reading Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air, a piece of high octane award bait about being a talented neurosurgeon and ~philosopher of mortality~ then finding out you're going to die young of cancer, and there's this passage in it that is just bugging the shit out of me
-
-
he retrieves it, "resuscitates" it by putting it in the freezer for 30 minutes, after which it's fine and "tasty". he picks chocolate chips from it out of his teeth. it's like somebody who'd only ever seen ice cream sandwiches on television wanted to write an anecdote about one
Show this thread -
like, anybody who has ever eaten any ice cream based food knows that after thirty-plus minutes in a hot room, you don't have a slightly wilted ice cream sandwich; if you're lucky enough not to have destroyed an expensive medical computer, you have a bag of goo
Show this thread -
and if for some reason you refreeze that, you have a mess of spiky ice shards that will be profoundly unpleasant to eat. and this get me suspicious of other details. chocolate chips? the only ice cream sandwiches i've seen with those are the cookie type at movie theaters.
Show this thread -
and who picks chocolate chips out of their teeth? why wouldn't you just lick your teeth like everybody else? idk, maybe, i guess? but at some level this passage is top tier Did Not Happen for the most bizarre and trivial reasons. so what the fuck is it doing in this book?
Show this thread -
is it some kind of object lesson in Gell-Mann amnesia? am i supposed to conclude that the rest of the book is also made up or poorly recalled without any effort to impose coherence on it, and i just don't realize it because it's medical drama presented with authority?
Show this thread -
is it trolling? is it the author saying, lulz, i am writing a Serious Award-Bait Book so i can leaven it with anecdotes that absolutely could not have happened and you'll just nod your heads solemnly because of the holiness i am wrapping myself in
Show this thread -
this latter seems like the best explanation for how the passage could have made it through every editor on the project without some kind of world-model consistency being imposed on it; if he were trolling he'd have marked it up as stet early and often
Show this thread -
so this is my current attempt to figure out in what fashion exactly a dead dude is making fun of me for reading his book, hope you've had fun on this journey
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.