{"id":13283,"date":"2008-09-15T23:23:38","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T03:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=13283"},"modified":"2014-01-23T15:38:32","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T20:38:32","slug":"feeling-human-and-unalone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/09\/15\/feeling-human-and-unalone\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling human and unalone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to E. E. Knight, I was alerted to this interview with David Foster Wallace which originally appeared in Salon<\/i> back in 1996<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I was particularly taken by this passage, which grows even more poignant in light of the author’s recent suicide:<\/p>\n

What do you think is uniquely magical about fiction?<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh, Lordy, that could take a whole day! Well, the first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don’t know what you’re thinking or what it’s like inside you and you don’t know what it’s like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way. But that’s just the first level, because the idea of mental or emotional intimacy with a character is a delusion or a contrivance that’s set up through art by the writer. There’s another level that a piece of fiction is a conversation. There’s a relationship set up between the reader and the writer that’s very strange and very complicated and hard to talk about. A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I’m sitting in a chair. There’s real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn’t make me feel less lonely.<\/p>\n

There’s a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I’m in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don’t with other art.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m saddened that the art Wallace loved wasn’t enough to keep him from feeling so alone as to have saved him.<\/p>\n

But I guess it’s naive of me to even think that it could.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to E. E. Knight, I was alerted to this interview with David Foster Wallace which originally appeared in Salon back in 1996. I was particularly taken by this passage, which grows even more poignant in light of the author’s recent suicide: What do you think is uniquely magical about fiction? Oh, Lordy, that could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[469],"class_list":["post-13283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-foster-wallace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13285,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283\/revisions\/13285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}