Clinical depression.
"Instead of just incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is ITSELF a feeling. It goes by many names - anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton's melancholia
or Yevtuschenko's more authoritative psychotic depression-but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as IT."
From "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" (DFW, 1999, p. 169: "The way she finally concluded that something was wrong with her was: either something was really wrong with her, or something was worong with her for irrationally worrying about whether something was wrong with her. The logic of this seemed airtight."
ReplyDeleteAh yes - the air-tight logic. Too much thought?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the too much thinking was something that undermined DFW's own health?
BTW - who is "she"? Gonna have to read this at some point.
I'm SURE that the "too much thinking" undermined DFW's health, as it likely does with many, many people whose minds begin working and spinning in damaging ways. I think physical hypochondria also works this way.
ReplyDelete"She" is the "young wife" in "Adult World, Pt. 1" in BIWHM - it's another collection of his.
So you do think that then? That too much thinking can undermine a person? Maybe that's why I had such a terrible January. I do believe that I was depressed on some level. (I learned later that our GP later admitted to the Blonde Woman that he was "worried" about me. (Wonder why he didn't tell me that? Or take some action?)) That's when I started reading the deep, dense, difficult IJ - and starting thinking (more than I usually do?). I thought maybe it was my usual seasonal depression - or my drinking. But maybe it was my thinking. Look at the number of posts in the blog archive. Seems a bit obsessive and crazy. But enough about me and my pain - this "novel" was hard enough to read - what could it possibly have been like to write it?
ReplyDeleteYes, I think that too much thinking can take you down dark paths. Or at least to the entrance to these paths, and then it's up to you to choose whether to follow them into the dark or not. Me, I prefer these days when I get to a place like that just to look a little way into the dark, just sort of peering in from the entrance. And I don't necessarily view this just-peering, this not plunging in down the paths themselves, as fear. The refusal to wade in is just as much being occupied with other, more rewarding things.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this means that one potentially interesting line of thinking remains veiled. But having wandered in more than once, I'm not convinced that this line is worth pursuing - or, ultimately, all that interesting anyway.
A healthy (or unhealthy?) portion of the world's literature and philosophy (not to mention its music), written by marginal, oft-depressed outcasts, finally reaches this impasse: yes, life is meaningless; yes, we're all doomed; no, there's no final redemption or reward. Some of the most pessimistic thinkers (hello, Arthur Schopenhauer) assert that given these absolutes, we might as well give up now - "reject life," etc. But how to do that, except by committing suicide? And if you do off yourself, what does that prove anyway?
Others - bigger thinkers, I like to imagine, like Goethe - seem to conclude that yes, the human condition is a bitch, but so what? Might as well soldier on and just deal with it.
I think that if you can have a good time, at least for a while (and if you're lucky, for most of your three-score-and-ten), then you might as well indeed. If your good time also involves other people, and your enjoyment brings them enjoyment as well, so much the better. Sometimes I think that the pessimists were and are not necessarily "deeper" thinkers at all - merely marginal misfits. Losers, brooders. The kinds of guys who quit the team, or never sign up to begin with.
Yeah. You never know what you're going to find if you enter. I do think that there is plenty of pessimism but what interests me and sometimes concerns me (about myself?) is the de-stabilization that occurs; how the flight of imagination (the incandescence (which to my mind is actually a very positive thing)) is not manageable by many minds - if any (when you consider how great DFW's talent was). You know it's like when you choose to enter - you are risking your life (sanity) for the sake of your talent, your incandescence and more importantly for the great incandescence of life. You are sacrificing.
ReplyDeleteCome what may - dark cynicism or weird travels of the mind - you are sacrificing.
The symbol that I have created in my mind of DFW and his talent is one of the Big Bang - where his talent just one day exploded and unleashed it's power and beauty (infinitely) on a universe - and left us with something fantastic but hard to grasp.
But, you know, there is a more traditional and powerful, symbol too that comes to mind (now that I have read more about the Great Gately and what maybe was behind JOI and Hal and the whole story): I see Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of Man (Adam) reaching out to touch the hand of God. I could be wrong at the end. Only a few pages to go. I have already predicted that this story is about talent. But maybe I was thinking that when I wasn't sure that this was a "novel". I am now thinking that this story is about something bigger. The incandescence is not talent. It's maybe love. Gately dismisses the Wraith in the end but I don't know: the idea that James Incandenza (Himself) was making all of those films because he wanted to help his son, talk to his son, suggests to me a story of love. Father, son, love. God? Sadly it's apparently a love unrealized. A failed entertainment. I guess I'll have to keep reading to find out. But you know, I have for a while now being asking - "Why read? why write?" - and I have to say that I am very grateful that DFW was able to go down that dangerous path and make his sacrifices. The writing couldn't have been easy and couldn't have helped keep him stable - but he gave the world a great gift.