Blog Rage

By Isaac Butler

Just peaking my head in to address this blog post I wrote responding to Julian Gough's article on David Foster Wallace's death. After reading Julian's response in the comments, I decided to reread the post and think about it and ultimately, I'm not particularly proud of it. I think it's a textbook example of Blog Rage Syndrome.

After blogging for many years now, I've come to recognize Blog Rage Syndrome in myself and others. It goes something like this: some amount of pressure is building up because of shit going on in your life and usually (in my case) reading about the news.  And then some trigger point comes up like Gough's article, and all of that Blog Rage gets directed right at it and your response to the thing is disproportionate.

This gets compounded with the Primary Flaw of All Blogging which is the now-like-genetically hardwired tendency amongst bloggers (and commenters) to immediately distrust the intentions of anyone they're talking to or about.  I fight hard against the Primary Flaw of All Blogging in my work here at Parabasis, but when blinded by Blog Rage Syndrome it becomes hard to do.  And therefore, some apology is in order for being a dick and letting BRS and the PFAB get the best of me. 

(I should also note here that many top-line blogs, particularly the coincidentally-named Eschaton are the deeply hilarious Sadly, No! made up entirely of BRS and PFAB which makes both phenomena even harder to resist)

Now, I do think that Gough's piece on DFW's death is seriously flawed.  However, I don't think (particularly after reading Gough's comment) that the flaws come out of a twisted desire to use DFW's death to advance one's own agenda. 

Here's why I think it's flawed, and what set me off a bit I think... David Foster Wallace's death is all the more tragic (lower case t) because it's essentially meaningless.   Some percentage of people on antidepressants will be failed by them. DFW's number came up.  At least if the Rolling Stone article is to be believed, his number came up at the end of a long process in which he and those he loved did everything right. It's meaningless, and that meaninglessness is really scary. (It's essential meaningless was also true prior to the Rolling Stone article's publication, no one knew at all what had happened to him other than those who he was close to)

Searching DFW's death for meaning is like looking at a pool of blackened water lit from above by the full moon. All we'll see in it is a muddy distended reflection of ourselves. In our heartbreak and psychically wounded state, we're going to keep going back to that pool, and that muddy self is going to look a lot like meaning. 

I find that myself now that I'm re-reading Infinite Jest.  Which parts of it are evidence of X thing about DFW and which aren't?  Wallace himself would've rejected such a reading, and it takes real like control-of-my-subconscious not to do so.

In other words, what I found off about Gough's piece is a basically entirely natural response to something heartbreaking and seemingly random, and the proper response to such a thing is some modicum of human compassion and putting-oneself-in-the-other-person's-shoes, particularly when it comes out of a shared love of an artist, rather than being a dick.

Comments

[Mark]

I know he's not a popular name around these parts, but, to riff off Mamet: blogging provides a real danger that one will open their mouth without knowing what the shot is. When I first started blogging, I did that more than once and wound up eating a big slice of crow. Now days I try to be more circumspect.

[Pmull]

I empathize with your BRS. I recently had an episode on my own blog that was spurred by GGR (Google Group Rage). It's a struggle. Maybe we should start a chapter of BRA (Blog Rage Anonymous).