Your floating despair
A challenge:
Admit it. Certain things make you desperately unhappy, and you don't know why--the Sbarro at the mall, the taste of Jolly Ranchers in winter, the woman in the Buick station wagon you saw at the Kwik Trip, the Food Network after ten p.m. In 100 words or less, please answer the question, "What makes you so unhappy?" in the comments field below. Selected answers will appear in Dean Bakopoulos's new novel, My American Unhappiness, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in late 2009 or early 2010.
The answers. A sample:
The mall. It's not shopping itself -- I actually like to shop in some places -- but the climate-controlled sameness of shopping malls. I don't know why they make me so depressed, but they inspire in me a kind of sadness that slightly unnerves me because it's so hard to explain. The mall is a generic Everyplace. The chain stores are all the same. It's a totally artificial environment. I don't care that it's convenient; it's not real, and I guess the mall reminds me of the pervasive artificiality in the structures of our common life, and the commodification of conformity.
What an interesting thought experiment. I wonder why I actually like reading the answers.
Admit it. Certain things make you desperately unhappy, and you don't know why--the Sbarro at the mall, the taste of Jolly Ranchers in winter, the woman in the Buick station wagon you saw at the Kwik Trip, the Food Network after ten p.m. In 100 words or less, please answer the question, "What makes you so unhappy?" in the comments field below. Selected answers will appear in Dean Bakopoulos's new novel, My American Unhappiness, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in late 2009 or early 2010.
The answers. A sample:
The mall. It's not shopping itself -- I actually like to shop in some places -- but the climate-controlled sameness of shopping malls. I don't know why they make me so depressed, but they inspire in me a kind of sadness that slightly unnerves me because it's so hard to explain. The mall is a generic Everyplace. The chain stores are all the same. It's a totally artificial environment. I don't care that it's convenient; it's not real, and I guess the mall reminds me of the pervasive artificiality in the structures of our common life, and the commodification of conformity.
What an interesting thought experiment. I wonder why I actually like reading the answers.