You can be right and an asshole at the same time
On why I think the Helen DeWitt drama is an "everyone sucks here" situation.
When I tell you I empathize with Helen DeWitt, I mean that I once went to a restaurant with no pants on. I was 23, running late, and wearing sheer hose, the squeeze of which told my brain it no longer needed to think about matters south of the border. Then I got to the tapas place, opened my trench coat, and watched clouds of consternation cross my friends’ faces. Thank God for that coat: I kept it on streaker-style all night.
When I tell you I empathize with her, I refer to the rental cellos: how my bank issued a new debit card in December, invalidating the on-file payment info at the music store. How fixing this problem involved three simple steps: 1. activate new card; 2. call music store during business hours; and 3. tell them the new card number. How after four months and an escalating string of admonishment letters from the store, I finally gave up and drove there—half an hour away—to hand them a physical credit card, which—to be clear—was not the new debit card, which I still haven’t activated. I simply could not do it the other way.
In the matter of the Windham-Campbell Prize drama, I feel Helen DeWitt’s pain in my bones: the way certain administrative tasks in my personal life, minor to the neurotypical, can suck the energy out of entire days, weeks, months. The way I have to forego them as much as possible or face an alternative too miserable to endure: a life in which my substantial gifts as a literary agent go to waste, smothered to death under sock orphans and school health forms. The disbelief—maddening disbelief—I often field when I tell people the truth about how much time things like sending a package can take me, and what happens to my brain and body when I push through and do them anyway. The pain when people don’t understand that I can be strange this way and really, really good at what I do, thanks in no small part to the support of colleagues and money.
For all these reasons, I empathize with Helen DeWitt. I agonize over the catch-22 of her situation: money would make it so much easier for this brilliant writer to get the support she needs, but due to her cognitive disabilities, she can’t access the Windham-Campbell Prize money.
And it’s because I empathize with her so much that I feel comfortable saying this: I think she’s acted like an asshole all week.
