[honkdaddy]

Refreshingly well-researched and honest piece from the New Yorker.

My favourite writing by Aaron is his explanation of what happens in the "ending" of Infinite Jest. [1] I'm of the opinion DFW deliberately left it somewhat open to interpretation, and that his famous quote "If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you" was a tad tongue in cheek. That said, Aaron's explanation is certainly the most plausible, and I'd kill to know what DFW would have thought of it.

[1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend

[Mikhail_K]

> Refreshingly well-researched and honest piece from the New Yorker.

My impression is quite the opposite. This piece by Larissa MacFarquhart was a contemptible whitewash of government bullies. "New Yorker" is squarely in the corner of intelligence agencies and law enforcement and against the people, and not just in this particular case.

[mattzito]

I'm curious how it's a whitewash of government bullies when that's not the point of the article? It's pretty clear at the start that it's about how his friends and family perceived him, and his backstory - I was aware of the overall narrative, but found it extremely interesting to hear stories of his challenges with interacting with the world.

In general, I respect and appreciate content that takes someone who has been lionized (especially posthumously) and humanizes them. People are complicated, the narrative is rarely as simple as it's distilled down for public consumption.

As far as the "squarely in the corner of intelligence agences and law enforcement" - that wasn't my impression, and while I did not spend hours researching, I went through the "police" tag on the new yorker website, and in the last year, 10 out of 21 articles were overtly critical of police, and only ~2 could be considered positive towards police. The remainder were either neutral, nuanced, or orthogonal (e.g. photo essays about a woman who was embedded with the police for several years). Do you have evidence to back up your assertion?

[boppo1]

Aww New Yorker is one of the few outlets I still like. Do you have examples?

[pklausler]

I so wish Aaron were still around so that I could argue his Infinite Jest conclusions with him.

(My reading of IJ is that wherever a parallel to Hamlet can be credibly drawn, it's probably right, and that JOI was murdered by CT & Avril.)

[j4pe]

Wait, why and how? Did I miss this?

[daniel-thompson]

Wow, this is excellent. It's been a while since I read IJ but I apparently missed a _bunch_ of the plot, judging by this writeup.