Susan Klebold, mother of Dylan Klebold, speaks out for the first time since her son perpetrated one of the worst school shootings (with Eric Harris) and then took his own life ten years ago. I read the piece because I worked with Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, for a decade and was deeply involved in the story. After I read the piece, published in O Magazine, I put my head down on my kitchen table and wept. Her words of despair about the loss of her son and the guilt over the lives he took is rendered with tremendous clarity and honesty. I could not stop crying. In the end she talks about suicide, how it can be prevented, how she hopes her piece will help others see what she didn’t see. It’s not a neat ending. It’s just an ending.
I realized today that I never quite took it all in. Yes, there were always vivid moments, many of them, that Dave wrote about that were horrifying and heartbreaking no matter how many drafts I read. His efforts to understand the boys were nothing short of heroic. But for me, I was working on a manuscript with a writer, I was thinking about structure, tone, and transitions. When I talked about the people in the book I often referred to them as characters and thought about how to keep track of such a huge cast, how to keep readers from losing track. I thought about pacing. That is my job. That’s what I help writers do. And I think I’m guided by a deep feeling of empathy for people as much as by my desire help writers fully realize their creative work. But right now none of that seems like much.
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Betsy Lerner 
Thanks for this beautiful posting.
It’s one of the dangers in being a writer – the distance we sometimes develop from our characters, even when the characters are real people. Eventually though these things can catch up with us. I’d like to read the piece that Dylan Klebold’s mother wrote. I want to be moved too by the backstory.
For every story there are backstories and so often these stories are left out or forgotten.
It is time I read Columbine. I was so taken with Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, that I wept everytime I picked up the book and started to read.
I will steel myself for Columbine, because we, as human beings and writers, cannot understand our own characters or our own path in life until we hold close books and stories over which we weep.
How wonderful it is to say: “I have read this book and wept. I did not cry; I wept.” And then to think again and wish the story had not been true. All those young people!
I’m halfway through Columbine, and it’s amazing. You and Dave worked so hard on this, Betsy. Ten years, right? Your dedication is amazing, though not surprising from the little I know of you.
Columbine is incrediblely well written, and Dave does such a fine job of taking the reader through everything and everyone without judgement. The reader is given not just facts, but a complete story, and brings humanity to everyone involved.
It’s an amazing book written (and edited) with such grace.
“Art is a lie, which helps us realize the truth” Picasso
Your artful, detached, cold eye made that book the kind of book that brings a story home. That is some fine work, Betsy Lerner. I read “Columbine” with the same attention I give every emotionally urgent book and wept when I finished it.
Good job.
Want to read the book. Know I should read the book. Can’t bring myself to do so quite yet. It’s like going to see Schindler’s List back in 1993 . Facing the horrors of reality sometimes takes a forced determination. Maybe after I return from my trip to the beach. I’m thinking my beach reads can’t be anything that will make me weep.
And as much as my heart went out to all the victims’ families, I can’t even begin to comprehend how Eric and Dylan’s families have coped.
Columbine is a book I”ve been meaning to read. As a former teacher for at-risk teens I’ve intervened in situations involving weapons. No one died at my school but I read about my former students all the time; one serving a 99 year sentence for murder, another just arrested for armed robbery, another serving six years for a drive-by shooting, ten years for sexual assault, a suicide, a drug overdose, the list goes on,. All were kids who I read stories to, tried to bring out the best in their writing, took on camping trips, had countless meeting with their parents. Sometimes reading the police blotter is like being punched int he stomach. Yes, I’m going to pick up Columbine but my hands will probably be shaking a little when I crack the cover.
I read the post on a plane Friday, and have been trying to figure out how to do it justice with a response ever since.
First, I’m so glad you responded to Sue’s essay compassionately. I didn’t have time to cry, because a Today producer faxed it to me Sunday night just before we taped a segment and I had to race through it clinically. But there were several places I gasped. I just had to take a breath, not break down, but not plunge ahead right away either. The crying into the dish towel for some reason stays with me. It was so candid, so vivid, and what a story to tell. It’s been rough ten years for her, to put it lightly. I was disappointed by the callous response from a few of my peers. God.
I’m touring a lot again and get asked about Sue and Tom and Kathy and Wayne a lot. Some people (mostly those who have not yet read the book) are accusatory, but a whole lot just want to know if they’re OK. And they want to know how on earth they got through it.
That gives me faith in human beings. That enough people out there think to care.
Anyway, the essay shook me up a bit, too. I felt like I had a pretty good read on what Sue had been through, and I did, but in a general way. The specifics tore me up.
Professional distance is tricky. I was struggling with those same issues, of course: structure, pacing, tone, etc., and a lot of worrying about the reader keeping track of all these people. (At one point, I wiped out more than a hundred names in one pass. Anyone who was sort of a bystander or who just had one quote became “a sophomore” or “a mother,” to simplify it for the reader.) But I felt really close to these people, and to each event which (I was conceptualizing as each scene) and I sure needed you and Jon a little further back.
Your empathy came through. I don’t think I could have gotten very far with an editor who didn’t feel for the people in it. There was a lot of underbrush to hack away to tell that story clearly, and I only would have trusted someone who cared about it to help guide that scythe to chop it all away.
—
Thanks for all the great comments, which also give me hope. Elisabeth, if I understand your point, I agree, and feel that one of the big problems with much journalism is this supposed need for detachment much of the profession self-imposes. I think we need to be as objective as possible, but that doesn’t mean emotionally uninvolved. It’s easier to remain detached than to dive in emotionally and then pull yourself back before you write, but I don’t think it delivers what readers want or need.
It can be a bit dangerous to dive all the way in there, though. I had two bouts of secondary PTSD writing this book–a condition I didn’t even know existed when I started. But hey, I got over it. (And Betsy helped.) I wouldn’t go back and write it the detached way for a million bucks.
In the midst of that hellish story, life was affirmed again and again. That you were able to accomplish that astounded me. As a writer and a librarian, “Columbine” is a book I highly recommend.
COLUMBINE is an extraordinary book.
I think every person in America should read it.
I want to thank everyone for their moving comments.
Incredible support. Thank you.
BTW, when I said “I don’t think I could have gotten very far with an editor who didn’t feel for the people in it” I hope it was clear that I was referring to both Betsy and Jon.
They both got involved with it back in 2000, then it moved away from Jon and we circled back to him eight years later. They both had an enormous impact on the book. Thank God for great editors. They were a great team. Betsy was there all the way through, from helping me reconceptualize it back in 2003 and 2004, on to many rounds of editing. She was my rock all along the way.
I’ve been blessed with a lot of great editors. Before Jon and Betsy, I had Joan Walsh at Salon and David Plotz at Slate. They always made my stories better. I’ve worked with some editors where that was not the case. I didn’t pitch them again. When I work with someone good, I don’t feel like they are just improving that work–I still hear Joan in my head, and she really gave me the confidence to trust my voice; but also to listen when a smart person told me I was off the rails.
Hmmm. Am I off topic?
It’s been a shitty day. But this conversation right here has warmed my soul. Odd, given the topic. Enough people care, I think that’s what you said, Dave. Not more than enough, but enough. And that is enough. Thanks, Betsy, for creating the space for this little community to speak truthfully. It’s been a salve.