50th Wedding Anniversary Poems

DMV: An Incomplete List of Writers Who Met Death by Motor Vehicle

Is it my imagination, or do an inordinate number of writers die in motor vehicle accidents?  Maybe I tend to notice these grisly deaths because I’m a writer, an avid reader of obituaries, and also a car lover with a deep fear of dying in a crash.  But I’m convinced by years of accumulated empirical evidence that writers outnumber the percentage of, say, nurses or teachers or accountants who die in car and motorcycle accidents.  (Similarly, an inordinate number of musicians seem to die in plane crashes, including the Big Bopper, John Denver, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Ritchie Valens and Ronnie Van Zant , to name a few.)

Why do so many writers die in motor vehicle mishaps?  Are they reckless drivers?  Prone to bad luck?  Likely to indulge in risky behavior?  I don’t pretend to know the answer(s), but I have noticed, sadly, that writers who die in crashes are frequently on the cusp of greatness or in the midst of some promising project; sometimes they’re at the peak of their careers.  I offer this list in chronological order, aware it isn’t exhaustive.  Feel free to add to it in the comments.  Think of this as a living tribute to writers who left us too soon:

T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) – Lawrence of Arabia , Lawrence’s account of his experiences during the Great War, made him an international celebrity, though he called the book “a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people.”  An inveterate letter writer, Lawrence also published his correspondence with Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, E.M. Forster and many others.  He dreamed that victory on the desert battlefield would result in an autonomous Arab state, but negotiators at the Paris peace conference had very different ideas, prompting Lawrence to write bitterly, “Youth could win but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age.  We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven on earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”