A Decidedly Dumb Thing I'll Likely Do Again

“What the fuck am I doing?” 

I’m almost certain I said this aloud at 3 A.M. in my cloistered studio apartment, which is, in fact, just a small bedroom with a modest bathroom attached. If I did, it was likely heard in the next room over, as the dividing walls are wafer-thin. I know this because I’ve been made privy to much of my neighbor’s shower crooning, and, more recently, a nasty hack of a cough that leads me to suspect that The Virus has entered the building. 

Let me explain. I promise that it won’t be especially illuminating or interesting.

This website was only recently conceived. I’m still figuring out what I’d like to do with it. More than anything, I’d like it to be a kind of rummage bin for ideas, somewhere to air thoughts that don’t conform to journalistic standards in the way of narrative formula and content. That, and maybe a respite for the disillusioned and chronically curious. Yeah. Something wildly idealistic like that. 

Anyways, I had started drafting a list of the books I read in 2020, complete with abbreviated reviews and favorite quotes. I had probably already devoted at least two hours to the thing, thinking I’d publish it on the site within the next few weeks. And I would’ve, too, if I wasn’t roused and shaken in the wee hours by the following self-appointed dis: ‘Who the absolute fuck would wanna read that?’

Of course, this sent me spinning into a biting series of thoughts in aforementioned dark, cloistered room: If my first love was creative writing, why was I pursuing journalism? If the goal was to dabble in experimental fiction, why had I settled so comfortably within the predictably diaristic, first-person narrative? And wasn’t this all kind of ‘showing my ass’ a little? I mean, if you consider writing to be an art form, it’s one of the most straightforwardly revealing of the ‘artist’ behind it. You can only hide so much behind language. It’s fucking intimate, man.

Obviously there are better creative mediums for the reserved. I just don’t have any sort of knack for them. I mean, at least I can put Ink to Page. Anyhow, at this point I was wide awake and feeling a little ill. I had concluded that I was just another millennial trying to Do Something that was ultimately an exercise in navel-gazing, and a total crock. Sleepless nights breed hasty hyperbole like that.

When in distress, I tend to turn to those who are more compelling in their misery. So naturally I turned to one of America’s favorite doomed darlings, David Foster Wallace. Love him or hate him, the man had a wickedly succulent mind*. (I also admittedly needed reassurance that a writer who leaned literary could deliver in the sphere of journalism.)

I flicked on my lamp, cracked my copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and started reading the title essay, in which Wallace details his weeklong stay on a luxury cruise. In the first few pages, Wallace makes it known that he is writing on assignment for Harper’s, that all expenses have been paid for by the magazine, and that this seafaring indulgence was not his idea. He is also predictably critical of his wealthy, cosmetically-altered company:

I have, in dark moods, viewed and logged every type of erythema, keratinosis, pre-melanomic lesion, liver spot, eczema, wart, papular cyst, potbelly, femoral cellulite, varicosity, collagen and silicone enhancement, bad tint, hair transplants that have not taken ― i.e. I have seen nearly naked a lot of people I would prefer not to have seen nearly naked.

But the line that follows hits hardest:

I have felt as bleak as I’ve felt since puberty, and have filled almost three Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me.

As someone who has too often been the moody bitch in the hoodie, I can promise it’s almost certainly Just You. The resident asshole. The snob. The fool. Prematurely dulled, disappointed, or disgusted by a perfectly harmless lot. More often than not --at least in my experience-- that's probably been the case.

In other words, whether you're staring at the ceiling at 3 A.M. or vigorously filling Mead notebooks, the conclusion is the same: Self-awareness is crippling, writers are creeps, and an attempt to sidestep the narcissistic anxiety of the digital age is a torturous exercise in futility.

If you'd like to hear from an expert on the matter, here's DFW in “E Unibus Pluram”:

The persons we young fiction writers and assorted shut-ins study, feel for, feel through most intently are, by virtue of a genius for feigned unselfconsciousness, fit to stand people’s gazes. And we, trying desperately to be nonchalant, perspire creepily on the subway.

Stay tuned for further perspiration.

XXX

*Here’s Bret Easton Ellis on DFW: "I often considered David the most overrated writer of our generation, as well as the most pretentious and tortured...But I still liked the idea of David and the fact that he existed, and I also think he was a genius." (I admire both writers for different reasons, and it doesn't surprise me that they weren't especially chummy.)

THIS STORY WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED via (the now defunct) thoughtrot.net.