The sad-book intent stated at full length — American sadness rooted in loneliness, a culture teaching…
echoes
From: DFW with Christopher Lydon — The Connection, WBUR Boston (February 21, 1996; the rediscovered 'lost' interview)
- Early text:
[scene] The only idea he started the book with was to
make something about an America gone sad without merely mocking it;
his bright, privileged, well-educated friends are sad on some level and
he thinks it has to do with loneliness; the culture has taught us that
living means getting and pleasure, with happiness implicitly promised;
he is obsessed with what his children will think of what we did with
everything we were handed and where the sadness comes from
[00:20:40–00:21:34]; his own arc —
early luck, career success, getting the stuff that was supposed to make
him all right, and finding it didn't [00:21:34]; the generation as
atomized, anomic, lost and very lonely [00:19:48]
- IJ echo: the loneliness spine everywhere in the novel — the
Entertainment as terminal self-soothing, Hal's sealed interior, Ennet
House as the counter-community; the sad-not-funny reading of the whole
book
- Weight: shared-preoccupation