flâneur

It's time we said when a thing is bad - by Alistair Kitchen

alistair.substack.com · 2,357 words · saved by 1 readers

Yes, it was bad

Todd Heisler / The New York Times David Foster Wallace’s “9/11, as Seen from the Midwest”, published October 25, 2001, in Rolling Stone, gives the view from Bloomington, Illinois, in the immediate aftermath of the attack. It’s a classic DFW essay in that the narrator functions as a kind of alien trying to make sense of, or even just participate in, the customs of the “normal” people around him. He feels, in his words, “alienated” from them. For example: DFW starts out self-conscious about the lack of flags on his lawn, goes out in search of one, eventually finds some craft supplies at a…

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