by
David Lipsky
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[...] 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?
when really you just have to live with the discontentment and in a way turn it into contentment
[...] If the examiner looks at the documentarian instead of the camera, it can appear evasive or coerced. It's not optimal, and the prebriefer's advice is to look into the camera as one would a trusted friend's eyes, or a mirror, depending.
the implication that the listener might not have a trusted friend is just the right amount of subtle. so good
[...] The card's figures opening emergency doors and pulling cords and crossing their arms funereally with their seat cushions on their chests seemed amateurishly drawn and their features little more than bumps; you couldn't see fear or relief or really anything on their faces as they slid down the emergency chutes in the drawing. [...]
Claude Sylvanshine on the plane. inspiration for MC on the plane in the last chapter
[...] the woman's claw on the steel armrest between them was a horrible sight that he declined to attend to. Old people's hands frightened and repelled him. He'd had grandparents whose hands he could remember in their laps looking alien and clawlike. Upon incorporation, Jones, Inc. issues common stock at a price in excess of its par value. It was difficult not to imagine the faces of those whose jobs were writing these questions. What they thought about, what their professional hopes and dreams were. [...]
Claude on the plane. idea for something in tech - customer journeys/profiles, by the marketing dept? maybe the Sean character
also, the way the two narratives are interspersed: inspiration for MC thinking about taxes (or something else very startup-focused) vs something very personal (the idea that his wife might cheat on him)
[...] precious time was lost before he could even think about how to set up a workable schedule for maximally efficient reviewing for the exam, even mentally, which he did every day. His great weakness was strategic organization and apportionment of time, as Reynolds pointed out at every opportunity, enjoining Claude to for Christ's sake just take a book off the stack and study instead of sitting there noodling impotently about how best to study. [...]
inspiration for someone, maybe a nameless character, who spends so much time planning out his coding process as opposed to actually coding, starts delegating the actual coding to other people (the dangers of solipsism. like me planning out harvest moon)
(think about the point of this more)
also i like the way DFW puts in "for Christ's sake" (inserting the character's own verbal tics into the narration of the character's speech)
[...]and he remembered, as the overhead bell rang again and the sign lit, the no-cigarette glyph legally redundant [...]
I just really like this. not sure how it'll be relevant to SJ tho
'[...] The next suitable person you're in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, "What's wrong?" You say it in a concerned way. He'll say, "What do you mean?" You say, "Something's wrong. I can tell. What is it?" And he'll look stunned and say, "How did you know?" He doesn't realize something's always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn't know everybody's always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they're exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing's ever wrong, from seeing it. This is the way of people. Suddenly ask what's wrong, and whether they open up and spill their guts or deny it and pretend you're off, they'll think you're perceptive and understanding. They'll either be grateful, or they'll be frightened and avoid you from then on. Both reactions have their uses, as we'll get to. You can play it either way. This works over 90 percent of the time.'
inspiration for someone at co, encountered by both intern and MC, who does the same thing for both of them (intern finds him fraudulent cus it just seems practised; MC finds him empathetic until he sees him do it to someone else)
[...] Named Bussy, Mr. Vince or Vincent Bussy, who wore a Kmart parka with a hood with a fake fur fringe, [...] Bussy one week thereafter gone so abruptly that his umbrella remained hanging from the Pod's communal coattrack for almost a quarter until someone finally took it down.
he gets fired cus his wife tells his boss that Bussy said the boss could be a truly evil person if he grew a somewhat larger set of balls
(someone at a tech company gets fired, and something similar happens? something very Lynchian - if possible - remains? use the same style of putting it after a comma, at the end of a long sentence in which this character is introduced by name in the first place)
[...] except the telephone in the alleged apartment wasn't connected yet and he considered the prospects of being able to hail a cab from outside an apartment complex were at best iffy, and if he told the original cab he'd taken to the apartment to wait for him, there would be difficulties because how exactly would he reassure the cabbie that he really was coming right back out after dropping his bags and doing a quick spot check of the apartment's the condition and suitability instead of it being a ruse designed to defraud the driver of his fare, Sylvanshine ducking out the back of the Angler's Cove apartment complex or even conceivably barricading himself in the apartment and not responding to the driver's knock, or his ring if the apartment had a doorbell, which his and Reynolds's current apartment in Martinsburg most assuredly did not, or the driver's queries/threats through the apartment door, a scam that resided in Claude Sylvanshine's awareness only because a number of independent Philadelphia commercial carriage operators had proposed heavy Schedule C losses under the proviso 'Losses Through Theft of Service' and detailed this type of scam as prevalent on the poorly typed or sometimes even handwritten attachments required to to explain unusual or specific C-deductions like this, whereas were Sylvanshine to pay the fare and the tip and perhaps even a certain amount in advance on account so as to help assure the driver of his honorable intentions re the second leg of the sojourn there was no tangible guarantee that the average taxi driver—a cynical and ethically marginal species, hustlers, as even their smudged returns' very low tip-income-vs.-number-of-fares-in-an-average-shift ratios in Philly had indicated—wouldn't simply speed away with Sylvanshine's money, creating enormous hassles in terms of filling out the internal forms for getting a percentage of his travel per diem reimbursed and also leaving Sylvanshine alone, famished (he was unable to eat before travel), phoneless, devoid of Reynolds's counsel and logistical savvy in the sterile new unfurnished apartment, his stomach roiling in on itself in such a way that it would be all Sylvanshine could do to unpack in any kind of half-organized fashion and get to sleep on the nylon travel pallet on the unfinished floor [...]
this whole scene (when Claude is vastly overthinking the whole getting-food-via-cab scenario) is incredible. the sentence just goes on and on. ends at the end of the chapter, with him having to take a breather on the airport tarmac (basically a panic attack)