Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Daniel Ross Goodman

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СКАЧАТЬ unity, which engendered among their adherents a sense of togetherness and belonging. Catholicism and Judaism ensconced the individual within a communal web of care and concern, making troubled individuals feel as if they were never truly alone.

      Like many sophisticated individuals today, Wallace may have considered himself too intelligent to bother with belief or accept the doctrines of a religious tradition. To many intelligent people, certain core religious beliefs can seem absurd: a divine revelation in the desert that happened before the eyes of three million people? A virgin birth? A resurrection of the Son of God? A resurrection of the dead during the end of days? An all-seeing omniscient being who watches over us and records our every act? These beliefs can seem more fantastic than the most incredible science fiction.

      Yet the societies wherein these beliefs emerged created communities of concern in which every individual is cared for and made to belong. In these communities of concern, individuals are given a sense of meaning in life, and are embedded in networks of love and support. As Alain de Botton argued in Religion for Atheists, atheists are wrong to reject religion in totality simply because there are certain creeds that they cannot accept. According to de Botton, even atheists should acknowledge that religionists have been geniuses at creating communities and generating meaning; atheists have much to learn from how religion has served humanity’s most profound psychological and existential needs for thousands of years. And the secular world has yet to create anomie-reducing alternatives the likes of which religion carefully created and developed over scores of generations.

      Is the Universe Tragic or Comic?

      At one point during Lipsky’s interview, Wallace affirms his belief that human beings cannot truly change. Clearly, Wallace wasn’t only a tragic writer. In his real life, Wallace himself was a tragic character who believed that we cannot escape our character, that “in the end we end up becoming ourselves.”

      This view is fundamentally at odds with the Judeo-Christian tradition, which at its core maintains the hope that we can all change, that we can all purify our coarse characters and merit redemption and salvation. How we merit this salvation—whether by accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior or by accepting the yoke of the six-hundred-thirteen commandments—is the subject of doctrinal dispute. Yet what is agreed upon, not only by Christianity and Judaism but by most religions, is that metaphysical, social, and psychological mechanisms exist whereby we mortal human beings can alter the course of our destinies, transcend fate, and achieve—either in this life or the next—inner peace.

      Wallace’s belief in the futility of human beings’ attempts to escape themselves and transcend their natures, and his view that personality is determinative of destiny, suffuses Infinite Jest with a tragic sensibility that is closer to the Greek view of human nature than the Judeo-Christian perspective that “every human being has the capacity to be as righteous as Moses or as wicked as Jereboam,” as Maimonides wrote in the Mishneh Torah. In a key passage of his magisterial Infinite Jest, Wallace writes:

      The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. . . . You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. . . . You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.^[1]

      Perhaps the true tragedy of Wallace’s life was that he was never given the tools to access a religious tradition that would have given him the means to treat the spiritual crisis from which he so acutely suffered. He was never given the spiritual keys that would have unlocked for him the treasure house of a wisdom tradition. Thus, he was always trapped inside his own animating limits, killed by his own hand and mourned by us all.

      Note

      1.

      David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (New York, Little, Brown and Company, 1996), 84. (emphasis added)

      Chapter 4

      Driving to Nebraska

      Cinema, Human Dignity, and the Elderly

      At times, cinema succeeds where philosophy fails. Films like Nebraska show us the importance of honoring our elderly parents and remind us of the unique dignity of every human person.

      Is it possible for a film that was nominated for six Oscars, was directed by one of Hollywood’s most highly regarded filmmakers, and features a career-best performance by one of the best actors of his generation to be overlooked? In the case of Nebraska (2013), the answer is yes.

      Directed by Alexander Payne and featuring stalwart character actor Bruce Dern in a performance that garnered him his first-ever Academy Award nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actor, Nebraska was one of the surprise standouts of last year’s crop of Oscar-season films. The movie is shot in crisp black-and-white, simultaneously conveying the grimness of the forlorn Midwest landscape and also lending the film, in the words of its director, an “iconic, archetypal look.” A quiet and subdued film, Nebraska imparts an important reminder of every person’s intrinsic human dignity, honestly portraying one man’s struggle to care for his aging parents in a way that reflects that dignity.

      An American Road Trip

      In Nebraska, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) is a retired Montana mechanic and a cantankerous Korean War veteran. As if his congenital crabbiness were not enough, Woody is also an alcoholic, and he’s evidently verging on dementia. When he receives a promotional sweepstakes letter in the mail stating that he has won a million-dollar prize, he believes it. Everyone understands that this sweepstakes letter is clearly a hoax—everyone, that is, but Woody. He prevails upon his son David, played by a surprisingly effective and restrained Will Forte (formerly of Saturday Night Live), to drive him to Lincoln, Nebraska—where the sweepstake’s headquarters are located—in order to collect the chimerical prize. They are accompanied by Woody’s wife, Kate, played by a wonderful, laceratingly witty, acidly funny, scene-stealing June Squibb who, at the age of eighty-four, received an eminently deserved first-ever Oscar nomination for her supporting actress performance.

      As the story unfolds, Nebraska seems to follow the structure of the venerable American “road-trip movie.” Characters embark on a physical journey across the broad, expansive landscape of our beautiful country, experience interesting adventures, encounter strange and exciting people, and narrowly escape from a few hairy situations, only to experience a more profound inner journey of the soul. Of course, such narrative structures have an impressive pedigree that precedes American culture: think of Homer’s Odyssey, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, or even Dante’s Divine Comedy.

      Yet Nebraska is much more substantial than the average American road-trip movie. While our expectations of witnessing the typical tropes of the road-trip genre are fulfilled, the Grants’ journey through the lonely land at the center of our country serves as an unconventional exploration of the challenges of honoring our parents. Throughout the film, the message is clear: the elderly—even when they reach the stage of senility—must be cared for with sensitivity and respect.

      In choosing to drive him from Billings to Lincoln, David succeeds in pulling off the tricky task of managing a mentally ailing parent. David addresses the dilemma of how he should honor his father by deciding to play along with his father’s delusions, in order to avoid causing him needless СКАЧАТЬ