On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise (1996) [pdf]

If instead he'd written a piece about how the staff on cruise ships work ridiculously hard for very low pay to give the guests a respite from their own shitty lives because the crew live even shittier lives than the guests, that would have been a much better piece. But that's not the piece he chose to write here. Alas.

Note that the king serves his people, and we do not typically characterize kings as inferiors. Parentd feed, clothe, and bathe their children in their early years with no risk to their rank. Perhaps here lingers a contempt for the work of the working men, an ingratitude, that inflames the strange spectacle of overcompensation, of overvaluing their work.

But it is simple. Either the arrangement is just, in which case there is no problem, or it is, in which case, what are you doing partaking in it, unless it is licit nonetheless, in which case, why the anxiety? Learn to receive what is given with the right amount of gratitude.

Also, I don't especially care for cruises.

The other thing that really struck me was his characterization of the cruise environment as "an enormous primordial stew of death and decay." It isn't, at least not any more than anyplace else on the planet. Sure, boats rust, but so what? This is just another example of the continual struggle of life against the Second Law. This entire planet is "an enormous primordial stew of death and decay." It is, of course, also an enormous nursery of life emerging from that death and decay. That's just the Way It Is. Cruse ships are just part of the human phenotype, no different from any other artifact. Nothing lasts forever. Getting maudlin about it is a choice.

Some other random examples: he renames the ship from Zenith to Nadir as a dark joke, but then he keeps referring to her that way. The micromanagement he describes on page 37 doesn't happen, except insofar as the staff will try to be helpful in allowing you to make the most of your limited time.

Reading back over it I guess the problem is not so much blatant factual inaccuracies as it is continually and unrelentingly putting the worst possible spin on every detail of what is actually a very enjoyable experience -- if you allow it to be, which he emphatically did not. The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that this was the clinical depression talking.

I mean, I've read Infinite Jest (I did mostly skip the footnotes) but I can't get through more than a few pages of every Franzen novel I've tried. Could just be me.