Stranger Than Fiction (True Stories)

The book is the product of Nora Ephron and Thom Jones and Mark Richard and Joan Didion, Amy Hempel and Bret Ellis and Denis Johnson because those are the people I read.

The story is no longer my story. It's David Fincher's. The set for Edward Norton's yuppie condo is a re-creation of an apartment from David's past.

Worse than that, written information can't teach, according to Thamus. You can't question it, and it can't defend itself when people misunderstand or misrepresent it. Written communication gives people what Thamus called "the false conceit of knowledge," a fake certainty that they understand something.

My brother-in-law used to call this behavior "brinksmanship," the tendency to leave things until the last moment, to imbue them with more drama and stress and appear the hero by racing the clock.

Millions of us paid money to watch the Empire State Building destroyed in Independence Day. Now the Department of Defense has enrolled the best Hollywood creative people to brainstorm terrorist scenarios, including director David Fincher, who made the Century City skyline fall down in Fight Club. We want to know every way we might be attacked. So we can be prepared.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard defines dread as the knowledge of what you must do to prove you're free, even if it will destroy you. His example is Adam in the Garden of Eden, happy and content until God shows him the Tree of Knowledge and says, "Don't eat this." Now Adam is no longer free. There is one rule he can break, he must break, to prove his freedom, even if it destroys him. Kierkegaard says the moment we are forbidden to do something, we will do it. It is inevitable.
Monkey think, monkey do.
According to Kierkegaard, the person who allows the law to control his life, who says the possible isn't possible because it is illegal, is leading an inauthentic life.

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can't control life, at least you can control your version. Because even sitting in my puddle of warm Los Angeles water, I was already thinking what I'd tell my friends when they asked about this trip. I'd tell them all about my infection and Malibu and the bottomless bathtub, and they'd say:
You should write that down.

The only thing worse than showing up at LAX ugly is showing up ugly but showing signs that you really tried to look good. You gave it your best effort but this is the best you could do. Your hair's cut and skin's tanned, your teeth are flossed and the hair in your nose is tweezed, but you still look ugly. You're wearing a 100 percent cotton casual knit shirt from the Gap. You gargled. You used eyedrops and deodorant, but you still come off the plane missing a few chromosomes.

So I went there, to the little studio apartment, sealed and stale after months empty. Like a crypt, I'd say, but that's not the right word. It sounds too dramatic. Like cheesy organ music. But in fact, just sad.
The sex toys and anal whatnots were just sadder. Orphaned. That's not the right word either, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

When the problem looks too big, when we're shown too much reality, we tend to shut down. We become resigned. We fail to take any action because disaster seems so inevitable. We're trapped. This is narcotization.