The david foster wallace thing called The Depressed Person is really fantastic because there's nothing to say to it. it's amazing because it's whole, because as with anything where you get the big picture all these insane things conspire to make a logical whole. A horrific childhood happened to this person and from that stemmed a universe of unimpeachable feelings about the world. Those feelings are totally crazy and ridiculously unhealthy, and yet there's really nothing to undermine any of it. The only thing I could imagine saying to them was "chill out." The rigor of the depression was staggering.
What flows naturally from that rigor, from a god's eye view of one person's personal hideousness, is sympathy. It's the sympathy of a confounded person, a sympathy born of the recognition that that person's thoughts are coherent and that since you can't figure out what you'd do in their place you're forced to respect their intractable misery. The big picture! Everything always makes sense!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment