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
-
Show this thread
-
he describes an ER patient arriving as he's eating an ice cream sandwich for lunch. he stashes the ice cream sandwich behind a computer in the trauma bay, where there is "sweltering heat". more than half an hour later, he suddenly remembers the sandwich
1 reply 3 retweets 15 likesShow this thread -
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
3 replies 3 retweets 50 likesShow 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
2 replies 0 retweets 38 likesShow 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.
1 reply 0 retweets 41 likesShow 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?
2 replies 1 retweet 54 likesShow 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?
2 replies 0 retweets 37 likesShow 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
1 reply 0 retweets 43 likesShow 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
5 replies 0 retweets 25 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @chaosprime
wasn’t it published posthumously? I bet it would’ve been changed if his editor had anyone to give notes to. as anyone who’s edited a manuscript written by the unquiet dead can tell you, making changes is a great way to get haunted for the rest of your life.
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
hm, yes it was. makes sense
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.