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[...] It is in The Circle, though, that Eggers finally writes his Infinite Jest, the book he had the honor of introducing in its 2006 edition. [...]
In a country that builds endless opportunities for "connection" but no longer makes anything, The Circle's endorsement of essentially Thoreauvian economic values comes through Mercer Medeiros, the protagonist Mae's Luddite ex-boyfriend, who stands for inefficient artisanship (he makes antler chandeliers) and rants about what The Circle does to in-person interactions. [...]
The Circle is among the first Pale King-influenced novels as well, applying Wallace's insights into mechanized labor to the fully digital era. While there are no "Tingle tables" here (PK 276), Eggers satirizes the endless streams of stressful, pointless, and self-obliterating work in a supposedly hyperefficient age [...] A feckless and Fogle-like character, Mae-as-May embodies the perverse new liberty implied by the word neoliberal: applied to technological formations, liberal now essentially refers not to citizens' rights but to the freedom they grant corporate systems to instrumentalize their tastes and habits. Crime prevention and many other civic domains are soon to fall as well under The Circle's corporate control. If Infinite Jest told us in 1996 where digital entertainment "choices" would lead us, The Circle predicts the neoliberal dystopia to which today's wave of (social) media saturation is headed. It also offers a far more detailed account of the technocorporate methods by which the American social contract is being sundered, a subject The Pale King addresses in much more mysterious terms.
- the shark-feeding scene: see DFW's essay on lobsters being eaten + DFW's own fear of sharks revealed in the Max biography, which Eggers blurbed
- Mercer as a stand-in for DFW
- the Circle campus similar to ETA
- the data-gathering procedures influenced by Mister Squishy (which Eggers edited for McSweeney's)
[...] Like "Mister Squishy," §16 is one of Wallace's many multitrack narratives in which an oral discourse describes one thing while a wandering mind (despite being engaged by the external talk) explores something else entirely; our mission as readers--reconciling incompatible ideas, as in Freud's unconscious--is to ferret out the connection between the two tracks. [...]
definitely a motif to be used in my story
on the dialogue during Lane Dean's break, listening to the other examiners talk about dinner and mosquitos
[...] Wallace gave his characters new names "constantly," writes Pietsch (PK xiii), but other REC names--the forest (sylvan) in Sylvanshine, the land and river valleys (glen) in Glendenning, the bloom in Blumquist, the fish in Fisher, the deer (hind) in Hindle, the bus in Bussy, and the bond (to pay for public works) in Bondurant--suggest that a finished Pale King might have had much to say about many different public resources, natural and infrastructural. [...]
idk if I agree with the intrepretations of all these names but it's an interesting theory
[...] Consider David Cusk, the compulsively sweaty accountant: as he seeks release from self-obsession through what is essentially an inner thermostat to regulate his temperature, he replies to all those solipsistic hoarders of energy who have preceded him, from Lenore Sr. (who lacks such an inner thermostat) to Fogle (who keeps an external one on high). Cusk knows that paying attention to things outside him, things other than his fear of an "attack," can stem his sweat's flow but also that such outward attention is heavy lifting: "Paying attention to anything but the fear was like hoisting something heavy with a pulley and rope--you could do it, but it took effort, and you got tired, and the minute you slipped you were back paying attention to the last thing you wanted to" (PK 320). Cusk is learning here the concluding lesson of This Is Water: the willed choice to pay attention is the "job of a lifetime, and it commences--now," taking up every minute of every day, the call to real American work (TW 136).
[...] Neither is Wallace exceedingly interested in commodities' production, the class structure that leads to them, and all the elements of the Marxist critique underlying so much of U.S. postmodernism. His bounty is different.
good to know
[...] some of the attractiveness of Wallace's difficult works to an Occupy generation should be attributed to his understanding of the dire emotional consequences of a cultural environment in which value has been emptied out and financialization made ascendant, a world in which the most plentiful riches ever somehow produce dissatisfaction and perceived scarcity, not to mention unconscionable class stratification. Has Bernie Sander's presidential candidacy marked a resurgence of New Deal values for a new generation of liberalism? Wallace might have shown us the answer.
alas
"Nell", the Constable continued, indicating through his tone of voice that the lesson was concluding, "the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people--and this is true whether or not they are well-educated--is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations--in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward. [...]"
"The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code--but their children believe it for entirely different reasons."
"They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it."
"Yes. Some of them never challenge it--they grow up to be small-minded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel--as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw."
"Which path do you intend to take Nell?" said the Constable, sounding very interested. "Conformity or rebellion?"
"Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded--they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity."
[...]
" I suspect that Lord Finkle-McGraw, being an intelligent man, sees through all of the hypocrisy in his society, but upholds its principles anyway, because that is what is best in the long run. And I suspect that he has been worrying about how best to inculcate this stance in young people who cannot understand, as he does, its historical antecedents--which might explain why he has taken an interest in me. The Primer may have been Finkle-McGraw's idea to begin with--a first attempt to go about this systematially."
[...] Receiving a lot of healthcare from the NHS does not really make people 'better off' than those who do not need that care (although the recipients would be a lot worse off if they had to pay for it privately). [...]
- low and high earners should pay the same share of income in tax (a proportional system;
- higher earners should pay a higher share of income in tax (a progressive system);
- both should pay the same amount in tax (a regressive system).
They were also asked how state pensions and unemployment benefits should relate to their previous earnings--whether they should vary according to past contributions or likely need:
- previous high earners should get more because they had paid in more, that is, they should be earnings-related;
- they should get the same, through flat-rate entitlements;
- previous low-earners should get more because their needs are greater, implying, for instance, that benefits should be means-tested.
options in a poll in the EU. it's weird cus i would support the last option (out of the last 3) and yet I know means-testing is a bad idea ... idk
conclusion: roughly evenly split between progressive and proportional, with the remainder supporting regressive
the other thing this example makes clear to me is that democracy itself is a great illustration of drift. the telos of having a democratic system is to produce a system that works. we use democracy as a heuristic because it seems like a reasonable one compared to others that have been tried. but there comes a time when we forget about the original purpose and start worshipping the structure. this idea that elections--as a symbol of democracy--are so incredibly important and pure and all that. when really democratic elections only "work"--that is, they only produce a system that works in the long run--if 1) you can trust people to vote correctly and 2) the options they are voting for are themselves optimal. elections should not be worshipped when we're living in an age that is essentially a hostile environment for democracy. when the average voter doesn't have all the information needed to make the right decisions and isn't truly empowered to make any important decisions. worshipping the idea of democracy as expressed through elections where one man = one vote will get you nowhere. you have to be able to modify the idea of democracy to fit the circumstances. you almost have to kill your heroes, actually