To the editor:
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May I offer a few thoughts inspired by John Greenfield’s profile of bike messenger-turned-author Travis Hugh Culley [March 30]? I haven’t read his book yet, but I can already tell the guy is a budding literary genius, maybe the next Jim Thompson. Consider, for example, the chilling economy with which Culley, using the passive voice to startling effect, evokes the solipsistic interior world of the true sociopath: “We [messengers]…can penetrate a crowd like it was a puff of smoke. There is no fear.”
The funny thing about this article is that prior to reading it, I was inclined to partially exonerate scary bike messengers as individuals, apportioning at least some of the blame for their behavior to the rules of the rat race. Now, however, I have learned that their aggressive riding practices are less a matter of economics, more the reflection of a grotesque subculture of narcissism and self-delusion.
