21–25 of 25 posts
I am profoundly scandalized that they edited 500 pages out of this monument. Give them to me. Now. I need them.
Agreed. And I wonder what the Pale King would have looked like if he had gotten the chance to defend it from cuts.
I guess what makes me sad is that I would like my generation to realize that it would be way better for us, like inside, in our stomachs, to be willing to pay higher taxes to be able to shelter and feed poor people, not for their sake but for ours, so that we would be the sort of culture that doesn’t let people die. And instead we’re all so worried about an extra 4% off our monthly paycheck that we get all exercised…
I guess what makes me sad is that I would like my generation to realize that it would be way better for us, like inside, in our stomachs, to be willing to pay higher taxes to be able to shelter and feed poor people, not for their sake but for ours, so that we would be the sort of culture that doesn’t let people die. And instead we’re all so worried about an extra 4% off our monthly paycheck that we get all exercised…
This is a beautiful sentiment from one of my favorite writers, but it also highlights why these arguments are so often unproductive. Obviously, there are people who think that handouts result in a net loss in happiness for the world. Especially in progressive nations with functioning economies. You might disagree with that calculus, but it's silly to think that the people on the other side are just big meanies.
Pleasantly surprised to see this on HN. I've read all of DFW's work and he's such an interesting writer/human being. The biography "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story" is a must-read for anyone who's interested. My favorite lines he wrote are in IJ: "you'll worry a lot less about what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do."
Interesting -- I've also read (nearly) all of DFW's work, but I've held out on ELSISAGS due to unflattering reviews. Why is ELSISAGS a must-read for you, and what do you say to reviewers who call it an insubstantial pop biography?
I found I couldn't put ELSISAGS down -- I think it's because I so desperately want to get as complete a picture of DFW as possible and the book more than anything helped me understand what DFW was really up against w/r/t his depression and its presence throughout his life. If anything, I found that ELSISAGS demystified DFW to some extent, though maybe part of that is my getting older, too.
>The idea, though, that improved technology is going to solve the problems that the technology has caused seems to me to be a bit quixotic. I understand that there’s a certain amount of hope about the Internet democratizing people and activating them. The fact of the matter is that it seems to me if you’ve still got a nation of people sitting in front of screens interacting with images rather than each other, feeling lonely and so needing more and more images, you’re going to have the same basic problem. And the better the images get, the more tempting it’s going to be to interact with images rather than other people, and I think the emptier it’s going to get. That’s just a suspicion and just my own opinion.