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The New Yorker
American Chronicles
March 11, 2013 Issue

Requiem for a Dream

Aaron Swartz was brilliant and beloved. But the people who knew him
best saw a darker side.
[macfarquha]

By Larissa MacFarquhar

March 3, 2013

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"This I suppose is the actual problem" Swartz wrote long before his
suicide. "I feel my existence is an imposition on...
"This, I suppose, is the actual problem," Swartz wrote, long before
his suicide. "I feel my existence is an imposition on the planet."
Illustration by Michael Gillette

HE COULD NOT deal with people talking about him. It's taken me some
time since he died to get used to talking about him because I was
under such strict instructions not to. But he fucked up something
really major. He made a really dumb, bad decision. And it's my right
now to ignore all the other things that I thought were dumb, too.
Maybe if I hadn't felt I couldn't talk about him to other people this
wouldn't have happened. I'm not going to let those preferences that
led, in one way or another, to him killing himself guide my life
anymore. I reject them.

Published in the print edition of the March 11, 2013, issue.
[macfarquha]
Larissa MacFarquhar, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author
of "Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the
Urge to Help."
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