If your answer is “I don’t know” or “That’s a stupid question” or “Why am I reading this,” you are correct. The correct answer is always a question.
Fill in the blank: The hardest thing to say to another person is not “I love you” or “I’m sorry” or even “You were right.” The hardest thing is ____________. octet david foster wallace pdf
Consider the octet: eight people in a room. A support group for people who have been asked to review a manuscript of a support-group story. The story within the story is about a support group for people who can’t stop imagining the inner lives of strangers. The leader of that group, let’s call her Beth, says: “You’re on a bus. The woman across the aisle is crying. You don’t know why. But you construct a tragedy for her — dead child, fired, cancer — and you feel a small, clean grief. That grief is not compassion. It is a way of not having to look at her face.” If your answer is “I don’t know” or
Turn your paper over. Sit in the silence for thirty seconds. Do not fill the silence with a device. The silence is the real PDF. The silence is the only thing no one can sell you. Consider the octet: eight people in a room
If you wrote “I need help,” you are sentimental but not wrong. If you wrote “I don’t know who I am when you’re not looking,” you have been in therapy. If you wrote nothing, you are either very healthy or very dishonest. The octet’s eighth member, a woman named Louise who hasn’t spoken for three meetings, finally whispers: “I’m not sure I exist when no one’s watching.” The bearded facilitator nods. “That’s the octet’s thesis,” he says. “You exist as a function of attention. Including your own. Which is why loneliness feels like disappearing.”
One of the members of this group (the outer frame) raises a hand and says: “Is this supposed to be about me? Because I feel accused.” The facilitator — a man with a beard that seems designed to communicate sensitivity — says: “That’s the mechanism. Accusation is the first layer of honesty. The second layer is: so what?”