Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the struggle of navigating life's choices amidst constant change and uncertainty.
In this quote, Jonathan Franzen delves into the complexities of human experience, illustrating how each new encounter in life can evoke a sense of conviction in one direction, only to be met with a contrasting pull toward something equally compelling. This reactive existence, likened to that of a pinball in a game, signifies the absence of a guiding narrative, leading to a life driven by the mere instinct to survive rather than a purposeful pursuit.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing change, one might quote Franzen to highlight the unpredictable nature of life.
Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.
The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.
If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life.
To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.
Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.
If you have not had direct firsthand experience of loving a category of person - a person of a different race, a profoundly religious person, things that are real stark differences between people - I think it is very hard to dare, or necessarily even want, to write fully from the inside of a person.
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
One ship drives east and another drives west With the selfsame winds that blow. Tis the set of the sails And not the gales Which tells us the way to go. Like the winds of the seas are the ways of fate, As we voyage along through the life: Tis the set of a soul That decides its goal, And not the calm or the strife.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.
Rapidly, merrily, Life's sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily Enjoy them as they fly!
I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
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