I have this great quote from a 1977 Joan Didion essay called on the road. She was on a book tour and had some very interesting thoughts on how everybody was incredibly obsessed with opinions, especially about “where are we going?”

“I lost track of information. I was blitzed by opinion. I began to see opinions arcing in the air, intersecting flight patterns. The eastern shuttle was cleared for landing and so was lapidary bleakness. John Leonard and joy were converging vectors. I began to see the country itself as a projection on air, a kind of hologram, an invisible grid of image and opinion and electronic impulse.” 

I’m not sure what lapidary means and the John Leonard and joy reference wasn’t one I got. But otherwise, I think this quote is applicable to today’s world too. If anything, opinion seems to replace facts for some people. 

One of the few times using AI is okay, when you’re just stuck on what some reference might be. Gemini’s response.

1. Lapidary Bleakness

“Lapidary” originally relates to the cutting, polishing, or engraving of stones and gems. When applied to writing or style, it means concise, elegant, and precise—often with a degree of hardness or coldness.

When Didion pairs it with “bleakness,” she is describing a worldview that is depressive or grim, yet articulated with crystalline perfection. It suggests that the bleakness isn’t messy; it is polished, hard, and unyielding. Ironically, this is often how critics describe Didion’s own style.

2. John Leonard and Joy

John Leonard was a prominent literary critic for The New York Times.3 In 1977, he wrote a famously glowing review of Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer, essentially cementing her status.

The absurdity she is highlighting here is the “leveling” effect of the media grid. In the “hologram” of opinion, a specific human being (John Leonard) and an abstract human emotion (joy) become equivalent “vectors.” They are just data points arcing through the air.

Those explanations elucidated things quite well.

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When I’m reading an author who has both nonfiction and fiction, I tend towards reading the essays before novels. It’s like how I read hundreds of E.B. White essays (yeah, I have basically everyone he ever wrote in print) before I reread his three children’s books. But literary people keep saying that novels raise your ceiling, while nonfiction only raises your floor. However, in my mind, you should raise your floor as much as possible because that can only raise your ceiling higher – the ‘sea raises all ships’ sort of thinking. 

Anyhow, other than my reading notes of Didion, I’ve been pretty intellectually flat lately. I think it’s because the texture of reality has gotten even more shocking and toxic since Didion’s time. I just want to stick my head in video games and wait out the storm, which may never pass.

… Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel is not a game; it’s literally taking your time on this earth and flushing it down the drain. 

I don’t even play that competitively because that’s a brutal min-maxing affair that is part of the toxic competitiveness that I got away from in “paper” Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh years ago. Master Duel used to be a fun casual environment. You had some competitive try-hards yes, but now, it’s where people just bash each other in the face because they have no life outside of that game…

I wanted to focus on building decks with a whole bunch of random cards because that’s fun. But what fun is it when you get to click a red surrender button twenty times straight (actually I think the most losses in a row I’ve ever had was 11 before someone inevitably throws me a bone and disconnects because of bad wi-fi or scoops with a bad hand…) I also have a limit of games I play. If I play 10 games and win only one, that means I need to find a different thing to do, even if that’s literally taking a nap…

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I’ve noticed that with a lot of online discourse, especially in “communities,” you have a few “influencers” that pretty much run the show. Yes, people may offer good ideas and improve the community as a whole, but someone like me who often comes out of left field and talks about something no one else thought of before, I get shunned 99 percent of the time. Even if a couple people speak up and say I have a point, the majority just either ignores me or says extremely mean things that make me curl up in a fetal position. You know, because bullying is apparently really cool these days! The saddest part is that these online bullies are actually pathetic… but with the way the vast majority of popular online “community building” platforms offer such a terrible choice: pay up and join them or walk away and be a Vermont hermit who only talks to herself, her wife, and a chatbot…

I think it is absolutely insane that speed runners will go down to the single frame with a world record. Like with Mike Tyson’s punch out, summoning salt was trying to get a 1:59, but it took him literal years. It’s so ridiculous. But it’s entertaining.