Madeleine McCarthy is now in her early thirties. She’s a comedian and actress, and passes her days and nights amid a coterie of showy show business folks. One night at an after-show party she starts to see things differently.
Early thirty-something existential moment of truth, when you first realize that not everyone you worked with in your twenties is a genius, that some people are “wild and crazy” and others simply have a substance problem, that the alluring sexy-sad people are just depressive, that depression is rage slowed down, that mania is grief speeded up. That first great winnowing.
From The Way the Crow Flies, by Ann-Marie MacDonald (published 2003).
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An alcoholic in the hobo jungle: “He came up close to me so that I could smell his firey breath and look deep into the glaring hollows of his eyes. They had a feverish brainwashed wino emptiness. He was so far gone that he would never come back.”
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