How To Be Alone

Apathy Jack writes:

In his essay ‘Why Bother?’ Jonathan Franzen says of depression:

“Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression’s actual essence, which is an overwhelming estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage with the world, the more perfidiously happy-faced the rest of humanity seems for continuing to engage with it.”

So according to Franzen, I’m depressed.

Of course, how seriously can you take the opinion of a shocking literary pedant who believes the fact that not everyone reads 25 books a year is a harbinger of the downfall of society?

Actually, being a shocking literary pedant who believes the fact that not everyone reads 25 books a year is a harbinger of the downfall of society myself, self-interest dictates that I say you, the adoring public, should take the opinions of such people as gospel.

Not that I’m too happy to have anything in common with Jonathan Franzen, of course.

Oh well, at least I don’t write lengthy diatribes where I come across as being insufferably precious, socially dysfunctional and having a martyr complex.



Aw crap.