The Bookbat

"Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom."

from this article: David Foster Wallace’s struggle to surpass Infinite Jest : The New Yorker

David Foster Wallace’s notes on the premise of his last book, The Pale King

(via stef-lee)

Aside from my patent overuse of “w/r/t” I really, really try not to get all “So, I read David Foster Wallace and” but reading this quote made me think about the experience of reading The Pale King and how much I struggled — REALLY STRUGGLED — through it and the boredom, the tedium, the monotony and then the end. The end really is “like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.” That is exactly what it is like. I still remember reading the very last word of that book — sitting on the couch in that awful living room at the old house, water leaking through the ceiling and into a trash can — and how I just cried and cried because it was so perfectly beautiful.

(via lookuplookup)

The thought that The Pale King is waiting for me and will be in my life someday, someday when I have free time and focus, is one good reason to keep living.

(via lookuplookup)