Not P but DFW: by way of sheer ontology

[Mike Jing]

That makes sense. Thanks, Mark.


On Sun, Jul 13, 2025 at 7:16 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> "by way of one's sheer "being"", one's very existence as a tourist in the
> unspoiled places
>
> ......[ontology is the study of being
>
> On Sun, Jul 13, 2025 at 6:59 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The following excerpt is from David Foster Wallace's essay *Consider the
>> Lobster*:
>>
>> To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American:
>> alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed
>> in
>> a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the
>> very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself
>> on
>> places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you.
>> It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to
>> confront
>> a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a
>> tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome,
>> an insect on a dead thing.
>>
>> What does "by way of sheer ontology" mean here?
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>