References
Interviewer: Do you think that is something that is true? That humor can only come out of something sad?
0:14
I know that Wittgenstein believed that the most serious and profound
0:24
problems and questions and issues could be discussed only in the form of jokes. I know in U.S. literature
0:34
there is a tradition from about the 50s and 60s called “black humor”,
0:40
which is a very kind of sardonic sad type of humor.
0:46
I’m grasping for something interesting to say in response. I think probably sometimes it can be
0:53
and sometimes it isn’t. There are forms of humor that offer escapes from pain.
1:00
And there are forms of humor that transfigure pain.
1:06
Interviewer: Because in your books … Does that make any sense? Interviewer: Yeah. Definitely.
1:11
Now the perspiration starts. Okay.
1:16
You know what would help me? Tell me what you think. If we do this as a conversation it will be easier for me.
1:22
Interviewer: Yeah, sure. And, you know, I wrote my Master’s Thesis about Thomas Bernhard.
1:28
And Thomas Bernhard has a theory that you know, he was very, he had this lung sickness
1:34
so he couldn’t breathe all his life. His life was very hard for him. And also he hated Austria, where he lived.
1:43
And he thought they were all Nazis. There was all this Catholic fascism. And he was just hating everything,
1:50
but then out of that he developed this really strange sense of humor. So his novels are very dark,
1:56
but at the same time, for me, very witty. And also this humor comes
2:02
some sort of music and all that. And I just wanted to know if you think that is true
2:09
that the kind of sense of humor that you like comes out of this bitterness and sadness.
2:22
The answer for myself is I don’t know. I know that very often, humor is a response
2:29
to things that are difficult.
2:34
In the U.S. there’s a strange situation where in some respects, humor and irony are
2:43
political responses and they’re reductive. And in another sense, particularly in
2:49
popular entertainment, irony and a kind of dark humor can become a way of -
2:58
It’s pretending to protest when it really isn’t. Someone once called irony the song of a bird
3:04
that has come to love its cage. And even though it sings about not liking the cage, it really likes it in there.
3:14
So that it can be both a wake-up call and an anesthetic.
3:20
And the difference in the U.S. now is
3:25
very tricky and very complicated, it seems to me. Interviewer: And what would you think is true for your books?
3:32
For me, they have very serious questions.
3:38
And they are often very sad, but at the same time you get the sense of humor in there somehow.
3:54
I’m not often all that aware of stuff that’s really funny in the book.
3:59
In the American version of “Infinite Jest”, I set out to write a sad book.
4:05
And when people liked it and told me the thing they liked about it was that it was so funny,
4:10
it was just very surprising. It’s the other strange thing about humor.
4:17
I teach school and I teach literature and some of what I teach is Kafka. And there’s a story about Kafka,
4:22
that in some of Kafka’s most horrific stories his neighbors would complain,
4:28
because he would be laughing so hard late at night, as he wrote these stories. He found them very very funny and there are things in them that are funny,
4:35
but I don’t know that many people would understand laughing so hard that your neighbors would complain. So there’s something.
4:41
It’s probably difficult to talk to a writer about the humor or
4:47
sadness or something in in his or her own work, because our sense of it tends to be very different from readers.
4:56
Interviewer: Yeah, but there was one interview you gave, Interviewer: Yeah, but there was one interview you gave, I forgot which media it was, but
5:03
you said, when you began writing, “Infinite Jest”,
5:08
you wanted to write something about sadness. So sadness was something that really belonged to this project.
5:17
So, could you describe?
5:23
It was a while ago.
5:29
The easiest way to talk about it would be The easiest way to talk about it would be that for the upper-middle class
5:35
in the US, particularly younger people, things are often, materially, very comfortable.
5:42
And there’s also often a great sadness and emptiness.
5:47
And it’s difficult to think about and difficult to come up with answers in the abstract.
5:57
And I think I had started that book after a couple of people, not close friends,
6:04
but people I knew who were my age had committed suicide.
6:12
It just became obvious that something was going on.
6:18
And so I know that that impulse was part of starting the book.
6:25
The book is so long though, it took so long to write, that it’s almost hard to remember the impulses at the beginning,
6:30
because everything sort of changes. It’s something you live with for years and years,
6:35
rather than something that you just have an idea or a feeling, and you just do. I think one of the ideas in the book is that there’s a particular
6:45
there’s a particular ethos in U.S. culture, especially in entertainment and marketing culture.
6:52
That very much appeals to people as individuals, that you don’t have to be devoted or subservient
6:59
to anything else. There is no larger good than your own good
7:04
and your own happiness. And in the book, as best I can recall,
7:11
Characters who become drug addicts - There is a form, that the root in English
7:17
of addict is the Latin, “addicere”, which means
7:24
which means religious devotion. It was an attribute of beginning monks, I think.
7:30
There’s an element in the book in which various people are
7:38
are living out something that, I think, is true, which is that we all worship and we all have a religious impulse.
7:46
We can choose to an extent what we worship, but the myth that we worship nothing
7:52
and give ourselves away to nothing simply sets us up to
7:57
give ourselves away to something different. For instance, pleasure or drugs.
8:05
or the idea of having a lot of money and being able to buy nice stuff or in the tennis academy,
8:12
it’s somewhat different. It’s devotion to an athletic pursuit that requires a certain amount of sacrifice and discipline,
8:20
but is nevertheless an individual sport and one is trying
8:26
to get ahead as an individual. I doubt this makes very much sense,
8:32
but whatever the conditions of hopelessness you’re talking about,
8:38
at least in “Infinite Jest”, have to do, I think,
8:44
with an American idea, and not a universal one, but one that I think kids get exposed to very early.
8:51
That you are the most important and what you want is the most important and that your job in life is to
8:58
gratify your own desires. That’s a little crude to say it that way,
9:04
but in fact it’s something of the ideology here.
9:11
And it’s certainly the ideology that’s perpetrated by television and advertising and entertainment
9:19
and the economy thrives on it. Interviewer: And what happens when this ideology becomes — Sound Guy: Sorry, sorry.
9:26
Interviewer: Oh, was there … Oh, am I? Oh, god, sorry. Sound Guy: I got to switch this battery out.
9:35
Shit, I was halfway lucid for a second there too. And it probably didn’t come through? Sound Guy: No, it was fine.
9:41
I was feeling lucid. Sound Guy: I promise, it was fine. Sound Guy: Yeah, it went out for just the last question there. Yeah.
9:47
Sound Guy: But it’s kind of hard because he moves in and out. I move in and out?
9:52
Sound Guy: Oh yeah. Interviewer: You know, the thing is the background is not too pretty. Interviewer: Of course, and that’s why we’re not showing —
9:57
I’m sorry. Interviewer and Sound Guy: No, no, no. That’s cool. That’s okay. Sound Guy: Because you’re pontificating. Oh, thank you. There’s a nice word.
10:04
Sound Guy: In a very deep, spiritual way. Thank you. Sound Guy: Okay? Which is completely screwing me.
10:10
[Laughter from Interviewer and Sound Guy] Sound Guy: Okay? That’s a king. Sound Guy: You are, you’re just, I can tell, you’re very …
10:18
Twitchy. I’m sorry? Sound Guy: You’re very reflective. Well these are hard questions.
10:24
Particularly when it’s about something you did seven years ago. Sound Guy: Okay. I just shoot the pictures. Yeah.
10:30
I would trade places with you at this moment. [Laughter] Sound Guy: Any time.
10:37
Interviewer: What do you think? Interviewer: What do you think? Does this ideology,
10:45
when children are told from the beginning everything that counts as your own happiness
10:51
and your own pursuit of satisfaction? Well, of course, nobody tells you.
10:59
I mean, mom and dad don’t sit you down and say this. This is something very subtle
11:09
and is delivered by a great many messages.
11:20
Just conversationally, do you get what I’m talking about? I rather doubt that
11:27
European’s idea of America is very different from this.
11:35
This is one enormous engine and temple of self-gratification and self-advancement.
11:42
And in some ways it works very very well. In other ways, it doesn’t work all that well,
11:48
because, at least for me, it seems as if there are whole other parts of me
11:56
that need to worry about things larger than me
12:01
that don’t get nourished in that system. Interviewer: And do you think the Europeans know that?
12:09
From the Europeans I’ve talked to, yeah.
12:14
When I get in arguments with Europeans it’s that their view of it sort of exaggerated and simplistic.
12:21
It’s a very complicated thing and full of paradoxes and ironies and all kinds of stuff.
12:29
And the idea that America is one great big shopping mall and that all anyone wants to do
12:37
is grasp their credit card and run out and buy stuff
12:42
is a stereotype and it’s a generalization. But as a way to summarize a certain kind of ethos
12:50
in the U.S., it’s pretty accurate. Particularly after the elections we just had on Tuesday.
12:58
The U.S. is not getting better in this area. It seems like it’s getting worse. Interviewer: I’ve been coming here every year
13:03
Interviewer: I’ve been coming here every year over the last couple of years
13:10
and it seemed, for me, I seemed to see some progress in that.
13:15
This development. When you go to a department store, people seem more aggressive in trying to sell you stuff.
13:22
Yeah. Interviewer: On the other hand, I like it here
13:27
because, I mean, I’m German, it’s not that funny too. It’s not that what? Interviewer: Not that funny all the time too.
13:34
Yeah. Yeah. Interviewer: And also an intellectual crisis and everything. It stands still somehow.
13:40
There are certain paradoxes that go along with being a wealthy Western industrial country
13:49
and it just seems that they’re probably somewhat common.
13:55
We have our race problems. You have the problems of absorbing East Germany
14:02
and dealing with all that stuff. I’ll stay out of politics. It’s too upsetting.
14:09
[laughter] Interviewer: What’s also in this interview I read
14:14
you said you wanted to write something about a generation. I mean, you weren’t sure
14:22
if you were right about this generation. But you somehow had that feeling that your generation was in that kind of trouble.
14:32
Well, my memory is, one of the reasons for setting the book in the future Well, my memory is, one of the reasons for setting the book in the future
14:39
was that … I’m now 40, so I was born in the early 60s.
14:45
and to an extent, I think my generation tends to think of itself as children still
14:52
and as people with parents and I remember wanting to do
14:57
something about what would be the situation of our children. Kind of in the next generation.
15:04
Interviewer: And this child like thing also has something. There’s one story
15:09
in “Interviews with Hideous Men”, where the oppressed person is always talking about
15:16
the woman and the child. Is that something that belongs together? Or is this …
15:25
Language like that, the wounded inner child, the inner pain is part of a kind of pop psychological movement
15:33
in the United States that is a sort of popular Freudianism that has its own paradox
15:42
which is that the more we are taught to list and resent the things of which
15:50
we were deprived as children, the more we live in that anger and frustration and the more we remain children.
15:57
That’s a very simple way of putting it, but I think the character in that story is sort of a compendium of
16:03
kind of all the worst and most painful features of the popular psychology movement in the U.S.
16:11
And I don’t know whether there’s any analog to that in Western Europe or not. Interviewer: I think there is, actually.
16:19
And when you said that, I find that too, in Europe, that there is
16:26
this reluctance to really grow up and to live life on its terms.
16:34
What should this generation, which is not able to grow up, do about it?
16:42
Let me insert one thing, Let me insert one thing, which I’ll bet you’ve noticed from talking to writers,
16:49
is that most of the stuff that we think we’re writing about in books
16:54
is very difficult to talk about straight out. You know, question and answer.
17:00
In some sense, it probably can’t be talked about directly, and that’s why people make up stories about it. This is all a big defense,
17:06
because I feel like what I’m saying is so simple and so reductive
17:16
To the extent that I understand it, being what you call “grown-up”
17:23
isn’t a lot of fun a lot of the time. There are things you have to do.
17:28
There are things you want to do, that you can’t do for a variety of reasons.
17:35
I think, for young people in America there are very mixed messages from the culture.
17:42
There’s a streak of moralism in American life There’s a streak of moralism in American life that extols the virtues
17:47
of being grown up and having a family and being a responsible citizen, but there’s also the sense of
17:54
do what you want, gratify your appetites, because when I’m a corporation,
18:00
appealing to the parts of you that are selfish and self-centered
18:05
and want to have fun all the time is the best way to sell you things. Right?
18:14
And the point that emerges from that is …
18:24
is that it’s, I think, one more example of the American …
18:33
American economic and cultural systems that work very well
18:38
in terms of selling people products and keeping the economy thriving, do not work as well
18:45
when it comes to educating children or helping us help each other know how to live and be happy.
18:57
If that word means anything. Clearly it means something different from whatever I want to do.
19:03
I want to take this cup and throw it right now. I have every right to. I should. We see it with children. That’s not happiness.
19:11
That feeling of having to obey every impulse and gratify every desire.
19:17
It seems to me to be a strange kind of slavery. Nobody talks about it as such though.
19:23
It talks about the freedom of choice and you have the right to have things
19:29
and spend this much money and you can have this stuff. Again, saying it this way, it sounds to me very crude and very simple,
19:37
but that’s sort of the way.
19:46
Does this make … does this make any sense to you? Interviewer: Absolutely. And I’m not lying or something. I would tell you. Interviewer: Absolutely. And I’m not lying or something. I would tell you.
19:51
But I mean, but you’ve spent time in the U.S.? Is this something - Interviewer: Yes. But I think it’s not only a problem in the U.S.,
20:00
because everything, you know, that happens here is copied by people in Germany and there is always
20:07
this impulse that you only have to do what makes you happy and forget about all the others
20:14
and you don’t want to be with boring people, people who need you. And that’s not attractive and all that.
20:21
So it’s more or less the same thing, so it makes sense to me of course. And it works very well as a system for And it works very well as a system for
20:27
running an economy and keeping goods produced and sold. It works wonderfully.
20:32
The ways in which it doesn’t work are much more difficult to talk about.
20:41
Interviewer: So, speaking of that, where doesn’t it work?
20:48
Once reduced to talking about general terms, Once reduced to talking about general terms, like being grown-up
21:00
or a term that’s rarely used here anymore. And see, now I feel embarrassment,
21:06
because I’m going to sound like my grandfather or something. But the word, “citizen,” the idea of being a citizen,
21:13
it would be to understand your country’s history and the things about it that are good and not so good and how the system works
21:22
and taking the trouble to learn about candidates for political office, which means often reading stuff which isn’t fun.
21:30
Sometimes it’s boring.
21:35
But when people don’t do that, here’s what happens: the candidates win who have the most money to buy television advertisements,
21:43
because television advertisements are all most voters know about the candidates, therefore we get candidates who are beholden to large donors,
21:52
and become, in some ways, corrupt, which disgusts the voters
21:58
and makes the voters even less interested in politics, less willing to read and do the work of citizenship.
22:07
When I was a little boy, there was a class called “citizenship”.
22:13
Here are certain things about America and America’s history. Here’s why it’s important to vote.
22:19
Here’s why it’s important not to just go in and vote for who the best looking candidate is.
22:25
Here’s what’s really interesting, and I don’t know if you can translate this. Talking about this now, I feel ashamed,
22:31
because my saying all this sounds to me like an older person saying this, like a person lecturing, which in American culture sets me up to be ridiculed.
22:40
It would be very easy to make fun of what I’m saying. It would be very easy to make fun of what I’m saying and I can hear in my head a voice making fun of this stuff as I’m saying it.
22:49
And this is the kind of paradox, I think,
22:54
of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now
23:00
and probably also a Western European. There are things we know are right and good
23:06
and would be better for us to do, but constantly it’s like, yeah, but you know it’s so much funnier and nicer to go do something else.
23:14
And who cares? And it’s all bullshit anyway. Sorry. Interviewer: No, but it’s the same dilemma actually in Germany, Interviewer: No, but it’s the same dilemma actually in Germany,
23:22
when people are wanting to say something, knowing at the same time, it’s this intellectual stereotype
23:28
but on the other hand, you kind of forget about it.
23:34
One of the things it causes is tension and unhappiness in people. One of the things it causes is tension and unhappiness in people.
23:41
I don’t think it’s very complicated and I don’t think I’ve named the only reason for it. The paradox is that that sort of tension and complication
23:49
and conflict in people also makes them very easy to market to. Because I can say to you, ‘Feeling uneasy? Life feels empty?’
23:59
‘Well, here’s something you can buy or something you can go do.’
24:06
The economics term is inelasticity of demand. I demand all the time, no matter what the price of it is.
24:13
And it works really well in an economic way.
24:19
Emotionally, spiritually, in terms of citizenship, in terms of feeling like a meaningful part, even of this country.
24:26
Forget the world. I’m sure the US government’s
24:33
arrogance and disdain for the rest of the world is unpleasant, but it’s also a natural extension of
24:42
certain cultural messages we send ourselves about ourselves that work very well in some ways
24:48
and make us very rich and very powerful. It’s all complicated.
24:53
Interviewer: So we are all somehow addicted to having fun and even so-called serious literature …
25:03
it’s that you don’t want to make this effort anymore. Books who are serious also have to be very entertaining
25:10
and you don’t want to be bored. I think, twenty, thirty years ago, you can still read a book and
25:19
and it would be this kind of work to do, but you wouldn’t think, well I have to be entertained all the time.
25:27
So how do we get out of this dilemma? Even for intellectuals, it has to be entertaining and not boring.
25:37
I don’t know that … I don’t know that … I don’t know that I’d agree with the last part of what you said.
25:44
There’s a real split, it’s interesting that you went and interviewed Crichton, because there’s a real split in U.S. literature
25:54
between commercial literature, novels like Crichton writes, Stephen King, Tom Clancy,
26:02
who are the other big … Grisham. Some of which are really pretty good,
26:11
and they make a great deal of money and there’s a whole lot of demand for them. And then there is still and I think it’s probably like this in…
26:18
well, it’s probably not quite … There’s probably more demand for serious books in Europe.
26:25
But here there’s a small pocket of probably, I don’t know, half a million…
26:33
say, a million readers, many of whom were from the upper classes
26:38
and have good educations and have been taught the pleasures of hard work in reading or music or art and like that.
26:51
I mean, when you’re talking me, you’re talking to somebody who doesn’t have very much power in the culture
26:58
and who’s not very important except in a fairly small I don’t know what the analog would be.
27:04
It would be something like maybe contemporary classical music in the US, which there are people who enjoy it and listen to it,
27:11
partly because of training and partly because they are disposed to be willing to do a certain amount more work reading it.
27:18
But compared to popular music and rock and roll and hip-hop and stuff, classical music is nothing.
27:25
I mean, economically or commercially or in terms of how many people have heard of it
27:30
or how much an influence it has on the culture.
27:39
And, for me, personally, I don’t know that it’s really ever been all that different.
27:45
I think probably American education used to be a little bit better
27:50
and a little bit more difficult and children had no choice but to realize that there were certain things that were hard and involved a certain amount of drudgery
27:58
that were actually very satisfying at the end of it, but for the most part I think in the U.S., people who have been doing
28:05
“serious stuff” which is harder and stranger, have always played to a much smaller audience.
28:14
In terms of what can be done about the dilemma…
28:21
First of all, I’m wondering who would care what I think
28:27
and, second, I’m not sure, and, third, what do you think? I mean, you live in the same atmosphere I do.
28:33
Interviewer: Yeah, I think it’s really a problem, of course. In Germany they have this TV literary expert
28:40
and he’s called ‘The Literary Pope’. So he’s the Pope of Literature. And people think he has a very good view of everything and he really knows,
28:50
when he says, ‘The book was good,’ the book is good. Who is this guy? Interviewer: [Laughter] His name is Marcel Reich-Ranicki.
28:57
Maybe you’ve heard of him? Uh uh. And he’s a very funny guy and he’s maybe eight years old something
29:03
And he has always this verdict on the book, so the book is shit or … He’s part of your show? He’s part of …
29:10
Interviewer: No no no. But he is just a figure and at the same time
29:17
He always wants … what he doesn’t want the book to be is boring. By no means boring.
29:23
And at the same time he really understands a lot about books and he is really a good reader, but by saying all the time,
29:30
‘Well, things are not supposed to be boring’ … I mean, I think that’s really a mistake
29:36
and it’s getting taken for granted and I feel sometimes I also have this feeling that I don’t want to be bored
29:43
but at that the other side, I see that’s not an option.
29:48
I mean, I don’t know, you know, it’s not right. I somehow have this feeling, even if it sounds stupid.
29:55
No. It’s … There’s a difference though, I think, between being mildly bored There’s a difference though, I think, between being mildly bored
30:01
but then there’s another kind of boredom that I think you’re talking about.
30:06
Reading requires sitting alone by yourself in a quiet room and I have friends, intelligent friends, who don’t like to read,
30:14
because they get - it’s not just bored - there’s an almost dread that comes up, I think, here about having to be alone
30:26
and having to be quiet. And you see that when you walk into most public spaces in America.
30:31
It isn’t quiet anymore. They pipe music through. And the music is easy to make fun of,
30:37
because it’s usually horrible music, but it seems significant that we don’t want things to be quiet ever anymore.
30:45
And to me, I don’t know that I could defend it, but that seems to me to have something to do with
30:51
when you feel like the purpose of your life is to gratify yourself
30:56
and get things for yourself and go all the time, there’s this other part of you
31:02
that’s the same part that is almost hungry for silence and quiet
31:07
and thinking really hard about the same thing for maybe half an hour instead of thirty seconds
31:12
that doesn’t get fed at all.
31:18
It makes itself felt in the body and a kind of dread in here.
31:23
I don’t know whether that makes a lot of sense, but I think it’s true that here in the U.S.,
31:29
every year the culture gets more and more hostile. I don’t mean hostile like angry.
31:36
It becomes more and more difficult to ask people to read or to look at a piece of art for an hour
31:44
or to listen to a piece of music that’s complicated and that takes work to understand,
31:50
because - well, there are a lot of reasons - but because, particularly now in computer and internet culture,
31:56
everything is so fast. And the faster things go, the more we feed that part of ourselves,
32:02
but don’t feed the part of ourselves that likes … that likes quiet. That can live in quiet.
32:11
That can live without any kind of stimulation. It’s an American idiom, “Going to hell in a handbasket”. It’s an American idiom, “Going to hell in a handbasket”.
32:17
Things are getting worse and worse and worse. When we’re saying it, are we just saying exactly what people our age said a hundred years ago?
32:25
There’s no way ever to know how different we are. Things seems different.
32:31
Interviewer: Yeah, you never get this distance to yourself to really know.
32:43
Now I don’t know what I wanted to ask anymore.
32:49
So, there was an episode in “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men”,
32:54
where it was also about this depressed person — You like talking about this story, don’t you?
33:02
Interviewer: Yeah, I do, actually. No, it’s alright. Interviewer: [Laughter] Is that bad? No, it’s fine.
33:07
Interviewer: And there was something I read that happens to me very often. I have a friend and she has multiple sclerosis.
33:15
Yeah. Interviewer: And that’s a very bad thing for a young woman. That’s no fun. Interviewer: No, definitely. And she calls me
33:22
and as soon as I pick up the phone she instantly begins
33:28
to talk about her sickness and what she takes and about going to the hospital.
33:33
Now is this part going to make it on to the interview? Are we going to hear this part? Interviewer: No. No. Okay. That’s what I figured. Alright. Keep going.
33:39
[Camera man and interviewer laugh] Keep going. Interviewer: Everything I say is not going to make it on anyway. Fine. Okay.
33:44
Interviewer: Don’t worry about that. Great. Great… Great great great great. [Camera man and Interviewer derisively laugh at David]
33:50
Interviewer: But I thought you wanted to have a conversation? Yes. Yes. No, this is fine. I’m just wishing - this is good.
33:55
Camera Man: I mean, they can hear, but it’s not making it to the show. [Interviewer continues cackling] Alright.
34:00
Interviewer: So, so, she calls me, and in the moment I hear her, I think, oh shit, okay, okay.
34:07
The next couple of hours are gone, because she’s telling me all that stuff. And on one hand, I know she has really got to get that out
34:15
and it’s somehow my duty, because I like her, to hear that. But on the other side, I think of my own free time
34:23
and I thought, well, I was just sitting here and now I have to hear all that stuff.
34:28
And afterwards, when it’s over, I think, well, it’s good that I … you know. Yeah.
34:34
Imagine though, if she called you up, late at night, and talked to you for two hours and it was mostly apologizing for bothering you.
34:41
So that it’s just one more layer of frosting, which is just something that goes along with kind of a depressive temperament.
34:47
So there’s a lot of narcissism in self-hatred. Interviewer: Yeah, but what I was thinking is what is so bad about me?
34:55
What’s wrong with me? That I hear her name and I think, oh shit, again.
35:01
That happened to me. I shouldn’t have picked up the phone. And that’s, you know, that’s also part of the problem.
35:06
Because, on the other hand, that is something I have to do.
35:13
Yeah, but it’s also. I mean, it’s not … Well, no. Now we’re in this conversation
35:18
and I’m going to be talking about your specific thing. This doesn’t get used, right? No, but it’s just kind of …
35:25
I don’t think you’re a bad person for … I have a friend, who’s not sick,
35:31
but lost her mother, sister, father, to cancer, all within three years. And then her best friend died of AIDS in San Francisco.
35:38
This woman had the most terrible two or three years of anybody I’ve ever heard of.
35:43
Pretty good friend of mine. My heart would sink every time … because it was always painful.
35:50
And she didn’t complain about it. You know, she was she was doing real good, but still I like things to be pleasant.
35:56
I’d rather drink my chocolate milk and read a comic book than hear about unpleasant stuff.
36:02
But this … The depressed person lady just has another has another spin on that.
36:11
which is that she’s so worried about that feeling you have of dread
36:17
that she’s calling, that she’s going to try to get in there, and hate herself for it before you can and there’s a great deal more narcissism in her.
36:25
I didn’t like her very much. Interviewer: Yeah, I have a feeling … It’s usually really bad not to like the main character of a story.
36:33
And I haven’t done many where I didn’t, but this one I didn’t like. So it’s just why I smiled.
36:39
Everybody asked me about the story and it’s like the one I don’t want to talk about. But it’s fine. It’s fine.
36:44
Interviewer: No, no. I also found that he didn’t like her, but nevertheless the story is — But she didn’t like herself either. So.
36:51
She would’ve predicted that I didn’t like her. Interviewer: Right. [Chuckles uncomfortably] So um.
36:58
So um, do you still, I mean, do you watch TV? So um, do you still, I mean, do you watch TV? I don’t have a TV.
37:04
Because if I have a TV, I will watch it all the time. So there’s my little confession about how strong I am at resisting stuff.
37:12
I watch TV over at friends houses and stuff sometimes. I don’t watch as much as I used to. Interviewer: Yeah, but in “Infinite Jest”, the entertainment is not Interviewer: Yeah, but in “Infinite Jest”, the entertainment is not
37:22
coming from TV, directly, but it’s coming from the noise.
37:27
I thought more from those cartridges that you order and get all the time.
37:34
But is the entertainment in “Infinite Jest” like TV as in America today?
37:40
Is it somehow similar? I don’t know what you mean by TV. I don’t know what you mean by TV.
37:46
There’s network TV and there’s cable TV and there’s satellite TV where we can get 500 channels.
37:53
Then there are movies and various things available on both tape and DVD
37:58
and so the phenomenon of TV, the stuff you can look at when looking at a TV
38:04
is probably not all that dissimilar. My memory in “Infinite Jest” is that there was some complicated
38:10
setup where they would sometimes broadcast things and then sometimes deliver it to you on a cartridge.
38:17
You would have to let me go look. I don’t remember very well. Interviewer: Yeah, that’s right. There are things about the book that are probably not
38:24
economically all that realistic. Interviewer: Yeah, but, I mean, it’s, just, I mean, um, yeah.
38:33
It seemed to me that all the people in the book wanted to reach a similar state of mind,
38:40
like something, like amnesia, if people were doing drugs and people who are using the entertainment
38:48
and there was one woman who did something to herself
38:54
and she said I didn’t want to hurt me, but I didn’t want to get hurt anymore.
38:59
I just wanted all this stuff to stop. Is this a similar something - is this a similar goal
39:07
which people want you to reach about in similar ways?
39:14
Sort of amnesia or self-forgetting? Sure, I guess.
39:23
Part of the allure of both drugs and entertainment Part of the allure of both drugs and entertainment
39:28
is escape from my problems and my life and having to be stuck in here.
39:35
I can pretend I’m James Bond or someone. It just seems fine over the short haul.
39:42
As a way of life, it doesn’t work all that well though, no?
39:47
Interviewer: No, but in your book - I don’t … Interviewer: There are a lot of people doing drugs.
39:56
Not have to feel those things anymore. Yeah, well, stop me if I’m wrong, but…
40:04
Because again, like I said, you know I did this thing like seven years ago. Interviewer: You just say what you think about it.
40:09
Um, no. I don’t quite get the question, because it seems to me the parts of the book that have to do with drugs
40:16
have mostly to do with this halfway house where people who have been doing drugs for ten years
40:21
kind of stop and then sort of lose their minds because all of a sudden now they are starting to feel some of this stuff.
40:30
So, if you’re talking about the more general allure of drugs So, if you’re talking about the more general allure of drugs to the extent that I understand it,
40:36
which is about as specifically as I’m going to talk about it,
40:42
It seems to me to be, and this isn’t a very original thing to say, it’s a pretty natural extension of corporate capitalist logic,
40:50
which is, I want to feel exactly the way I want to feel, which is good for exactly this long
40:55
and so I will exchange a certain amount of cash for this substance And I will do it, but it’s all of course a lie,
41:03
because the control gradually goes away and it stops being that I want to do it,
41:08
it becomes that I feel I need to do it and that shift from, I want something, to, I feel I need it, is a big one.
41:16
Yes? I mean … Most of the problems in my life have to do with my confusing what I want and what I need.
41:25
Interviewer: I was just having this very, Interviewer: I was just having this very, I have to admit, very simplistic notion.
41:33
Interviewer: What we want to reach, what most people want to reach is this state of flawlessness,
41:41
not having to think anymore. And I just wanted to know if there are several ways
41:48
to reach this state of mind and, you know, watching entertainment all the time and …
41:54
Are you talking about entertainment in general or the entertainment in the book? Interviewer: In the book and also
42:00
when I turn the TV on here it really drives me crazy because it’s always, I see a little piece, and then it’s commercial break,
42:07
and then they show me something and then I’m supposed to watch the longer part, but I’ve already seen the longer part,
42:13
so there’s no use in doing that. So it drives me somehow mad. Yeah. Interviewer: This all creates this kind of state of
42:19
if I do it every day and so now it may be … Well, particularly if you have a remote control. Well, particularly if you have a remote control.
42:25
See, when that happens, you go to a different channel and if you don’t like that channel, you go to a different channel. And one of the reasons I can’t own a TV
42:32
is I’ve started having this thing where I become convinced there’s something really good on another channel and that I’m missing it.
42:37
And so instead of watching, I’m scanning anxiously back and forth for this thing that I think I want, that I don’t even know what it is.
42:45
And so, I don’t know whether German … Well, this is probably not a good thing to say on television, but I don’t know whether a similar thing happens in Germany,
42:52
but it’s very stressful now. And what it is, is too much good stuff combined with my sick little head
42:58
that thinks there’s always something a little better on the next … And all you have to do. You don’t have to get up now to change it.
43:05
That was the problem, when it became easy. You just had to move your thumb and change it.
43:10
That’s when we were screwed. Interviewer: So do you think it’s …
43:15
Ninety-percent of this is going to be cut out, right? Interviewer: Yeah, sure. Yes? Okay. [Awkward interviewer laughter]
43:21
Interviewer: I mean, not because I like it, Interviewer: I mean, not because I like it, but because, you know — Because it’s not going to make any sense. Yes, right. Right.
43:27
Interviewer: Yeah. So, do you think that entertainment… Is entertainment something we have to fight against?
43:38
See, it’s a strange question, See, it’s a strange question, because who would say entertainment is bad? I mean, I wouldn’t say entertainment is bad.
43:48
But a model of life in which
43:54
I have a right to be entertained all the time seems to me not to be a promising one. Right?
44:07
And this won’t translate, but of course one of the insidious about it is that
44:13
entertainment is so god damn entertaining. Imagine this show were running on American TV
44:20
and I were sitting in this hotel watching it. Okay, we get this pointy-headed nerdy guy talking about this stuff or I’ve got, you know, Pamela Anderson running on a beach
44:29
or hilarious comedy. Which one am I going to watch? You know, there’s no …
44:37
If fighting against entertainment is even required, how does one do it, unless
44:45
Well, there are two options: One is you direct the attack only to people who are willing to listen to the complexity.
44:52
But those aren’t the people who are enslaved by entertainment anyway. Or you find some way to make the attack on entertainment entertaining
45:00
in which case you’ve been captured by the very thing you’re fighting against. It’s very very strange. Interviewer: Yeah, that’s exactly the dilemma.
45:07
Yes. Interviewer: That’s exactly it.
45:15
This is different, the topic is different now. “Infinite Jest” takes place in a tennis academy
45:25
and you have been, I read, a tennis player. A quite good tennis player.
45:32
A somewhat good tennis player, not a quite good … No, I played a lot as a kid. Yes.
45:37
Interviewer: And then you said once, ‘Well tennis was a little bit like chess and like boxing.’
45:45
I don’t know if it’s a combination of the two. But you somehow related the three together, tennis, boxing, and chess.
45:52
What makes tennis so special? Well, if you’re asking why it’s in the book,
46:00
the reason it’s in the book is it’s the one sport I knew well enough to be able to try to talk about why it was beautiful.
46:07
And it’s also a sport that has to do with two very bounded spaces and sending stuff back and forth between them
46:13
which has other stuff to do with the book. I think tennis is a very very beautiful sport,
46:21
because it’s very abstract and geometrical and tactical like chess.
46:27
And it’s also very physical. There’s a lot of running. You get very tired playing.
46:33
I don’t know about the boxing thing unless that it’s just usually one person against another person.
46:38
Interviewer: And chess? Well, if you’re really interested,
46:46
really good tennis players, like really good chess players, are always thinking four or five moves ahead.
46:53
Actually, this was something that …
46:59
that some of the German players who were superstars in the nineties were very good at doing.
47:06
Boris Becker didn’t just come up and hit an ace. What Boris Becker - and I think he’d learned this from McEnroe -
47:13
was really good at hitting the forcing serve that made you hit a weak return that let him come into the net and put the next shot away.
47:21
So that everything is being thought of ahead, but it’s also very combative.
47:27
But if you and I are playing, if I win, you lose. I’m trying to beat you very individually.
47:32
I don’t feel like this is making any sense at all. Interviewer: It does. Okay. Okay. Interviewer: I’m sorry, but - No, no. Okay, fine.
47:39
Well, you can run some sort of editing magic. Interviewer: Yeah, sure, but I don’t have to.
47:44
But there’s also something about - It’s also combat at a distance. In boxing, the two bodies are very close to each other.
47:52
There’s something a little colder about tennis, which is, I’m trying to beat you,
47:58
but you’re 75 feet away from me and what’s traveling between us is just this small thing.
48:03
There’s something more abstract about it which is a little bit more like chess. Interviewer: And you also said it’s more mathematical, right?
48:11
There was … I think there was … Are you talking about the essay that talks about calculus and tennis?
48:20
Interviewer: No. Maybe I didn’t understand it, Hal talks - no, was it Mario who talks to this guy?
48:30
His name is Schtitt? Schtitt! Schtitt? Yeah. I think he says that.
48:36
A German, as I recall. Interviewer: Yeah. But that’s not a German name, actually. No, of course it isn’t.
48:41
What it is, is a vaguely Germanic sounding name to Americans. Yeah, he’s not the subtlest character in there.
48:52
Well, the angles are mathematical. So I don’t know.
48:59
Interviewer: So, what is literature able to do that other - Interviewer: So, what is literature able to do that other -
49:04
I saw this on the sheet of paper. Interviewer: Yeah, because I had to … Good. Good. So let me ask you first, and then I’ll …
49:11
What is it that literature can do that other things can’t do? It’s not so easy, is it?
49:18
Interviewer: No, no. Not at all. But I thought that, you know, you’re more intelligent than I am.
49:27
Well, actually, I read in this interview and you said something,
49:34
That good art somehow is able to not make you feel alone.
49:41
That is something actually that I’m very addicted to. Because, simple as I am, I’m very happy
49:51
when I don’t feel so lonesome when I read something. And also, good literature?
50:00
Literature is something very musical to me. I had that with Bernhard very much,
50:05
because the sicker he got in his life, the easier the words became.
50:12
And it was like some kind of music. So, for me, the beauty of the words and also this musical thing about it,
50:20
and also something philosophical and not feeling alone. Why don’t - can we just put that in?
50:27
That’s a better answer to the question than I could have given. Interviewer: No, no. First I had to answer.
50:34
Well, play back the tape of what she said, and I’ll just - no.
50:42
It’s a heavy question.
50:50
There’s something musical about it, because it has to do with patterns of meaning that develop over time.
50:59
There’s stuff, for me, about reading that isn’t like looking at a piece of art,
51:07
because, there, I choose how long I look and what I look at. I’m being directed through a linear flow of time.
51:13
But in a piece of music or in a movie, that flow is directed for me. I’ve really got no choice, but to follow it.
51:19
Whereas books, it’s weird. I’m moving through time, through this thing,
51:25
but I can also, I don’t know whether you do it or not, but if I’ve read a paragraph I like a lot, I go back and I read it over again.
51:32
So I’m trapped in time, but I’ve got more mobility within that time.
51:37
And then I think … There’s other writers I’ve talked to about this
51:45
and most of us who end up doing this like to read as kids, probably for the same reason you did.
51:53
I’m trying to think of a way to say it where it doesn’t just sound stupid and simple, but it goes without saying that …
52:02
There are four of us in this room. I’m sure we all seem fairly pleasant.
52:09
There are big limits on what we’ll ever know Like I don’t know what’s in your mind, right now.
52:15
God knows I don’t know what’s in his mind right now. There’s a way for me - I’m talking more as a reader -
52:22
that when I’m reading something that’s good and that’s real I’m able to jump over that wall of self
52:33
and inhabit somebody else in a way that I can’t. You know, that we can’t in regular life.
52:42
And when I do inhabit that other person, very often what they’re thinking or saying or feeling are things very much the way I do,
52:51
but I’m scared there’s something wrong with me that I do and nobody else does. There’s a tremendous reassurance about that kind of
53:00
communion and empathy. And then it gets more complicated,
53:05
because I’m also getting access to the mind of the author in a way that we don’t have access to each other talking this way.
53:17
Most of the friends I’ve got, and most of my friends don’t like to read. Most of the friends I’ve got who don’t like to read
53:22
find it, A) boring, and B) just kind of lonely and slow. And I just don’t get it.
53:27
because watching television for me, although it’s easier, is much lonelier. Watching in flat images on a flat screen doing interesting things
53:36
and often they’re very easy to look at is very different from knowing what it’s like to be inside somebody else’s skin
53:44
or knowing what it’s like to be able to spend two hours with an author who somehow can make me feel like I know what it is.
53:51
I mean, it just seems like a form of magic to me. Interviewer: And is it also comfort?
53:59
I can’t remember which American writer it was … I heard him speaking.
54:04
He said that his job is to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable.
54:10
And so that, there’s something comforting …
54:15
There’s something comforting about being able to inhabit somebody else, but there’s something also very uncomfortable about it,
54:22
because usually the experiences that person is having are just the ones that I don’t like
54:28
or that I haven’t worked out. And it seems to me that the biggest split isn’t
54:34
between music and literature or music and sculpture, whatever. They’re forms of art that offer us escapes from ourselves and our daily lives.
54:42
And I think that’s fun in small doses. And then there are kinds of art that offer us more confrontation
54:49
with our own lives. I don’t think it’s surprising that there isn’t as much demand
54:55
or as much money in the latter, because it’s more difficult and less pleasant sometimes.
55:01
It takes skill and education to get good enough at reading or listening
55:06
to be able to derive pleasure from it. There’s class stuff involved here that gets very tricky.
55:15
But I think it’s worthwhile. I think reading and writing are both worthwhile.
55:21
That’s very profound. [Laughter] I did good for awhile in the middle there. That was lucid.
55:28
All I did was parrot back what you said - Interviewer: No, you didn’t. But I took like ten times as long And I did this [hand gestures] a lot more.
55:39
Boy, is it hot in here now. Interviewer: Yes, it is. [Laughter] Camera Man: Oh yeah.
55:46
Interviewer: So we are right into something that I actually have … Do you want me to get you some water or something?
55:53
No, I’m fine. I’ll just be sweating here in my chair. It’s fine. Not a problem. Interviewer: The typical American.
55:59
Yes, the sweaty American. I’m proud to sweat on behalf of the USA. [Laughter]
56:06
Interviewer: So we were just in the middle of a question that I put on this paper
56:11
which was somehow faxed. And which I received. Interviewer: That’s good to know.
56:20
The fear of the writer. That his work and his persona, somehow, made banal, be flattened, and abused,
56:29
as soon as the media - I don’t recall that. Where’s that written down there? Interviewer: Here. Banal?
56:34
Interviewer: Yeah, I don’t know if that’s - Oh. Okay. Interviewer: “Banalized”. I think I made this word up? How interesting.
56:40
See, mine stopped here. Interviewer: Really? Yeah. There wasn’t any of this stuff. Interviewer: Oh my God. No, it’s fine.
56:51
So, we’re talking about the marketing of writing stuff? Interviewer: No, but. I mean …
56:57
The fear of the writer that his work and his persona are somehow made into banal, well not only, but, it belongs to promoting.
57:09
The work and his persona are the same thing? Interviewer: No, no, no. But they’re both made …
57:16
Interviewer: Yeah, but, you know, when you’re out there for the media.
57:22
What happens then? I see a paradox here. I’m going to talk about the difficulties
57:28
of having to deal with the media, but I’m talking to the media. See, I’ll pretend I’m talking to you,
57:34
but when this shows, you’re going to have this face, sweaty face, on camera, talking about how difficult it is, as a writer, to be on camera,
57:43
in which case, if I were the viewer, I would go, ‘So why is the son of a bitch on camera?’
57:48
So, how do you suggest I handle this? Interviewer: Yeah. No. It’s a paradox, but at the same time I think it’s very …
57:55
I mean, it’s a legitimate fear to have.
58:00
I think about these things all the time. I think, well, I like literature, but at the same time,
58:05
why am I doing this? And how am I doing this? And how can I try to preserve these things?
58:12
So, you know, it’s a paradox for me too.
58:17
So, for this reason I think it’s something you can think about. Sure.
58:24
Well, there are a number of trade-offs. In the United States, there’s another division between corporate publishers
58:34
and non-profit publishers, who are often very small and do a lot of poetry and avant-garde fiction.
58:40
If you are “lucky”, these are square quotes, if you are lucky enough to be published by a corporate publisher,
58:49
you get more exposure, you get reviewed in the New York Times instead of just your local newspaper,
58:58
you get translated into other languages.
59:04
But literary stuff loses money for corporate publishers almost all the time. And one of the ways they try to keep from losing money is marketing this stuff.
59:14
And for reasons that everyone has tried to explain to me, but I still don’t understand it,
59:20
having the author go around and talk and read - The thing they most like to do is send you to a bookstore
59:27
and you give a reading at a bookstore and there’s maybe 200 people there, but, while you’re in town to do the reading for the bookstore,
59:34
you talk to the local newspaper and you maybe do something like this. And that generates free advertising for the book.
59:48
My problems with it are the following: my stuff, I don’t feel like, is meant to be read out loud.
59:56
It’s not supposed to live on the breath. There isn’t enough punctuation in it.
1:00:02
And I don’t feel like I read it out loud very well, A). And B) , I find …
1:00:13
When there’s a question and answer, like you and I are having, although you and I are having a much more lengthy one,
1:00:21
but particularly with a newspaper reporter or a question-and-answer at the end of a reading,
1:00:29
the question is easy to answer if it’s dull or stupid. The good questions are questions that can’t be answered
1:00:36
in a Q-and-A format, right? They’re ones where you would have to sit down with a pot of tea or a pot of coffee.
1:00:42
There are things that can be answered only in conversation between two people. And so I always feel vaguely
1:00:51
fraudulent. There’s a thing about doing this where you’re helping me.
1:00:57
We’re pretending we’re having a conversation. And I’m also pretending that there aren’t cameras all over here,
1:01:03
but in fact this is all on TV, and I know that I’m supposed to ignore, I’m not supposed to look at the camera,
1:01:08
because that doesn’t make for a good interview. But trust me, when I’m sitting here, the camera is the thing I really see.
1:01:15
It’s all very strange. And so … So why do I do it at all?
1:01:21
I make a variety of deals. And I do a few things.
1:01:26
I know some writers who like this. And there are things about it - it’s very flattering.
1:01:33
You guys came. It makes me nervous and it makes me …
1:01:41
it makes me self-conscious to try to talk about stuff that I find almost impossible to talk about. Or else just to go, ‘So, how long are you in town?’ ‘Oh, three days.’
1:01:56
But I have an agent whom I owe 25,000 favors to. He’s done all of these nice things for me.
1:02:02
And it’s also exciting for a writer to get his work published in another country, so she says.
1:02:10
This German publisher is really good.
1:02:15
They’re going to publish the book well, even though I don’t think my English can really be translated into German
1:02:21
because it’s very idiomatic. Great advertisement, I’m sure.
1:02:30
And all they need, they need this one thing from you to help them sell enough books
1:02:36
maybe so that they don’t lose money on it. It then becomes very difficult to say, no.
1:02:41
On the other hand, I don’t think it’s very good, I don’t think it’s good. Maybe a show like this?
1:02:49
There’s no analog for this in the U.S., but the whole going around and reading in bookstores thing,
1:02:55
it’s turning writers into kind of penny-ante or cheap versions of celebrities.
1:03:03
People aren’t usually coming out to hear you read, they’re coming out to see what you look like
1:03:09
and see whether your voice matches the voices in their head when they read. And none of it’s important.
1:03:14
It’s icky. I don’t know if there’s a German translation for “icky”.
1:03:20
In terms of “banal”, I don’t know. “Banal”, to me, means,
1:03:26
general and simplistic and superficial and vapid.
1:03:34
If you do work like this, you pay certain prices. You don’t make as much money. Not as many people read your stuff.
1:03:40
But people who are reading it and are interested in it, you’re pretty sure …
1:03:45
The thing that I like about doing this kind of stuff is that I’m pretty sure my readers are about as smart as I am.
1:03:51
I think if you’re somebody like Crichton or someone who’s a Harvard M.D., but you’re writing for a mass audience,
1:03:57
things get very strange. I don’t worry that people who are reading my stuff are misunderstanding it.
1:04:05
Or “banalizing” it any more than it’s already banal.
1:04:11
I do worry, weirdly, about when it’s translated into languages that I don’t know.
1:04:17
I worry that I don’t know what’s in there. There are so many American idioms in there
1:04:24
that I don’t know whether they can be translated or not. Interviewer: That’s very hard to do, to translate it, actually.
1:04:31
The people who did it, who translated your work in German, are really people who are very much into it, you know.
1:04:39
I know some of them. Oh, no. I mean, that’s good to hear. And you can understand, I can believe you,
1:04:45
and still, there’s this weird … there’s this weird … Because, one of the things about …
1:04:51
You’re probably like this about your work too. The term is, “control-freak”. You know, I want to control every single word that’s on there.
1:05:00
And so, it’s just tough. The one language I can read, I read the translation,
1:05:06
and it was just so different from anything I meant, that I’ve decided that it was just better
1:05:12
to have it be done in languages I don’t know. Is that any kind of answer to the question?
1:05:18
Interviewer: Yeah, sure. Sure. One thing that also very much appealed to me One thing that also very much appealed to me
1:05:26
is when you spoke in an interview about existential loneliness.
1:05:34
I said the word, “existential loneliness”? Interviewer: Yeah. Something like that. Okay.
1:05:39
Interviewer: You know, I’m German. Somethings I get things right and wrong. No, no, no. Okay …
1:05:47
Interviewer: And that’s something very much I like to hear an author say, because, in the things I read, that’s one thing I’m searching for,
1:05:59
these testimonies of existential loneliness. So, is that something you still relate to? Or …
1:06:08
Well, yeah. If I understand your question, this is the stuff we were talking about two questions ago.
1:06:14
There’s something painful about being stuck in a body and a consciousness that can’t ever, except through conversation,
1:06:23
can’t ever be inside anybody else’s. And there is a magic about …
1:06:29
Except, see, I don’t know that much about music. People who do say that there is a purity with which
1:06:35
the composer’s emotional state can be felt by the listener that can’t be approached by anything else either.
1:06:40
Probably, most of kinds of art have this magical thing of, for a moment, there’s a kind of reconciliation and communion
1:06:50
between you and me that isn’t possible in any other way.
1:06:55
But it’s also the sort of thing that’s so weighty and so general, that, especially after he used the word, “pontificate”, I feel …
1:07:03
Interviewer: What does it mean? I have never heard it. The word, “pontificate”? To speak pompously about very complex abstruse matters.
1:07:12
It’s a little bit pejorative. But he meant it in a funny way. But it’s, I mean, it’s …
1:07:17
This is something else about being an American. When I hear the word, “existential”, now,
1:07:23
half of me rolls my eyes, ‘Oh, what a big sexy philosophical term.’
1:07:29
And it becomes hard to speak seriously about it, because all I can hear is being made fun of
1:07:37
for how serious and boring and dull I’m being. If that makes any sense. Good luck editing.
1:07:42
Camera Man: We’re switching tapes. You’re German accent’s much better than mine. How surprising.
1:07:47
Interviewer: Yeah, really.
1:07:57
Interviewer: In Germany, when I’m talking about my generation,
1:08:02
people in my profession, most of the time they have really good educations,
1:08:11
and all this. There’s also the feeling of not being able to do anything with it.
1:08:21
You have pretty good conditions to start with, and then after that you think, well, what’s next?
1:08:28
What am I doing with this? Maybe it’s not reality, but you have the feeling of not doing anything with your life.
1:08:40
And what do you think about that? I know that there’s a paradox in the U.S. of,
1:08:50
the people who get powerful jobs, tend to go to really good schools,
1:08:57
and often in school you study the liberal arts, philosophy, classical stuff, languages.
1:09:02
And it’s all very much about the nobility of the human spirit and broadening the mind.
1:09:08
And from that, you go to a specialized school to learn how to sue people
1:09:15
or to figure out how to write copy that will make people buy a certain kind of SUV. And yeah …
1:09:31
I don’t know what I think about it other than that …
1:09:39
I’m not sure really that it’s ever been all that different. I’m not sure really that it’s ever been all that different.
1:09:47
because very few of us, and there are things about my job I don’t like,
1:09:53
but this is one of them that I do like, is that I get to use …
1:09:59
I get to use pretty much everything I’ve ever learned or think about. It’s actually something that goes a long way when I bitch and moan.
1:10:09
Sometimes it’s lonely work and sometimes you worry it’s not very good. I know that there is, at least in America,
1:10:16
an entire class of, and now, I’m talking about a very specific class here, I’m talking about upper and upper-middle-class kids
1:10:25
whose parents could afford to send them to very good schools where they got very good educations,
1:10:31
who are often working in jobs that are financially rewarding,
1:10:38
but don’t have anything to do with what they got persuasively taught
1:10:43
was important and worthwhile in school. And that is - I’ve never taught about it in those stark terms -
1:10:51
that’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it? When you guys talk about it, what do you conclude from it?
1:10:58
Interviewer: That’s the thing, I don’t know what to conclude from it.
1:11:03
I don’t know if it’s a phenomenon that has to do with a certain generation.
1:11:11
A friend of yours, your age, who you were in school with, who’s a business man now, would say that you are better off than he,
1:11:18
because you’re at least getting to use a lot of the stuff that you studied in your actual work, right?
1:11:23
Interviewer: Right. You know what? We could talk about it for a long time.
1:11:31
I don’t know that I could say anything about it that would be interesting.
1:11:36
From an on-camera point of view, my suspicion is that this has got something to do with
1:11:44
with something that was explained by original sin, in Genesis, which is that,
1:11:51
as we get older, we have to do things to get money, to stay alive, and there are things about that that often feel very wrong to us.
1:12:07
It would be very nice if you cut that out, because that just sounds weird.
1:12:13
I don’t know. Interviewer: Maybe this alienation is just part of it, you know?
1:12:19
In your book, in “Infinite Jest”, there are also people who,
1:12:25
they don’t want to grow up. And they feel alienated from what they started.
1:12:32
And they say, well, we have done this and that. Well, we’re not talking a Marxist alienation.
1:12:39
We’re not talking about alienation from the means of production.
1:12:46
The thing of it is, though, at least in the U.S., this would be my guess, I doubt that somebody who went only to high school,
1:12:55
which is the secondary school, and is working in a factory,
1:13:01
I doubt he wakes up and goes, ‘Well, by gosh, at least I don’t have all this humanistic learning I’m not using.’
1:13:07
I don’t imagine he’s any more satisfied
1:13:13
or nourished inside by his job either. What you and I are part of is a class and generation that can be very articulate
1:13:21
about what our complaints are and what we’re feeling uneasy about. I think if there’s something that characterizes our generation,
1:13:29
is not that we’ve come up with new problems or brilliant new solutions to them, but that we’re endlessly verbal about it.
1:13:37
Which is probably a start, at least being able to talk about it.
1:13:46
Interviewer: Talking about this dilemma,
1:13:52
wanting to be entertained and you just mentioned there was this big thing in America, a couple of days ago,
1:14:04
and also this movement in a certain direction. And you asked me what I thought it was in ten, twenty years from now.
1:14:11
So what do you think it will be like in a couple of decades from now in America?
1:14:20
I mean, how will this go on? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m scared.
1:14:30
I don’t know that I could say anything about the last couple years that anybody else couldn’t say.
1:14:46
When I was younger, I used to … When I was younger, I used to …
1:14:51
There’s a way in which we in America are very comfortable.
1:14:57
And I used to think that some of the political and social answers
1:15:05
that I thought should be …
1:15:10
Some of the political and social corrections that I thought should be brought about would happen when there was some sort of cataclysm
1:15:17
or misfortune, where we weren’t as comfortable any more.
1:15:24
The fact that … that we now have clear evidence that the way we live
1:15:33
and the relationships we have with various other countries
1:15:39
are causing some people to hate us so much that they want to kill us,
1:15:45
and may succeed in killing a great many of us, frightens me only because …
1:15:58
When I was growing up, one of the mythological periods for us growing up is the Great Depression.
1:16:07
Weimar era. Where the story goes, everyone pulled together.
1:16:12
There were hard times, and no one had enough, but everyone pulled together.
1:16:18
It seems to me now, that the country’s reaction to feeling frightened and insecure
1:16:27
is to buy Sports Utility Vehicles that are large and massive and tank-like and make individual people feel safer,
1:16:34
but also get four miles-to-the-gallon in a country where gasoline is probably one-fifth as expensive as it ought to be.
1:16:44
There’s a sanity in Europe about gasoline prices and fuel consumption that there isn’t here yet.
1:16:50
And yet, are voting for people who are deciding to go over and very possibly kill hundreds of thousands of civilians
1:17:00
in order to kill a few enemies. None of which is important, but the fact that no one here is talking about the connection between
1:17:09
how we live and what we drive
1:17:14
and the things that are happening. The speed with which it’s become, those bad people, those bad fanatics, they’re evil,
1:17:23
what they really hate is our freedom and our way of life, which is just hard to swallow, right? Who hates freedom?
1:17:29
People hate people, not freedom.
1:17:37
I now don’t know what’s going to happen. And I am, as an American, as scared …
1:17:47
Not since I was a little boy and I worried about the U.S. and the Soviet Union having an intercontinental -
1:17:53
Not since that, have I been this scared. And this is totally personally, but I’m more scared of us
1:18:01
than I am of anybody else. That’s a bleak place to be. I’m not sure how I feel about …
1:18:08
Well, you’re going to use it if you want. I don’t think this is an evil country.
1:18:14
I don’t think American people are evil. I think we’ve had it very … I think we’ve had it very easy, materially, for a long time,
1:18:22
and we’ve gotten very little help in understanding things that are important besides being comfortable.
1:18:29
I don’t think anybody knows how we will react if things get really hard here.
1:18:36
The fact that we’re strong militarily and economically is a good thing, but it’s also a frightening thing.
1:18:44
To some of us, as Americans.
1:18:51
Luckily, not a lot of Americans will see this in Germany.
1:18:56
Interviewer: Are there any means of rebellion? Interviewer: Are there any means of rebellion?
1:19:01
Sure. Interviewer: So, what would it be?
1:19:08
Well, there are people doing it all over the place.
1:19:14
I don’t know about people rappelling down buildings and getting tear gassed and stuff.
1:19:22
The people I know who are rebelling meaningfully don’t buy a lot of stuff.
1:19:31
And don’t get their view of the world from television.
1:19:36
And are willing to spend four or five hours researching an election rather than going by commercials.
1:19:43
The thing about it is that in America, we think of rebellion as this very sexy thing
1:19:48
and it involves action and force and looks good. My guess is the forms of rebellion that will end up changing anything meaningfully here
1:19:57
will be very quiet and very individual. And probably not all that interesting to look at from the outside.
1:20:05
I’m now hoping for less interesting, rather than more interesting. Violence is interesting
1:20:12
and horrible corruption and scandals and rattling sabers and talking about war
1:20:18
and demonizing a billion people of a different faith in the world. Those are all interesting. Sitting in a chair and really thinking about what this means
1:20:26
and why the fact that what I drive might have something to do with how people in other parts of the world feel about me
1:20:34
isn’t interesting to anybody else. That was very close to the truth, but I don’t think it’s going to make much sense.
1:20:40
And plus, it’s a little silly. I’m a writer. I’m not a politician or a political thinker or whatever.
1:20:47
Just a scared little American. Living in California.
1:20:53
Interviewer: Just one more question. Interviewer: Just one more question. Do you think there is a chance that
1:21:00
we might get rid of this love for attractiveness?
1:21:09
It’s this visual thing. And you said rebellion is supposed to be attractive.
1:21:16
People think, well, it’s attractive to take your gun and be this rebel.
1:21:21
But the true rebellion is not supposed to be attractive, because it just isn’t.
1:21:27
So how do we get rid of all this visual …
1:21:33
It’s weird to be saying this on television. It’s weird to be saying this on television. There’s something about … there’s nothing wrong …
1:21:42
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with being interested in stuff that’s interesting and attractive. What it seems to be like here is …
1:21:52
Television and corporate entertainment, because it’s so expensive, in order to make money,
1:22:00
it has to appeal to a very wide audience. Which means it has to find things that a lot of people have in common.
1:22:06
And I don’t know about you, but here, I think, what most of us have in common here
1:22:13
are our very most base, uninteresting, selfish, stupid interests.
1:22:19
Physical attractiveness. Sex. A certain kind of easy humor. Vivid spectacle.
1:22:26
That’s stuff that I will immediately look at, and so will you, and so will you.
1:22:33
So it’s in our very most base and childish interests that we are a mass.
1:22:40
The things that make us interesting and unique and human, those interests tend to be wildly different between different people.
1:22:49
So, my guess is … In terms of American mass culture, as a mass,
1:22:57
for things to get significantly different, what it’s going to involve is fragmentation in the entertainment industry.
1:23:06
Something like what’s happened in the American magazine industry, where instead of three or four magazines with millions of subscribers,
1:23:15
you have thousands of magazines, each with a few thousand. That is, if entertainment can get more niche -
1:23:22
N, I, C, H, E, is the English word - it’s possible that these companies that put this stuff out
1:23:31
can stay alive and make money without having to appeal to ten, twenty million people.
1:23:36
Because I don’t think that it’s evil. It’s just the way that it works. The only way to get ten or twenty million people all interested in the same thing
1:23:45
is to pitch your appeal very very low. Because maybe you’re not interested in any of the things that I named,
1:23:52
you know, just immediately, but I am. I’m no different than anybody else. I’m not, really.