such, we feel more for the ordinary man, which is why I like this story the best of all of my works.
Just didn't want you to get the feeling that I was a depressed maniac."