Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Trapped in an elevator for 41 hours

This is topic Trapped in an elevator for 41 hours in forum Grist for the Mill at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by rich (Member # 8140) on :

Interesting article in The New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten

And the accompanying video on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bMhNI_TY8

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

What a story! (Though I think the author took too much advantage of the opportunity to pad the thing with all kinds of information about elevators.)

I particularly like the last paragraph, though:

quote:

Looking back on the experience now, with a peculiarly melancholic kind of bewilderment, he recognizes that he walked onto an elevator one night, with his life in one kind of shape, and emerged from it with his life in another. Still, he now sees that it wasn’t so much the elevator that changed him as his reaction to it. He has come to terms with the trauma of the experience but not with his decision to pursue a lawsuit instead of returning to work. If anything, it prolonged the entrapment. He won’t blame the elevator.

Posted by rich (Member # 8140) on :

Yeah, The New Yorker goes into excruciating details at times. I liked the whole article, but I like stuff like that. They did one on the guy that designs those water cannons that shoot water dozens of feet into the air and "dance" to music, and it was like a textbook at times.

But the elevator guy...yeah, it's amazing how certain things seem to change us. Certainly a good window into character development for anyone that wants/needs to write about that kind of thing.

I thought a great detail was the co-worker, who assumed that he ditched "her" (the gender's never stated, but I don't see a guy doing something like that; yeah, maybe sexist, but you know it's true--unless he's gay, then, yeah, maybe a guy), and taped "an angry screed" to the guy's monitor for all to see. Good stuff. And maybe tells us more about the guy and his own life pre-trapped.