I.
So it all began when I reread George Orwell’s 1940 essay “Inside the Whale” for the first time in years and it sent me into a not entirely mild state of crisis. Discussions about literature came to seem pointless; phrases like “conglomeration” and “MFA program” and “The New Yorker” tasted bitter on the tongue. Scrolling my Substack timeline produced an acute feeling of surfeit and nausea. My internal monologue began sounding like Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? As the fool.
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