CHRISTMAS AND 2009
The Big Three of this year are, I think, obvious: election; economy; DFW. What these three kind of get at sums up what it means to be — for me at least and I’m sure for many of you — a person who — um, this is pretty hyperbolic but completely genuine — categorically denies that life is nothing more than a slow, boring death.
#1: Obama co-opted the language of a spiritual reality that spoke to pretty much everyone I know and won big. If you doubt that’s the case, then remember the last words of his DNC acceptance speech: “…and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.” Obama’s message of holding fast to hope resonates because this belief is either a) a trick of evolution that steers us away from self-annihilation; b) the crazy truth. Taken out of context, this language of hope feels rather nebulous: did anyone else ask, “What is it that Obama wants us to invest our hope in?” He’s got too much common sense to suggest in any way that government’s the solution and has too much humility to imply that he himself is gonna make straight the path leading forward. No, there’s little question that whom he wants us to believe in is none other than you and me and him together — the pronoun of the campaign, the pronoun of the calendar year: WE!!!!! This leads to #2.
#2: The collapse of the modern financial system exposed something that we generally try to keep under wraps: that is, we are pretty terrible at being WE. It’s not the we’re too greedy or don’t care about others — it’s simply that we just don’t know what to do with our autonomy. This cuts both ways. One obvious factor in this whole mess was the rapacity of some lenders to prey on first time homeowners. Another was social policy, though well intended, that encouraged homeownership for folks who had no cash money to pay for their mortgages. Both contributed to the propping up of a financial system that proved to be way overleveraged, way undercapitalized, the remnants of which bankruptcy lawyers and Neel Kashkari are having a field day sorting out. When it comes down to it, we just aren’t very good at being social individuals: responsible to others, yet free to will. We’re bad at being WE and if we’re really gonna believe in this thing called hope, we better look outward, not inward. This leads to #3.
#3: The suicide death of DFW means a lot more to me than either the Obama victory or the economic morass. I once considered myself a DFW superfan: attended numerous readings/signings (thinking now about my autographed hardcopy of IJ makes me sad when it used to make me feel, for lack of a better word, cool); imitated — badly — his style for an AP English essay on creativity-cum-onanism; read Infinite Jest 2x, so devastated by it that I still believe that no American writer will come close in my lifetime to going as huge as DFW did and succeed in showing me and you exactly what it is that makes these times so freaking weird and lonely and alienating. I was a DFW superfan. Then, I don’t know, after Hideous Men, I thought about DFW less often. I became passionate about other people. I transitioned from being an admirer to becoming a practitioner. Then, one night, I read on the NYTimes website that DFW was discovered dead. At home. By his wife. Can you imagine? His wife.
DFW looked inward and at the greatest cost, showed us who we are — broken and alone. We are the way we are because we are neither whole nor at home. DFW knew this; moreover, he went so far as to suggest that all this talk about how all you need to do is learn how to love yourself or put your foot down or know more and more stuff — DFW showed us all how dehumanizing and delusional such beliefs are. Hence, his admonition ““to need help”. Or, more poignantly, his notion of an entertainment so enjoyable that whoever watches it will die (IJ). DFW looked inside and exposed what we all know is true of ourselves — this becomes easier and easier to admit as we get older it seems — which is exactly why hope can’t be earned, but graced upon us. DFW knew this, but sadly, what he knew he could not believe.
My desire this Christmas and in the new year is that we act sacrificially — which I think is what Obama actually asks us to do —, but that we hope in the one who is with us and for us — Immanuel.
LOVE
ALEX