Then you're deriving your satisfaction from talking about your work, by acting like a writer, as opposed to by writing, so paradoxically you'd probably get less done.

[...] And there's nothing more grotesque than somebody who's going around, "I'm a writer, I'm a writer, I'm a writer." It's a very fine line. I don't mind appearing in Rolling Stone, but I don't want to appear in Rolling Stone as somebody who wants to be in Rolling Stone.

It's the whole pomo dance, that whole kind of thing. So my worry--I don't really have much integrity. Because what I'm really worried is, looking like the sort of person who would appear at these parties. Now, the difference between that, and sort of being the person who doesn't want them is unclear to me.

Educated Republicans: the racism here is very quiet, very systematic.

[...] And then you get, like, you start being able to make a living. So you get all that affirmation from the exterior, that when you're a young person you think will make everything all right. [...] But to realize--like you say, when it happens to you, when you realize, "Holy shit, this doesn't make everything all right." Um, for me, it fucked with my sort of "metaphysics of living" in an incredibly deep way.

And I think that the ultimate way you and I get lucky is if you have some success early in life, you get to find out early it doesn't mean anything. Which means you get to start early the work of figuring out what does mean something. [...]

But what I really remember is the times when working on that book was really hard. And I just gutted it out, you know? And I finished something. And I did it for the book, not trying to imagine whether David Lipsky would like it, or Michael Pietsch would like it. And that I feel like I've built some muscles inside me that I can now use for the rest of my life. And I feel like, "All right, like I'm a writer now." Whether I'm a successful writer or not, I don't know. But like, like this is who I am, this is what I do. And I know now how to live in such a way that I'm doing it for the work itself. Which I'm aware can come off sounding very pretentious. And it's also, it's what everybody says: "Ah, that other stuff doesn't matter."

Y'like candy?

Yeah. Of course.

What if you ate it all the time? What would be wrong with that?

Bad for teeth and very fat very quick.

Real pleasurable, but it dudn't have any calories in it. There's somethin' really vital about food that candy's missing, although to make up for what it's missing, the pleasure of masticating and swallowing goes way up. There seems to me to be some analogy to what--I'm talking about very seductive commercial entertainment. There's nothing sinister, the thing that's sinister about it is that the pleasure that it gives you to make up for what it's missing is a kind of ... addictive, self-consuming pleasure. And what saves us is that most entertainment isn't very good. (Laughs)

[...]

I guess entertainment would describe a continuum--I guess what I'm talkin' about is entertainment versus art, where the main job of entertainment is to separate you from your cash somehow. I mean that's really what it is ... And I'm not, there's nothin' per se wrong with that. And the compensation for that is it delivers value for the cash. It gives you a certain kind of pleasur that I would argue is fairly passive. There's not a whole lot of thought involved, the thought is often fantasy, like "I am this guy, I'm having this adventure." And it's a way to take a vacation from myself for a while. And that's fine--I think sort of the same way candy is fine.

[Of course, one interesting thing is he buys Pop-Tarts and stuff to eat; lots of candy.]

The problem for me is in entertainment, it's, at least in the book--God, if the book comes off as some kind of indictment of entertainment, then it fails. It's sort of about our relationship to it. The book isn't supposed to be about drugs, getting off drugs. Except as the fact that drugs are kind of a metaphor for the sort of addictive continuum that I think has to do with how we as a culture relate to things that are alive.

[...]

I'm not saying there's something sinister or horrible or wrong with entertainment. I'm saying it's--I'm saying it's a continuum. And if the book's about anything, it's about the question of why am I watching so much shit? It's not about the shit; it's about me. Why am I doing it? And what is so American about what I'm doing?

You know, why are we--and by "we" I mean people like you and me: mostly white, upper middle class or upper class, obscenely well educated, doing really interesting jobs, sitting in really expensive chairs, watching the best, you know, watching the most sophisticated electronic equipment money can buy--why do we feel empty and unhappy?

[...] probably each generation has different things that force the generation to grow up. Maybe for our grandparents it was World War Two. You know? For us, it's gonna be that at, at a certain point, that we're either gonna have to put away childish things and discipline ourself about how much time do I spend being passively entertained? And how much time do I spend doing stuff that actually isn't all that fun minute by minute, but that builds muscles in me as a grown-up and a human being? [...]

[...] I'm talking about the number of privileged, highly intelligent, motivated career-track people that I know, from my high school or college, who are, if you look into their eyes, empty and miserable. You know? And who don't believe in politics, and don't believe in religion. And believe that civic movements and political activism are either a farce or some way to get power for the people who are in control of it. Or who just ... who don't believe in anything. Who know fantastic reasons not to believe in stuff, and are terrific ironists and pokers of holes. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just, it doesn't seem to me that there's just a whole lot else.

[...] I really had this problem of thinking I was smarter than everybody else. [...] And I think if you're writing out of a place where you think that you're smarter than everybody else, you're either condescending to the reader, or talking down to 'im, or playing games, or you think the point is to show how smart you are.

Is that the great lie of the cruise is that enough pleasure and enough pampering will quiet this discontented part of you. When in fact, all it does is up the requirement. That's the sort of thing that it's about. And yeah, my little corner of that experience, some of this had to do with the writing, you know? I can remember being twenty-four years old and having my, you know, smiling mug in the New York Times Magazine, and it feeling really good for exactly like ten seconds. You know?