I guess I am sort of an ideas man--plagiarized, hackneyed ideas that sometimes seem poignant to me. Today at church, after the speaker started talking about the condensation of God (sic), I checked out for a little bit. I hopped on the phone and read some stuff by my favorite 13th apostle--David Foster Wallace. He's crazy and maximalist and tortured and dead (by his own hand), but I like him. He speaks to me.
He warmed me up with this gentle "you think you are so smart, but self-conciousness is not always good" quote:
There's good self-consciousness, and then there's toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness.(Nervous inner laughter.) Yeah, I think I have had visits from those Bedouins. But then he jumps into a more serious critique of literature, which I have applied more broadly to just anyone who produces or appreciates any type of art.
The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.
Anyway, for all those who, like me, seem to be relatively gifting in tearing down, deriding, dismissing, and disproving, maybe we should produce a little more, appreciate as much as we critique, and, ultimately, be nicer.
So there you have it, scoffing "this Idaho bumbler is an idiot" to "hey, take what you can use, produce more yourself, and cut others some slack." That was my church lesson. I am pretty sure it had nothing to do with what he taught.
