Despite the sense that my own continued existence is an unpayable debt--

Resnikoff on Joan Didion and hopeful action:

But I can’t read sentences like this and not feel a little let down: “If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man’s fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending.”It’s not that I don’t understand the impulse there; two pages earlier I nearly pumped my fist in the air when Didion wrote that her generation was “convinced that the heart of darkness lay not in some error of social organization but in man’s own blood.” But surely light and darkness exist on a gradient, and hopping to the barricades in defense of even a marginally less horrifying form of social organization is a worthy endeavor. Mind you, I’m not rejecting fatalism, which I find eminently reasonable and even sort of admirable. What I can’t get with is paralysis.

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I try to balance the scales, to justify myself to the world, but when I’m being honest with myself I know I can’t ever succeed.

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Would it be too cloying to say I honestly believe that action, even futile action, is a balm for the soul? I don’t know how much horror you can passively absorb before it curdles up inside of you, toxifies your life. Maybe the only way to clear the pores is through gestures of hope, even–especially, actually–in an unhopeful universe. Those gestures won’t change man’s fate, but they make grim thoughts about man’s fate easier to manage. And indeed, despite the sense that my own continued existence is an unpayable debt, I’m pretty happy with my life. There’s no one else I’d rather be, no time and place to which I’d rather relocate. I’m happy because I feel like I’m trying, and most times it hardly matters how feeble my attempts actually are. Even if it’s all too heavy to lift, at least I’m building muscle. You go to a barricade because you could use the sunlight and the exercise.

And Resnikoff has finally put a voice to my formless thoughts about Joan Didion and how her resignation makes her works so tiring despite her keen eye and sharp pen.