Ich habe Angst vor uns (Miriam Böttger, Die Welt — Kultur, 3 Jan 2003)

TL;DR (plain-language summary)

A short January 2003 German-language interview in Die Welt, from the same German press cycle as Wallace's ZDF television interview, headlined "Ich habe Angst vor uns" — "I'm afraid of us." It post-dates Infinite Jest by years and never mentions the novel — but it is a compact, quotable restatement of the cultural diagnosis the novel dramatizes. Wallace argues that American culture keeps its citizens infantile because that is what fuels the consumer and entertainment industries; that blindly following every desire is "eine Art von Sklaverei" (a kind of slavery) marketed as "Freiheit der Wahl und Recht auf Konsum" (freedom of choice and the right to consume); and that he owns no television because, if he did, it would run day and night and leave him good for nothing. One caution governs every quotation here: the interview was published in German as a translation of Wallace's spoken English, so the German is quotable only as Die Welt's text, never as Wallace's own phrasing. Not in Burn's anthology.

Key claims

• The infantilization thesis. Wallace's generation still sees itself as children, and the culture exploits that — it feeds whatever in you wants to stay a child (infantile, selfish, greedy), because that keeps the consumer and entertainment economy running. In the German: "Das Problem meiner Generation ist, dass wir uns immer noch selbst als Kinder betrachten" and "Wir wollen einfach nicht erwachsen werden." [L128-132]
• Self-interest as the American ethic. Children in the US learn early that all that matters is what you yourself want — "Das ist die amerikanische Ethik" — a message the system repeats a thousand times a day. [L136-142]
• Pleasure-following as slavery. Being compelled to follow every impulse and satisfy every desire is, for Wallace, "eine Art von Sklaverei", even as the culture calls it "Freiheit der Wahl und Recht auf Konsum." [L146-151]
• The self-mocking voice. He is ashamed to sound like his own grandfather delivering moral lectures nobody wants to hear, and hears, at that very moment, an inner voice ridiculing him — his gloss on the paradoxical position of a half-intelligent American who knows what is good but is endlessly distracted. [L153-159]
• No television, by self-defense. He owns no TV; if he did it would run day and night and he would be useless for anything else — he is no different from most people, "genauso gierig nach allem, was das Auge reizt" (just as greedy for everything that tempts the eye). [L161-166]
• The framing (by Böttger) notes Wallace gives interviews very rarely, nearly cancelled this one, and appeared nervous but resigned, "ohne Zynismus und voller Angst vor einem Krieg mit dem Irak" — without cynicism and full of fear of a war with Iraq. [L117-123]

Theories & evidence

THEORY: American consumer culture deliberately keeps people infantile and sells impulse-slavery as freedom — the E Unibus Pluram diagnosis of an entertainment economy that farms our appetites

• Crux: eup-connection
• Stance: advances
• Evidence:
  • [author] the infantilization claim: "Das Problem meiner Generation ist, dass wir uns immer noch selbst als Kinder betrachten" (the problem with my generation is that we still see ourselves as children) and "Wir wollen einfach nicht erwachsen werden." (we simply don't want to grow up). [L128-132]
  • [author] the mechanism — the culture feeds what is infantile, selfish and greedy in you to keep the consumer and entertainment industry running; self-interest is "Das ist die amerikanische Ethik," the message "dass es nur darum geht, was man selbst will", repeated constantly: "Aber de facto ist das, was unser System tausendmal am Tag sagt." [L136-142]
  • [author] the payoff — impulse-satisfaction as "eine Art von Sklaverei" dressed up as "Freiheit der Wahl und Recht auf Konsum." [L146-151]
• Notes: This is the E Unibus Pluram culture-critique in miniature, in the emotional/ethical register — an entertainment-and-consumption economy that cultivates appetite and calls the result freedom, the same complex the novel's Entertainment literalizes. Two qualifiers ride it: (1) all quotations are Die Welt's German translation of Wallace's spoken English, so his exact words are not recoverable here — the German verbatim is the paper's, not his; (2) Wallace himself undercuts the diagnosis in the same breath, ashamed to be moralizing like his own grandfather and hearing an inner voice mock him, so he offers it as a self-suspecting intuition, not a manifesto. The pleasure-as-slavery / can't-stop-watching material also bears on the culture-side question of how the Entertainment kills (pleasure continuous with real appetite, not a magic cartridge) — see the cross-references.

Themes

Entertainment and consumption (an economy that farms infantile appetite; impulse-satisfaction sold as freedom); television (the set he refuses because it would run day and night); irony / sincerity (the self-mocking inner voice, the shame of sounding earnest — the E Unibus Pluram bind restated); the American character (self-interest as the national ethic); and, topically, dread of the coming Iraq war.

Cross-references

• e-unibus-pluram — the consumer-culture critique here is the essay's argument compressed to a page, in the ethical/emotional key.
• oregon-voice-1998 — the 1998 pleasure-culture diagnosis ("kill ourselves with pleasure") is the same idea five years and one language earlier; the two bracket Wallace's consistency on the point.
• video-zdf-2003-consumerism and the other ZDF-2003 notes — the closest companions: the same 2003 European tour, the same consumerism-as-slavery and television themes. Those ZDF notes are the paraphrase-only (video) record of that press cycle; this Die Welt piece is its quotable-print sibling (with the translation caveat above).
• The Entertainment / Infinite Jest's samizdat film — the impulse-satisfaction-is-slavery and the-TV-would-run-day-and-night remarks are the real-appetite correlate of the fatal cartridge.

Notable passages

Verbatim GERMAN from the archived Q&A (quotable as Die Welt's published text, not as Wallace's English); bracketed English is a translation, not a quotation. Locators are 1-indexed line numbers in welt-kultur-2003.txt.

• "Ich habe Angst vor uns" [the headline — "I'm afraid of us"] [L110]
• "Das Problem meiner Generation ist, dass wir uns immer noch selbst als Kinder betrachten" [the problem with my generation is that we still regard ourselves as children] [L128-129]
• "Wir wollen einfach nicht erwachsen werden." [we simply don't want to grow up] [L130]
• "Das ist die amerikanische Ethik" [that is the American ethic] [L137]
• "dass es nur darum geht, was man selbst will" [that all that matters is what you yourself want] [L136-137]
• "Aber de facto ist das, was unser System tausendmal am Tag sagt." [but in fact that is what our system says a thousand times a day] [L142]
• "eine Art von Sklaverei" [a kind of slavery] [L150]
• "Freiheit der Wahl und Recht auf Konsum." [freedom of choice and the right to consume] [L150-151]