authors under the influence

[David Casseres]

There's an element of what you suggest, but the
everything-is-an-addiction trope was pretty well covered by Synanon,
which eventually turned into the über-addiction itself, finally
burning out as an incredibly destructive cult.  Having watched that go
down, my conclusion is that people tend to use the very concept of
addiction either to control others, or to let themselves be
controlled.

On 10/16/06, Daniel Julius <daniel.julius at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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