Originally published via The Daily Bell: With each successive generation, it seems we get one step closer in Western civilization to peak nihilism. The Twitter thread below starts with a truncated summary of Gen Z psychology (but also, I would argue, applicable to millennials, the generation I belong to): “to be serious is to be ‘cringe’, to be in love is to be a ‘simp’, and to be ambitious is to be a ‘try-hard’.”
I tell practically anyone who enjoys reading that if there's one book they should read before they die, it's "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. It's a door stop, but one of the most insightful tomes one can read today.
I had to request it from another county's library, so I wasn't allowed to keep it more than two weeks. I basically had to make a commitment to make that my top priority. I should probably just buy a copy and add it to my library. It's definitely worth reading more than once, and it makes a formidable door stop. I've got a book of essays which Wallace wrote the forward to. The book is worth the purchase price just for his contribution.
I tell practically anyone who enjoys reading that if there's one book they should read before they die, it's "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. It's a door stop, but one of the most insightful tomes one can read today.
I love Wallace's essays, especially the one about the cruise he went on. I started reading Infinite Jest once but goddamn it's thick.
I should give it another try.
I had to request it from another county's library, so I wasn't allowed to keep it more than two weeks. I basically had to make a commitment to make that my top priority. I should probably just buy a copy and add it to my library. It's definitely worth reading more than once, and it makes a formidable door stop. I've got a book of essays which Wallace wrote the forward to. The book is worth the purchase price just for his contribution.
Back in the day there was absurdism, but that was not so widespread.
it was a reactionary thing to the mainstream culture in the past, not the mainstream culture itself
A small but good movie about a moment in David Foster Wallace’s life is called “End of the Tour”: https://youtu.be/vcwU9fCBMM0