Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise
David Foster Wallace’s intensely magniloquent and eccentric piece on his week-long luxury cruise “vacation” is pure brilliance. Every one of his quirky narrative detours and rambling footnotes—of which there are many—is absolutely wonderful, so I had little trouble following along with his supposition that the indulgent pampering and hands-off, blissed-out environment afforded by ultra-luxury cruises is actually soul-deadening and horrifying to experience. At least as an outsider looking in, which is exactly DFW’s whole thing.
And just so you know, I tried my very hardest to summarize this essay in a way that would do it justice, but come on—it’s David Foster Wallace.
(Source: kottke.org)
