“At a certain point we’re gonna have to build up some machinery, inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by by people who do not love us but want our money.”
I think about this all the time. The more we tolerate it the easier it gets to accept.
Awesome article. As a total DFWhead, I wanted to add a few more from his fiction, since I think that's become under discussed thanks to all of his amazing essays and interviews.
9. Depression Feels Like Truth
The short story "The Depressed Person" from Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is largely a demonstration of this point, explaining the various degrees depressed people go to convince everyone in their life that their worldview is purely fact-based, and how apt the mind it at convincing you it's right about everything, permanently.
10. Suicide Is A Constant Temptation--And Its Temptation Is Oblivious To Those Around You
"Good Old Neon" (from the story collection Oblivion), is a first-person monologue of Neal, a handsome, smart, successful man who struggles with impostor syndrome and feels like a complete fraud. He eventually decides to kill himself in a car accident and as the frame drops, we realize the story is actually a writing exercise from the perspective of David Wallace, who was desperate to understand why someone who had such a good life on the outside succumbed to suicide. Of course, this is only made more haunting by the fact that four years after the story's publication, Macarthur-winning best-selling author and happily married David Foster Wallace killed himself too.
11. Attention Is More Important Than Intellect
The Pale King, DFW's unfinished final novel, follows a group of Midwestern IRS agents to show, essentially, what it is like to be bored out of your mind. David Fogle, a drifting, distracted young man is treated as a hero as he struggles to find focus in the midst of paperwork, exams, and endless bureaucratic repetition. One scene stands out: watching As the World Turns in his dorm, Fogle realizes his own aimlessness isn’t just adolescent laziness, it's nihilism. He learns that paying attention, even to the dullest tasks, is a choice that creates meaning, and that heroism can exist in mundane work if you engage with it fully. Wallace repeatedly returns to these repeated forms, drills, and rituals to show that sustaining attention is the real work of life.
12. Surrender, Not Smarts, Leads To Survival
In Infinite Jest, DFW's magnum opus, Don Gately is a recovering addict, former burglar, and live-in staffer at Ennet House, a sober living facility. Early in the novel, he struggles to stay clean while facing constant temptation and the consequences of his past, including violent confrontations and the shadow of his own self-destructiveness. He eventually realizes that his intellect alone can never outsmart his addiction, it will only feed it. What enables his survival (and triumph) is embracing the simple, ritualized structure of AA: repetitive steps, corny slogans, routines, and service to others. Wallace shows that meaningfulness and resilience come not from cleverness or insight but from disciplined attention and humble surrender. Like all of his fiction, DFW's lessons here came from his own life: Infinite Jest was based on his struggles to get clean before writing the novel (and his amateur tennis career, of course!).
Right on. He also wrote that we'll be unable to govern ourselves or thrive without a Democratic Spirit, which he defined as "“one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus a sedulous respect for the convictions of others.” That's from Authority And American Usage (collected in Consider the Lobster), one of the greatest essays of the 20th century and one I read every couple of years as this shit show gets ever more grim in just the ways DFW feared.
Sometimes i wonder whats the point in stuff like this. Both wallaces writing and stuff like this article. Everybody knowingly says yeees.. and go right back to the same old shit. Nobody ever listens to *timely* advice. I probably wouldnt either, unless i already pretty much agreed with it.
So yeah, lots of people, well known or not, have been warning us about wtf is going to happen to us if we continue on a path. Its not that hard to see, if ones paying attention.
Seems like the only thing to come out of it is getting to say i told you so, something wallace missed out on, and something nobody likes.
People dont like the advice, or the reminder theyve been so advised. I guess they just *want* to do the shit they do(again, me too).
I guess theres an entertainment element to stuff like this. Theres like a oooo! vibe to predictions come true. And you really cant make this shit up. But humans as a whole are about as dense as they come
It's a shame that the cohorts that might benefit the most from a deep dive into Wallace (novels & essays), probably consider their social media time serious reading.
"And finally, on a personal level, we can embrace Wallace’s plea for more kindness and compassion. We don’t need anybody’s permission to do that, and we can start immediately."
Can't help making the connection in these trying times that the cardinal stoic virtue of justice is grounded in kindness and compassion. Thank you, Ted, for not just reminding us, but exhorting us, to see that the road to a well lived life is filled with love, culture and individual acts of kindness.
Powerful, Ted. Thanks for sharing. I'll make a point of getting to know DFW's material much better. I'm at work presently reviewing a few drafts of an RFP I'm submitting next week, and my team has only assembled what is clearly digital AI slop. My message to my team: where is the "human" in this narrative? If we are going to not only differentiate ourselves but indeed survive, we have to lean hard - if not exclusively - into that which makes us human, connected, engaged, capable of emotion, etc.
Oh my gosh! I so hope you enjoy it. I’ve read it twice and it might be time for a reread. I recommend keeping a bookmark in the footnotes section as you read.
A DFW piece is always timely. He must be sipped slowly and savored. It can be exhausting, and inspiring. Even his reports from the Vegas Porn convention were profound. His screen warnings are coming true at the speed of chips…and we all know...but thats why they call it addiction. Were hooked. Its baked in. We read this on a screen. There is no evil plot, there’s only the profit motive. Maybe our AI robot buddies will reconnect us.
I once cobbled together random lines of his into a my ears only tribute piece about suicide that I revisit from time to time just to swim in it. And speaking of swimming, his “What is water” is worth the search…but you’ll need a screen.
Truth. Technology isolates. It offers continual distraction. Neil Postman had much the same concerns in his book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business'... published in 1985. The dilemma may be in observing that it's all well and good to conclude that there is no guarantee of happiness in life, and that Meaning lies outside of oneself, beyond any collection of brightly-lit screens... but seeing very few others choosing to walk that lonely road less traveled.
“At a certain point we’re gonna have to build up some machinery, inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by by people who do not love us but want our money.”
I think about this all the time. The more we tolerate it the easier it gets to accept.
Thank you for writing this.
Awesome article. As a total DFWhead, I wanted to add a few more from his fiction, since I think that's become under discussed thanks to all of his amazing essays and interviews.
9. Depression Feels Like Truth
The short story "The Depressed Person" from Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is largely a demonstration of this point, explaining the various degrees depressed people go to convince everyone in their life that their worldview is purely fact-based, and how apt the mind it at convincing you it's right about everything, permanently.
10. Suicide Is A Constant Temptation--And Its Temptation Is Oblivious To Those Around You
"Good Old Neon" (from the story collection Oblivion), is a first-person monologue of Neal, a handsome, smart, successful man who struggles with impostor syndrome and feels like a complete fraud. He eventually decides to kill himself in a car accident and as the frame drops, we realize the story is actually a writing exercise from the perspective of David Wallace, who was desperate to understand why someone who had such a good life on the outside succumbed to suicide. Of course, this is only made more haunting by the fact that four years after the story's publication, Macarthur-winning best-selling author and happily married David Foster Wallace killed himself too.
11. Attention Is More Important Than Intellect
The Pale King, DFW's unfinished final novel, follows a group of Midwestern IRS agents to show, essentially, what it is like to be bored out of your mind. David Fogle, a drifting, distracted young man is treated as a hero as he struggles to find focus in the midst of paperwork, exams, and endless bureaucratic repetition. One scene stands out: watching As the World Turns in his dorm, Fogle realizes his own aimlessness isn’t just adolescent laziness, it's nihilism. He learns that paying attention, even to the dullest tasks, is a choice that creates meaning, and that heroism can exist in mundane work if you engage with it fully. Wallace repeatedly returns to these repeated forms, drills, and rituals to show that sustaining attention is the real work of life.
12. Surrender, Not Smarts, Leads To Survival
In Infinite Jest, DFW's magnum opus, Don Gately is a recovering addict, former burglar, and live-in staffer at Ennet House, a sober living facility. Early in the novel, he struggles to stay clean while facing constant temptation and the consequences of his past, including violent confrontations and the shadow of his own self-destructiveness. He eventually realizes that his intellect alone can never outsmart his addiction, it will only feed it. What enables his survival (and triumph) is embracing the simple, ritualized structure of AA: repetitive steps, corny slogans, routines, and service to others. Wallace shows that meaningfulness and resilience come not from cleverness or insight but from disciplined attention and humble surrender. Like all of his fiction, DFW's lessons here came from his own life: Infinite Jest was based on his struggles to get clean before writing the novel (and his amateur tennis career, of course!).
Right on. He also wrote that we'll be unable to govern ourselves or thrive without a Democratic Spirit, which he defined as "“one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus a sedulous respect for the convictions of others.” That's from Authority And American Usage (collected in Consider the Lobster), one of the greatest essays of the 20th century and one I read every couple of years as this shit show gets ever more grim in just the ways DFW feared.
DFW was a visionary who died too young. “Federer as a religious experience” was a masterpiece. Here is a similar piece on Alcaraz: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/carlos-alcaraz-white-pill
Sometimes i wonder whats the point in stuff like this. Both wallaces writing and stuff like this article. Everybody knowingly says yeees.. and go right back to the same old shit. Nobody ever listens to *timely* advice. I probably wouldnt either, unless i already pretty much agreed with it.
So yeah, lots of people, well known or not, have been warning us about wtf is going to happen to us if we continue on a path. Its not that hard to see, if ones paying attention.
Seems like the only thing to come out of it is getting to say i told you so, something wallace missed out on, and something nobody likes.
People dont like the advice, or the reminder theyve been so advised. I guess they just *want* to do the shit they do(again, me too).
I guess theres an entertainment element to stuff like this. Theres like a oooo! vibe to predictions come true. And you really cant make this shit up. But humans as a whole are about as dense as they come
Wow, so prescient.
It's a shame that the cohorts that might benefit the most from a deep dive into Wallace (novels & essays), probably consider their social media time serious reading.
"And finally, on a personal level, we can embrace Wallace’s plea for more kindness and compassion. We don’t need anybody’s permission to do that, and we can start immediately."
Can't help making the connection in these trying times that the cardinal stoic virtue of justice is grounded in kindness and compassion. Thank you, Ted, for not just reminding us, but exhorting us, to see that the road to a well lived life is filled with love, culture and individual acts of kindness.
Powerful, Ted. Thanks for sharing. I'll make a point of getting to know DFW's material much better. I'm at work presently reviewing a few drafts of an RFP I'm submitting next week, and my team has only assembled what is clearly digital AI slop. My message to my team: where is the "human" in this narrative? If we are going to not only differentiate ourselves but indeed survive, we have to lean hard - if not exclusively - into that which makes us human, connected, engaged, capable of emotion, etc.
Just pulled Infinite Jest from it's shelf last night; picked it up at McKays a couple a months ago. I'll take this essay as a sign to dive in.
Oh my gosh! I so hope you enjoy it. I’ve read it twice and it might be time for a reread. I recommend keeping a bookmark in the footnotes section as you read.
Thanks for the tip. I'll do that.
The 2006 book 'Mediated' by my teacher Tom de Zengotita is also highly prescient about these topics. Highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/Mediated-Media-Shapes-Your-World/dp/1596910321
I needed this piece right now. Thank you. Love is the answer, it always is.
Startlingly prescient. Even in nascent form, the screens made us a danger to ourselves.
A DFW piece is always timely. He must be sipped slowly and savored. It can be exhausting, and inspiring. Even his reports from the Vegas Porn convention were profound. His screen warnings are coming true at the speed of chips…and we all know...but thats why they call it addiction. Were hooked. Its baked in. We read this on a screen. There is no evil plot, there’s only the profit motive. Maybe our AI robot buddies will reconnect us.
I once cobbled together random lines of his into a my ears only tribute piece about suicide that I revisit from time to time just to swim in it. And speaking of swimming, his “What is water” is worth the search…but you’ll need a screen.
I tried reading 'Infinite Jest'. But with the best will in the world I found it very boring and couldn't finish it.
Surely meditation would have solved all these problems.
Truth. Technology isolates. It offers continual distraction. Neil Postman had much the same concerns in his book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business'... published in 1985. The dilemma may be in observing that it's all well and good to conclude that there is no guarantee of happiness in life, and that Meaning lies outside of oneself, beyond any collection of brightly-lit screens... but seeing very few others choosing to walk that lonely road less traveled.