[postingpals]

This story is deeper than 'life crushed this one individual's childhood dreams'.

At any turn during the story, the author could have become something much worse. He could have become a drunk, he could have become homeless. The invisible hand of the economy dangled his future in front of him as a tease and then handed him a job in the end as a threat, telling him never to be ungrateful or else.

It's a retrospective on the ways in which average people can have their lives warped by externalities. At the end the author wonders about the version of himself that became beatnik, but what about those versions of himself that became drunk and homeless? Well, those don't exist in parallel universes. They exist in this universe, as other people in the same situation as him, the same situation shared by 90% of people.

[cubano]

So I made the huge mistake of replying after only reading a few panels, so all your criticisms are totally valid and I feel kind of silly now.

I think an alternate reading of the well-written story perhaps is how much of what we do is driven by dumb luck, and those just as smart and driven as we are here commenting are, through very little fault of their own, homeless and addicted because they just were not "in the right place at the right time" once or twice, or met the wrong person at a bad time in their life?

You talk about lives "warped by externalities" and man, ain't that the truth.

[hckrnwsthrwwy]

What's the difference between a beatnik or a drunk? It's all perception, to one person you're a wageslave drone wasting your life working for a boss, to another you're earning a living the honest way and are a model to look up to

[adamsea]

You can combine being an alcoholic with pretty much anything, so ...