I am concentrating docilely on the question why U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to reagain control. - David Foster Wallace
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I am concentrating docilely on the question why U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to reagain control.
David Foster Wallace (21 February 1962 – 12 September 2008) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His works include The Broom of the System (novel), Infinite Jest (novel), The Girl With Curious Hair (short story collection), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (short story collection), A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (essay collection), and the posthumously-published The Pale King (novel) and Both Flesh and Not (essay collection).
I was always either so unreasonably and pointlessly happy that no one place could seem to contain me, or so melancholy, so sick and silly with sadness that there was no place I could stomach the thought of entering. I hated it here. And I have never been as happy as when I was here. And these two things together confront me with the beak and claws of the True.
There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them. I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all,