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David Foster Wallace's Tax ClassesBy Seth Colter Walls (click on photo to read article) An additional clue about his thoughts regarding what genius may be obliged to owe is also included with the notes: a two-page Web-site printout of Schopenhauer's essay "On the Vanity of Existence," in which the following paragraph receives special attention from Wallace's pen:
Life presents itself first and foremost as a task: the task of maintaining itself... If this task is accomplished, what has been gained is a burden, and there then appears a second task: that of doing something with it so as to ward off boredom, which hovers over every secure life like a bird of prey. Thus the first task is to gain something and the second to become unconscious of what has been gained, which is otherwise a burden. |