authors under the influence

[Daniel Julius]

David,

I don't think Wallace wants you to extinguish yr joint.  I know I don't.  I
read the other David's account of AA and NA in _Jest_ not as a cautionary
tale, a "reader: don't smoke big-bad weed cause it'll make you drool like
Hal," but as a really very dark and pessimistic extension of a greater
point -- that everything is essentially addictive.  That external stimuli as
innocent as tennis or rock music or whatever cause chemical changes in yr
brain, just like coke or heroin or Tylenol or anything else does, and that
drugs are just one of the many distractions modern people often turn to to
remind themselves to forget either their own mortality, or boredom, or
loneliness, or anhedonia or whatever psychically ails you, but ultimately,
to forget those nasty little truths lurking around our brains all the time
(if, that is, yer naturally depressive, which, you know, who isn't?).

Hal thinks (and I can hear all you fuckers groaning right now) that
"it...lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle...that people
could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on
caring this way for years on end.  Could dedicate their entire lives to it.
It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic" (900), and it's also, I
believe, inevitable.  Weed, God, Satan, Ween, The Grateful Dead, "politics
or grammar, topology or philately" (900), codeine, P-lists, Wallace lists,
or work, or anything: choose your distraction.  _Jest_ isn't Reefer Madness
propaganda, it's a profound empathetic gesture to the reader that says "I
know how you feel, modern human being; a lot of us feel the same way right
now."

IMO, anyway.  I just really like that damn book.

--
Dan
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