Interview with Andrew Solomon

Not the Only Fact About Him. Andrew Solomon interview
  
Rumpus: The one I keep coming back to, the ones who crossed the biggest Rubicon, were the Klebolds. There’s one thing you mention, just in passing, that shocked me: that you slept in the guest room that used to be Dylan Klebold’s bedroom. I wondered, was that weird? Was that creepy? Or, at that point, had he been “normalized” for you, no longer a monster, but simply the dead child of these lovely people? Were you seeing him through their eyes at that point?
Solomon: I’m sorry to keep answering in this equivocal way, but I think both. On one level, I could see him through their eyes by spending time with them. And then, when The Today Show did their interview with me, and they showed a little bit of the footage of Dylan, screaming hysterically into the camera in preparation for this terrible thing…
Rumpus: With the guns and the black trench coats.
Solomon: Yes. I thought: that is not an okay person. That’s a monstrous vision. But I ended up thinking—and I think Sue said it the best—I ended up thinking, can we really sort people by saying: these people are terrific, these people are okay but made some mistakes, and these people are monstrous?  It’s just not a very good system. Everyone does wonderful things and terrible things. What Dylan did was much more terrible than what most people do, but I don’t think that it therefore is the only fact about him. So my feeling in terms of seeing him through Tom’s and Sue’s eyes is that I think he did something shocking and awful, and if any of us could go back in time and reverse it, we would…
Rumpus: Most of all, them.
Solomon: Yes. But I don’t feel that in the end I can say he’s a monster and nothing but a monster. He’s a monster who also brought Sue an umbrella when he picked her up in the rain, and worked the extra shift in the pizza parlor for Eric; who grew up in this essentially loving household, who was broken in some profound way. I’m sorry, deeply sorry that he was broken. I see how much pain he caused his own family, and I know how unbelievably much pain he caused all these other families, and to some degree, the whole nation that was shocked and horrified by that whole thing. But even though I know all that, I can’t think of it as being the only fact about him. I just don’t think there’s an “only fact” about anyone.

Thank you so much Catherine!! This is really interesting!

Welcome and I thought so too.

Where is this interview from?

I found it on the columbine tag

CatherineM813 wrote:

I found it on the columbine tag

Ah, from Tumblr?

That's the one.

queenfarooq wrote:

CatherineM813 wrote:

I found it on the columbine tag

Ah, from Tumblr?

Here's the link to the Andrew Solomon interview article that I posted on my Tumblr blog (which Catherine referenced above.)

InFiNiNcEX5 wrote:

Here's the link to the Andrew Solomon interview article that I posted on my Tumblr blog (which Catherine referenced above.)

Thank you, I'm just a little skeptical sometimes of information that comes just from Tumblr. I always found Andrew Solomon to come across very well in all the interviews he has done.

queenfarooq wrote:

InFiNiNcEX5 wrote:

Here's the link to the Andrew Solomon interview article that I posted on my Tumblr blog (which Catherine referenced above.)

Thank you, I'm just a little skeptical sometimes of information that comes just from Tumblr.  I always found Andrew Solomon to come across very well in all the interviews he has done.

I hear you. Hey, it's Tumblr. ;) As much as I'm fond of the Dylan pseudo quote "I'm full of love and no one wants it,  I wouldn't reblog it as if it's a fact that Dylan actually said it.  Everything I'm interested in posting on my blog is a verifiable source and it's my hope it's also somewhat educational especially for lookiloos and not just the usual reblogs.  The link or documented evidence is usually included with the post to support it.  That's why I added the interview link to the Solomon quotes posted on this thread.  Of course, credit for the find is always nice too.

good post

why do we care about this guy?