I happened upon this David Foster Wallace interview today. If you know anything about him, you know that he committed suicide back in 2008.
Toward the end of the interview Charlie Rose asked David about his drug use and about a previous suicide attempt. David said that instant fame is hard on a twenty-something year old.
He also said that fame is unsatisfying – especially when critics don’t experience your work as you intended.
On the one hand you are a shy library nerd who doesn’t really want fame and on the other hand you voraciously crave it.
It’s a craving that is never satisfied.
I wonder if hell on earth is like that – a craving that is never satisfied.
I wonder if hell in hell is like that, too.
P.S. After borrowing “The End of the Tour” from Redbox a few months ago, I was curious about David’s wife and found this article. Just fyi.
You are exactly right, I think, about hell: as here, the eternally unsatisfactory pursuit of what the self wants. I preached a sermon on his brilliant Kenyon College speech “This Is Water.” #SoGood
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Great speech, watched it on YouTube awhile back. Is your sermon archived somewhere?
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