Allow me to direct your attention back to the last Weekend Reading Roundup, the one in which I requested writer Darin Strauss’ “head on a hubcap.” Excerpt:
I. Don’t. Care. If. Life’s. Been. Hard. For. The. Type. Of. Prick. Who’d. Write. About. Misfortune. He. Brought. Upon. Himself. So. Please. Tell. Mr. Strauss. To. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Oh, and Darin: Spend your blood money wisely, vulture.
Classy, right? Especially because it was based on a story he wrote that I (admittedly) didn’t read. Involved a fatal accident in which he was the driver. And, I’m kind of touchy about even non-fatal accidents these days. But what I’m touchier about is violating my cardinal rule: Read before you write. (As in, I read at least some of each and every Hit-and-Run America incident I post. And there’s 573 of them, at the moment.)
Fast-forward to last night: Darin reached out via email asking, paraphrased, Sorry you got hit, but what’s with the misplaced hate of judging me without even reading what I wrote? Here’s our boiled-down e-mail exchange (printed with his blessing):
Strauss:
I’d be pissed too, in your shoes. But I wasn’t a hit-and-run; in fact, (and of course) I stuck around, and waited for the police to pass judgment (they decided I was blameless). …
Anyway, I thought I would never write about it. [Later in life] I read a study: there are about 2,000 of what police call “dart-outs,” and what insurers call “no fault deaths” ever year — an accident where one side is blameless, and the other side loses his or her life. The study said that people in my shoes were more likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder than were people who’re guilty of causing drunk-driving fatalities. And then I realized that I never worked through my past, and that a book on the subject would have helped me when I was a kid, etc.
Hickey:
I do appreciate you being a bit more mature about it than I was. Roles reversed, I’d have lit into you. Not that it matters to you, I’m sure, but if there comes a day when I’m able to, I’ll read the entire book. I let my self-appointed “no-mercy, beef-up-the-hit-and-run-penalties” mission blind me to common courtesy sometimes.
Strauss:
[S]orry to vent. But it is a fucking bummer to get slammed for having written something personal, by someone who hasn’t bothered to read the thing he’s slamming.
Hickey:
[I]f you have a book tour, or ever come through Philly, I owe you a few beers.
So there you have it, the first, and last, time you’ll see me publicly apologize for not having read up on something I’ve written about. I don’t think I can read Strauss’ book yet — just like I had to turn away from the screen when John Locke got smacked by that car with Ben Linus looking on — but I’d be remiss not to encourage you to do so when “Half a Life” comes out in September. He seems like a good dude. And good dudes write good books.
Not only that, but having looked at the cover for the first time …
… it seems as if Carrie Fisher endorsed the memoir? Please, please, please, PLEASE don’t tell me that I might’ve pissed Leia off. That’s all I need. Maybe this post will somehow convince her to mail some Lando-related artifact my way. Or, a lock of Chewbacca hair, at the very least.
In conclusion, lo siento for calling for your head on a hubcap, Darin. See you in September.