on January, and the internet
and Honor Levy (briefly) and other things
When I shop for groceries in the winter I think about a scene from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, in which the Satanic protagonist performs miracles for the Duke of Vanholt and his pregnant wife. After conjuring a floating castle in the air, he asks the Duke’s wife what her deepest desire is:
Likewise, I think about the self-congratulatory scientists from Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano describing a well-off engineer:
since the star in question has risen, has become far richer than the wildest dreams of Caesar or Napoleon or Henry VIII! Or any emperor in history! Thirty dollars, John - yes, that is how much money you make. But, not with all his gold and armies could Charlemagne have gotten one single electric lamp or vacuum tube! He would have given anything to get the security and health package you have, John. But could he get it? No!
The pregnant duchess would have given anything to get a dish of ripe grapes in January. But could she get it? Only with the help of Satan!
In a similar vein to comparing engineers to Charlemagne, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote that “with the exception of imperial offspring of the Ming Dynasty and the dauphins of pre-revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world.”
I think this is probably true! We are experiencing the most luxurious January in human history. I could get a dish of ripe grapes right now at very little cost, with very little effort. There are more images and texts on my iPhone right now than most people in pre-digital ages absorbed in their entire lives. And even hot people! Tinder et al. present an unlimited menu of human connection! And even math! Euclid would weep to see the shapes I encounter!
What was miraculous is now commonplace! Is this good or bad? Is that an entirely pointless question? Isn’t it kind of strange that we are more materially well-off than ever before, yet still a fundamentally unhappy society? (obviously some blame social media.) With such a glut of information and content available to us in the internet age, what is keeping discernment from becoming impossible? Is the death of taste upon us? Will people come to crave denial?
Here are some other things I have been thinking about:
Hannah Arendt saying “Fearlessness is what love seeks”
Honor Levy and the arrogance of autofiction: perhaps it’s less that everyone secretly wants to read a girl’s diary, as she said, than that every girl secretly wants her diary to be read.
But, also, more art is always better, why not fictionalize your life if it is interesting enough? Isn’t writing a memoir even more arrogant? Am I just jealous because I wasn’t described as “a fastidious archivist of her own myth” in an obscure online magazine?
The illusion of apprehension; the desire to miniaturize and replicate what has been irrevocably lost (busts of Roman statesmen, Civil war dioramas)
I have been editing out all the “but, whatever”s in my personal writing because if you don’t take your own thoughts seriously how will anyone else?
Also, 24 hours after I publish something on Substack I get a little email with the numbers of people who viewed my piece, or subscribed after reading, and these numbers always seems impossibly large! and I feel impossibly grateful! so thank you for reading, a thousand thanks.