PPS: Generational Knowledge

A midweek note

I’ve been toying with doing a mid-week check-in. This is the first one.

Thanks for your on and off-line responses to the platitudes thing. There’s something I dithered about adding, but when a reader pointed out that I didn’t, they were correct to worry about whether or not I had seen or heard of it.

I know it’s possibly unfair to hold a football coach (or really anyone) to one of the great writers and thinkers of our time, but the This Is Water speech by David Foster Wallace is the high-water mark for graduation speeches.

One of the things about the kind of writing I do and enjoy is that it’s part of a larger conversation. Wallace gave this speech (I think) the year I graduated. It’s 20 years old now, but I guess one of my continuing issues is there are two types of graduation speeches. The kind that recognize they’re part of a tradition, and the kind that are essentially audio pompoms.

Here it is (if the video below isn’t working). I assure you it’s worth your 20 minutes if you haven’t heard it.

What You May Have Missed

It’s cool to see more of you knocking around on Substack, but I wanted to share some of the social media aspect of it as an enticement (or warning) to those of you who haven’t had your dose of Kool-Aid yet.

I don’t go in for the whole broad strokes on generations. It could be because, being born in 1970, I have more “Boomer” sensibilities (especially when it comes to throwing myself at my job and family) than many of my slacker siblings.

Still, comparisons like this ring true. Sure, Ol’ Yeller got killed the one (or two) times older folks saw it in the movies, but there’s something about growing up with the whole of “children’s” entertainment on cable and VHS pre-1990.

Ol’ Yeller died almost weekly on cable. The Child Catcher got revived once or twice a year on the Magical World of Disney, and (of course) there was The Nothing.

I mean, holy fuck.

Where I get generationally snarky is, by the time my grandkids are deemed emotionally mature enough to watch a horse drown in the Swamp of Sadness on the way to rescue another child from The Nothing, they’ll be immune to the existential benefit.