Darin Strauss – Living Beyond A Tragedy

It’s high time for my November interview. Due to the East coast hurricane Sandy, we’ve had wide-spread power outages. And then I managed to get out and down to sunny Florida where I was {stuck} indoors for a most amazing four day Tony Robbins event.

I am pleased to present Darin Strauss, author and professor of creative writing. His most recent book is his memoir, Half A Life, a beautifully honest and examined look into an event that has forever shaped his life. In 1988 a high school girl was killed when she swerved on her bicycle into an oncoming car. That car was driven by another high school student, Darin Strauss. It was declared an accident and he was officially absolved of any wrongdoing.

And yet, how does one go on to live a {good} life carrying the weight of such a tragedy?

1. Please describe what you’ve had to overcome so that you could move on and live your life.

That’s a long, complex, maybe impossible one to answer. And I fear that any response would be self-serving. But here goes; I felt guilt, which must have been less crushing than the grief the girl’s family felt. And also less than someone who had been declared guilty of something would have. (I was held to be blameless.) I felt confusion, too. (But so do most young people, though not to the degree I did, I’m sure.) So the answer would take a book to complete. (Go figure.)

2. What personal qualities have helped you carry on and move in a positive direction?

I’m not the one to say. But– I was proud to get a recent call from a fellow alum from my high school. She said that she’d gotten married in 2000, coincidentally the week when my first book, Chang & Eng, had come out. At her wedding, someone said: “Hey, did you hear about Darin Strauss?” That is to say, this someone meant to ask the bride: “Did you hear that Darin has a book that just got reviewed by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times?” And the bride thought the question would be: Did you hear that Darin Strauss is homeless? Or a drug addict? Or something. She’d assumed that the accident would have destroyed me. So hearing that made me proud, though I’m not sure of what I should be proud. That I didn’t become a total screw-up? Not sure if that is justifiable cause for deep gratification and self-worth.

3. Was there a specific moment, thought or epiphany that helped guide you to a better place mentally and psychologically, or did it evolve over time?

I say in the book that “epiphany” is a false lead; that it almost never comes in the way fiction asks us to believe it does. And that “closure” is a smarmy term for self-help practitioners. You don’t close the book on difficult things, not if you’re a feeling person. What happens is: We get better by slow degrees, by effort and luck. Not by lightning strikes.

4. What thoughts propel you forward?

That I did my best. That something was thrown before me, and I tried my hardest not to let anything bad happen. And that the bad happened anyway was, in fact, beyond my control.

5. In general, how have you managed to live beyond the tragedy and create a good life for yourself?

I let time do its slow healing work; and I found the moment when I was able to face it—and not the moment before—and then I did. I did face it.

6. What part does forgiveness play?

Not enough, for me. Forgiveness doesn’t come easy. Maybe that’s good. There can be a lot of cheesy self-regard in our drive to forgive ourselves; and not enough morality.We need to own up to the truth, or our self-forgiveness will be hollow.

7. What advice would you offer someone going through anything at all similar?

Seek help—good help. Write things down, and write them with honesty. But only when you are ready. Don’t force yourself to.

But if you think you’re able, then write—put things in order, one word at a time, and it will give you a power over the event, whatever the event may be. But don’t lie to yourself, don’t skip the parts that are unflattering. A piece of self-propaganda won’t fool anyone, least of all yourself. And fooling yourself is not the objective. Finding the truth, and learning to have power over it—that’s the goal.

 

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