“You Are Not the Only Person on This Earth”
At The Common Review, Rebekah Frumkin’s “Our Psychic Living Room” preaches to this already-converted David Foster Wallace fan:
What Wallace is often trying to say in his fiction and essays–the message, as it were, at the heart of so much outpouring of feeling–is simple: think about someone else besides yourself. Which is a message a lot of us need desperately to hear. Wallace attacked the bored stasis of the unengaged American life–the stoned sitting and staring, the herdlike consumption of pleasure-inducing drugs (which could be anything from alcohol and cocaine to shopping and television)–and sounded an unselfish call to action. As someone who fought valiantly to escape the constraints of his own troubled mind, Wallace knew the value of a good change in perspective. “You are not the only person on this earth,” he seems to be telling his readers. “You really need to understand that and try to act accordingly.” If every bored person could just wake up and stand witness to what’s happening in the world, then maybe we’d all be a little more generous with our time and resources.
Emphasis mine, as it’s something that’s come up a few times this week. Article via Arts and Letters Daily.