
For Whom Is the Water Park Fun? - ordiblah
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/03/for-whom-is-the-water-park-fun/
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floren
I too enjoyed David Foster Wallace's account of his trip to the Illinois State
Fair.

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RhysU
Barth asked first:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_Funhouse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_Funhouse)

This piece title is from that opening line. The DFW connection is quite
striking, as Wikipedia sums up:

> The story "Lost in the Funhouse" had an overt influence on David Foster
> Wallace in the final novella of Girl with Curious Hair, "Westward the Course
> of Empire Takes Its Way". The protagonist takes a creative writing course at
> a school near Johns Hopkins, taught by a Professor Ambrose, who says he "is
> a character in and the object of the seminal 'Lost in the Funhouse'"

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default-kramer
Some of the purplest prose I've read, plus humor so dry people are missing it.
I think the author achieved what he was going for.

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thatswrong0
So the author was trying to.. demonstrate Poe's law?

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default-kramer
Demonstrating Poe's law probably wasn't the goal, but it was an inevitable
outcome of what and how he chose to write.

I'd bet there are a lot of the author's genuine thoughts and feelings in this
piece. But the best comedy has at least a grain of truth if not more. There's
no way an author who is able to write like this didn't intend the humor in
lines like "The moment was so upsetting that I absconded and immediately
purchased a funnel cake, which I ate distractedly and tried to calm down,
moseying for some time on the park’s vast, labyrinthine walkways."

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debatem1
Eeesh. I'm honestly worried about the mental health of the author. It could
just be hyperbole intended unseriously, but most of the article also tracks as
clinical anxiety masquerading as humor.

~~~
trevyn
Fun fact: One of his earlier articles this year was a review of a book about
suicide.

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necovek
Unfortunately, it is never revealed if the author enjoyed the Point Of No
Return or not. :)

While I agree on the lack of empathy and understanding of simple thrill
seeking and "unreasonable fun" (like sports, gambling, dancing, sex, music,
movies, even reading...), the author unwittingly stands up for the _few_ that
are peer-pressured to take part in "fun" activities that might frighten or
simply not entertain them.

However, the approach the author takes won't help them: it's better to
recognize that _you_ personally don't find a particular activity rewarding,
and encourage everyone to find something that is. Perhaps it's not even a
"few", but a _lot_. But just being negative does not help better understand
how we are forced to do "fun" things we do not enjoy.

And it's also okay if you find fun in something that majority finds fun in
(like water parks): you don't have to be absolutely different in every way to
count as a smart person :)

By missing to realize this, the author seems like a disgruntled fake-
intellectual guy who hates everyone for having any sort of fun and dismisses
it as "intellectually useless": even though studies show that "fun" helps us
perform better cognitively.

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bargl
I've been this guy. When volunteering in Haiti, I was just... mad at the
world. I hated everyone who didn't want to move to Haiti and help.

Then I started reading about Paul Farmer, who has arguably done more than I
ever will but doesn't seem to have developed that same anger.

I met him once, and he recognized that you have to take time for you to be. To
center yourself. Whether thats a theme park or watching TV and talking to your
friends about it.

The key (which I didn't have a handle on early on in Haiti) is to find the
balance you need to be able to accept in life what you can't change and to
aggressively strive against the things you can.

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mcphage
This is really funny. Do the readers at HN not get that he’s joking?

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parrellel
Pretty sure most everyone's got that was what he was trying for. It certainly
didn't land for me though.

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mcphage
> Pretty sure most everyone's got that was what he was trying for.

I really don't think that's true—we have comments "worried about the mental
health of the author", we've got comments claiming he "struggles with the joys
in life", we've got comments claiming the author "seems like a disgruntled
fake-intellectual guy who hates everyone for having any sort of fun". These
aren't comments from people who get that he's joking.

> It certainly didn't land for me though.

That's fair; there's no humor that works for everyone. But even if you don't
find it funny, at least you understood what he was doing.

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cobbzilla
The story ends with:

"The drop was so precipitous that I saw in just a few short seconds I would go
abruptly vertical, vanishing briskly down a long dark well. It was the point
of no return, a water park in 2019. And for reasons I struggled to explain, I
desperately missed my family. Look how far the fathoms have taken us. Look how
far we’ve strayed."

Sounds like a roundabout way of saying he chickened out of riding the biggest
slide in the park after seeing the drop. But I have no idea what those last 2
sentences mean.

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pram
The entire thing is written in a very overwrought and dramatic style, he’s
trying to be funny. The ending is probably supposed to capture an emotional
climax the likes of which you’d find at the end of a Melville or Kafka story
(but it’s not that funny and kinda nonsensical)

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kodablah
> all this forgotten Americana [...] it casually introduces to the park-goer’s
> mind scenes of mass genocide and global annihilation [...] Why tempt fate
> with a whale-watching expedition when you can scoot on over to SeaWorld?
> [...on and on...]

Reading the introductory paragraphs and then moving to the rest, one can
understand why the author struggles with the joys of life. Overthinking,
overanalyzing, and unable to empathize with the non-rich masses looking for
simple, shallow fun. It then goes into politics and ivory-tower-like
judgments. On the next escape the author should consider getting away from
himself.

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blakesterz
The footer says his writing appears in a bunch of places including.... "Best
American Travel Writing 2018" .... I wonder if the rest of that book is like
this?

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irrational
>Because who can enjoy the Congo Bongo in light of mudslides in the Pacific
Northwest? Who can enjoy The Flying Gecko when you have species-wide
devastation in the Amazon? The sheer insanity of a water park in the age of
the Anthropecene...

This guy must be so fun at parties.

~~~
smt88
I think you're assuming he's being 100% earnest. To me, a lot of this sounded
tongue-in-cheek.

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bmking
Gonzo journalism at its best

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probablypower
This was really well written, but I couldn't help laughing at the comma splice
errors in his own prose after calling out his students for it in the first
paragraph.

example:

> Soon we hurdled through the turnstiles, joining the throngs of near-nude
> Midwesterners, our procession a timpani of aqua socks.

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mdellavo
children?

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jeffrallen
Christ, what an asshole.

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RickJWagner
I like waterparks. Good, clean fun and the kids love it too.

