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Comment by eastbayjake | Hacker News Reader

Fun Fact: it's been alleged by contemporaries like Jonathan Franzen that DFW fabricated many of these stories, there's a reason they were not published as nonfiction in a magazine with a rigorous fact-check process like the New Yorker. (Which is not to say DFW's "nonfiction" writing is not entertaining or illuminating - it is!)

https://www.theawl.com/2011/10/a-supposedly-true-thing-jonat...

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As someone who has taken a lot of cruises I can tell you from firsthand experience that many of his descriptions are factually inaccurate. But I think that is missing the point. What is really going on here, I think, is DFW struggling with his clinical depression, from which a cruise offered no respite despite the fact that it's one of those things in life that is supposed to Make Everything Better. Viewed in that light, it's quite a poignant glimpse into the tortured psyche of a brilliant mind.

Just don't take it as anything remotely like an objective review.

I think the last thing you want to do with clinically depressed people is to put them within a continuously available means of easy suicide while at the same time exposing them to some pretty rude examples of exploitation and near indentured servitude.

Cruise ships are enough to make mentally healthy people depressed.

I don't think people appreciate this enough.

The story is an excellent metaphor for how people like him (dare I say “us”) look at life. We overthink and we are uncomfortable at the thought of being “pampered” as though we are superior to the person pampering us. Logical or not, that’s how I feel about it. Perhaps it’s because we are aware of the lousiness of a job such as “porter” whereas the average person is oblivious, disinterested, apathetic or whatever else.

In his famous "This is Water" essay DFW exhibits enormous empathy for others, but I find that empathy MIA here. Yes, there is a little bit of effort to describe the duffel bag story from the porter's point of view, but that's not really the overarching point, which is that Cruising Is Horrible because Life Is Horrible and there is No Way Out and there is no escape from the pit of existential despair.

If instead he'd written a piece about how the staff on cruise ships work ridiculously hard for very low pay to give the guests a respite from their own shitty lives because the crew live even shittier lives than the guests, that would have been a much better piece. But that's not the piece he chose to write here. Alas.

But why should he write something to suit your moral demands? The piece is clearly and obviously designed to entertain, and is written by a character called DFW who is as much of an invention as everything described. I feel you're missing the depth and the angle - it's not meant to be purely descriptive, it's artistic entertainment.

Yeah, I get that. But as a fan of cruising it feels like a cheap shot at an activity I enjoy and the people who work their butts off to make it possible. DFW seems completely oblivious to the fact that the people behind the scenes of his dystopian fantasy (to say nothing of people like me who buy their product) are actual human beings with hopes and dreams and feelings. You can spin this as "suiting my moral demands" but I think that my entertainment should come at their expense.

Don't read it then...

Also, if you're a fan of cruising, why do you continue to do it knowing the completely compromised position of those below decks who are being cruelly taken advantage of and underpaid to deliver you your cruise? It seems like you're pinning your own issues with yourself and the activity onto DFW while continuing to enjoy it

Because the people below decks are still taking those jobs voluntarily, and so as bad as their situation is in those jobs, I figure they must still be worse off without them.

I also try to avoid cruise lines that really abuse their workers.

Is this the defense of your choice to support the industry? I'm not sure I understand it, as the same logic was/is used to justify slave labour and systemic racism - "they want to work, the children enjoy helping their parents in the field". Doesn't this ring sour to you?

It does indeed, but there is a salient difference: I have no influence over the economic policies of the countries from which cruise ships draw their labor forces. If I did, you would be absolutely correct that I would not have any claim to the moral high ground. But I don't, so AFAICT giving them money is the best I can do under the circumstances. If you have a better idea, I'm all ears.

I would also point out that this kind of "exploitation" seems empirically to be effective at lifting large numbers of people out of poverty. It's far from ideal, but it nonetheless produces better outcomes than anything else that has been tried.

Maybe that’s why DFW chose not to mention it then

I was showing some Skinny Puppy videos from the late 80s and early 90s to a millennial and she commented that the interesting thing about them was that they were leaning in to their mental illness, anxiety and depression to produce great art. That doesn't really happen these days. Everyone is so medicated they are just all robots and they don't have these strong emotional forces driving their creativity in those directions.

Perhaps peculiar to the incoherent egalitarian of our age, particular to the middle class: not quite rich enough. The same impulse that motivates the "oh, you shouldn't have, I can't accept this" bit of sentimental moral theater. There's a certain fear of being unmasked as a fraud. You don't quite have the money or je ne sais quoi you feel you should have before you can confidently claim the sense of superiority you'd like. Ah, yes, it's that old mysticism of money again.

Note that the king serves his people, and we do not typically characterize kings as inferiors. Parentd feed, clothe, and bathe their children in their early years with no risk to their rank. Perhaps here lingers a contempt for the work of the working men, an ingratitude, that inflames the strange spectacle of overcompensation, of overvaluing their work.

But it is simple. Either the arrangement is just, in which case there is no problem, or it is, in which case, what are you doing partaking in it, unless it is licit nonetheless, in which case, why the anxiety? Learn to receive what is given with the right amount of gratitude.

Also, I don't especially care for cruises.

That’s interesting. I’ve only been on one or two cruises, but my recollection of the article is that it all seemed directionally accurate, or at least plausible.

It sounds like you certainly know better that I would, though, so I’m just curious - what are some examples of the inaccuracies?

I do not mean to be confrontational in the slightest, so I hope my question isn’t coming off that way.

Well, let's start with the title. It is simply not true that anything on a cruise ship is "nearly lethal". Cruise ships are ridiculously safe environments compared to the rest of the world. Just about the only place you're going to be safer is on an airplane. Even your own home is almost certainly more dangerous than a modern cruise ship.

The other thing that really struck me was his characterization of the cruise environment as "an enormous primordial stew of death and decay." It isn't, at least not any more than anyplace else on the planet. Sure, boats rust, but so what? This is just another example of the continual struggle of life against the Second Law. This entire planet is "an enormous primordial stew of death and decay." It is, of course, also an enormous nursery of life emerging from that death and decay. That's just the Way It Is. Cruse ships are just part of the human phenotype, no different from any other artifact. Nothing lasts forever. Getting maudlin about it is a choice.

Some other random examples: he renames the ship from Zenith to Nadir as a dark joke, but then he keeps referring to her that way. The micromanagement he describes on page 37 doesn't happen, except insofar as the staff will try to be helpful in allowing you to make the most of your limited time.

Reading back over it I guess the problem is not so much blatant factual inaccuracies as it is continually and unrelentingly putting the worst possible spin on every detail of what is actually a very enjoyable experience -- if you allow it to be, which he emphatically did not. The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that this was the clinical depression talking.

or a writer really just goofing around in the same way as, say, Seinfeld.

I didn't like Seinfeld either. There are enough people behaving like assholes in the real world. I don't need more of that in my evening entertainment.

Or George Carlin. Or Bill Hicks. Or a bunch of other people you don't like but that many enjoy regardless.

The problem with Seinfeld is that they deliberately set out to make a show with unsympathetic characters whose central personality trait is that they care about no one but themselves. Basically, they're sociopaths. Carlin can be abrasive, but I don't think he's a sociopath.

Why is that a problem? The whole point is to make the viewer laugh and mock them for comedy.

Because I don't believe in mocking people for their personal shortcomings.

I also think a fundamental principle of good drama is that it should have a protagonist that you can root for even if they are flawed. (Frasier is a good example.) None of Seinfeld's characters had any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Whoa, you don’t believe in mocking people for their behaviour?

That is not what I said.

Hence the finale ;-)

> The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that this was the clinical depression talking.

I think cruises are kind of shitty. Is it possible that one could dislike the experience without suffering from something in DSM?

To me they're the crowning jewel of shameless consumerism. It's like getting one of those 14-in-1 tools from the dollar store. Sure, you got everything in one pocket but they're all pretty crappy versions of the original.

I get the travel angle, but airplanes are a hell of a lot faster. I've never found myself reading sky mall thinking I'd prefer to be roaming through an actual mall.

He’s using hyperbole.

Anyway, if you’ve ever been on a cruise ship during a norovirus outbreak, stew of death and decay doesn’t seem so far off.

I think it's a big mistake for young people (like my former self) to take deeply unhappy 20th century authors like DFW, Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson too much to heart.

Yes, they did have important things to say, and yes, it wasn't their fault that they were so unhappy, but you should never try to be like them.

We were just trying to find the American dream

It seems like they were too focused on rejecting everything that was already there, though. (FAL reference duly noted.)

Oblig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwlC2B-BIg

It's really hard for me to see this as anything more than, Oh, Franzen's a hater.

Come to think of it, I've never read anything about DFW that comes remotely close to what he did on the page? Like it seems like every writer who has more than a few paragraphs on DFW is someone obviously inferior?

Relatedly, a wild thing, Chuck Palahniuk has written very little about him, but this included the fact that HE AND DFW SHARE A BIRTHDAY.

That kinda blew my mind.

Franzen wasn't the first and hasn't been the most consistent among those raising this concern. DT Max, who was Wallace's friend, and not even a rival-friend like Franzen, has said he thinks the chess encounter from this story is fabricated.

It's also been very convincingly established that the "companion" of the state fair essay didn't exist or wasn't there, which fundamentally changes the piece in a very serious way. His relationship to the publication in the famous "consider the lobster" essay was also not at all what he claimed within the essay.

He was a great writer in many ways and these don't change that or reflect on his skill. I think his even publishing as "nonfiction" was more a characteristic of the literary-journalistic culture of his time, rather than an informed choice on his behalf. Tall tales and partially fictionalized accounts of real events are themselves a deep American literary tradition and there's no shame in that heritage.

But it's well established now that he wasn't the most strictly scrupulous writer or person in general. He stalked and harassed Mary Karr for years, and he has absolutely been caught in small lies in his published works. Whether you still trust him on the big stuff is up to you I guess, doesn't speak to his literary legacy much either way imo.

> Like it seems like every writer who has more than a few paragraphs on DFW is someone obviously inferior?

That seems like a crank opinion, at least wrt Franzen's writing and your italics around the word "obviously."

I mean, it's definitely my opinion, that's why I did the "it seems." To me it does feel obvious, but I do wonder if others agree?

I mean, I've read Infinite Jest (I did mostly skip the footnotes) but I can't get through more than a few pages of every Franzen novel I've tried. Could just be me.

I thought the footnotes in Infinite Jest were gold.

They absolutely are. GP missed out.

Franzen was one of DFW's closest friends.

Sure, but if you know writers, this in no way excludes the possibility I mentioned :)

Thats really funny. Part of the appeal of DFW stories is that they are perfectly mundane - nothing fantastical, implausible or scripted happens, the genius is him overthinking it.

I almost don't mind if he made up, say, going to lobsterfest, because the story is about the concept of lobsterfest (and beating his drum about the vapidity of american culture) more than the actual event.

Also, isn't jonathan franzen the guy who got in trouble for fabricating his big book?

Yeah but part of the exercise is sending a fiction writer off to write non-fiction. Of course it gets fantastical, that's the point!

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