'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
theguardian.com
'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
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Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#2truly talented writer, not really the kind of guy who should be held up as a moral teacher. had a long-term pattern of sleeping with his students. committed serious domestic violence against one of his partners.
this wasn't well-known at the time this speech was given, or after he killed himself and the speech became hugely popular. It seems like it still isn't.
I think there's some kind of minimum bar where you shouldn't take spiritual and moral advice from somebody.
Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#3I find no way to phrase it and it's always taken as an attack or troll, so I wonder if anyone knows a proper framework for this argument (whether you agree with it or not): "If you know someone committed suicide, it seems ill-advised to read their thinking. Whether or not it's "advice" and whether or not you read with detachment, what we take in, comes from someone's psyche, echoes and transforms and embeds in our own unconscious. And so we are, however subtly, taking on some part of a psyche - the logic, beliefs etc., that leads to seeing life as not worth living, regardless of how enlightening it seems on the face of it." Something to do with epistemological...something?
Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#4truly talented writer, not really the kind of guy who should be held up as a moral teacher. had a long-term pattern of sleeping with his students. committed serious domestic violence against one of his partners. this wasn't well-known at the time this speech was given, or after he killed himself and the speech became hugely popular. It seems like it still isn't. I think there's some kind of minimum bar where you shou…
I think if you erased the name of the author, and prefaced the post with "Here's some life advice from a man who committed suicide 3 years after giving it" - few people would give this a second glance. I'm more inclined to do the exact opposite of what he says, because clearly it didn't work for him.
DFW - a great author, and a profoundly sad human. Enjoy his works but don't look to him for anything more than entertainment.
Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#5I find no way to phrase it and it's always taken as an attack or troll, so I wonder if anyone knows a proper framework for this argument (whether you agree with it or not): "If you know someone committed suicide, it seems ill-advised to read their thinking. Whether or not it's "advice" and whether or not you read with detachment, what we take in, comes from someone's psyche, echoes and transforms and embeds in our ow…
Garbage In, Garbage Out?
I don't think it is dangerous in itself to read his thinking, because everyone is coming at it from a different experience than DFW. But it would be dangerous to hold his thoughts up as some ideal to strive for, as opposed to hold his thoughts up as evidence that incredibly talented people can also be incredibly broken.
Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#6truly talented writer, not really the kind of guy who should be held up as a moral teacher. had a long-term pattern of sleeping with his students. committed serious domestic violence against one of his partners. this wasn't well-known at the time this speech was given, or after he killed himself and the speech became hugely popular. It seems like it still isn't. I think there's some kind of minimum bar where you shou…
What if the advice that would really help someone just happens to be from people who are all below this person's purity test bar?
Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#7I find no way to phrase it and it's always taken as an attack or troll, so I wonder if anyone knows a proper framework for this argument (whether you agree with it or not): "If you know someone committed suicide, it seems ill-advised to read their thinking. Whether or not it's "advice" and whether or not you read with detachment, what we take in, comes from someone's psyche, echoes and transforms and embeds in our ow…
If someone killed themselves then they most likely experienced negative emotions very strongly. Not everyone does. The insight that can be gained about existence from someone with such an extreme phenomenological experience (i.e, someone who feels like everything is a kind of soulless torture, as he makes clear in the essay) might be useful for people on a more even keel. He talks about having to constantly remind himself that his negative outlook is only one way of looking at things. It didn’t seem to be enough for him, but it might still be helpful for me to think about. I highly doubt that many people have read his essays and were driven to suicide. I do think many people have read his essays and learned something about their own nature.
Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#8truly talented writer, not really the kind of guy who should be held up as a moral teacher. had a long-term pattern of sleeping with his students. committed serious domestic violence against one of his partners. this wasn't well-known at the time this speech was given, or after he killed himself and the speech became hugely popular. It seems like it still isn't. I think there's some kind of minimum bar where you shou…
Also, would there not be value in the words from someone who had experience with moral corruption? If I wanted to hear what the world was like outside the city walls, I'd expect that person to have gone outside the city walls before.
Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#9truly talented writer, not really the kind of guy who should be held up as a moral teacher. had a long-term pattern of sleeping with his students. committed serious domestic violence against one of his partners. this wasn't well-known at the time this speech was given, or after he killed himself and the speech became hugely popular. It seems like it still isn't. I think there's some kind of minimum bar where you shou…
Also, would there not be value in the words from someone who had experience with moral corruption? If I wanted to hear what the world was like outside the city walls, I'd expect that person to have gone outside the city walls before.
i see what you’re saying in the broader case — i can imagine it would be worth listening to someone who had reckoned with the evil they did — but that’s not how people sold DFW.
The pitch was “here’s a book of good advice from a man who was brilliant, morally decent, and struggled with depression”.
Re: 'Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions' (2008)
#10truly talented writer, not really the kind of guy who should be held up as a moral teacher. had a long-term pattern of sleeping with his students. committed serious domestic violence against one of his partners. this wasn't well-known at the time this speech was given, or after he killed himself and the speech became hugely popular. It seems like it still isn't. I think there's some kind of minimum bar where you shou…
People can have flaws and do things wrong and still be right about some things. Indeed, everyone has flaws and does things wrong, so if you're looking for someone who doesn't before you consider any advice, you're unlikely to ever be able to learn anything.
If someone failed out of school and tells you to study hard, are you going to discount their advice because they failed to live up to it?