DFW - musings

One of the great ironies of our past generation is that a writer like dfw, who had exhibited a remarkable capacity for self-analysis and openness to self-improvement, took his own life. 

Anyone who has attempted to read Infinite Jest will recognize how ironic this is. That a writer of his calibre would do such a thing is such a puzzling mystery. Especially after the lengths to which he went to, in order to explicate the importance of connection and routine in our modern world, where people lose themselves to the lure of entertainment and self gratification. 

A cursory read of "This is Water" will bring this point to home. I'm not a fan of the encyclopedic novel genre. What I don't understand is a person's reluctance to hold on. 

I feel that the world has always been a hostile place and will continue to be so. And what little light can be found in it won't be found amidst the pages of lengthy volumes of late-western discursive philosophy that negates God. It won't be found amidst the likes of Focault, or Camus, or absurdists. All of them are mere apostles of darkness. Their arguments are fashioned not out of the cold indiscriminate scrutiny of objectivity and reason, but fancies and whims of the self. 

You can pretend and position farcical mouth-fillers like Pinker all you want. At the end of the day, they're nothing but slaves of the self. Not self-acknowledged servants of Truth.