Presumably like most people who read this article, I finished it and then immediately went off to read Snows of Kilimanjaro, trying to understand it as McCain did. Like @MarkSalter55, I remembered it as a story of heartbreaking regret.
https://twitter.com/MarkSalter55/status/1315595062731046918
Upon re-reading it, I discovered that it is indeed a story of heartbreaking regret. There's no other way to read it.
If you read it in middle-age, during a pandemic, from the bedroom where you've sat for months--
If you read it in middle-age, during a pandemic, from the bedroom where you've sat for months--
--months that increasingly seem like years, stale, flat, weary and unprofitable, slowly reviewing, in your mind, the ambitions of your youth, your memories of Paris and Istanbul when you were younger--
you'll be at a loss to see how anyone, McCain included, could read it any other way.
It's not a story of aspiration. It's a story of failed aspiration.
Not that I'd have any insight into how that feels, mind you.
It's not a story of aspiration. It's a story of failed aspiration.
Not that I'd have any insight into how that feels, mind you.
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