Once in a Lifetime. Week 52: Stories about Humans with Didion, Butler, Wallace and O'Brien

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Week 52 and, somehow, the end of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities project. We've got time to process all the emotions next week. For now, on to the readings!

This final week brings together a really cool set of 20th and 21st century works—Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Tim O'Brien, the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, and David Foster Wallace—all circling what Gioia calls “untenable situations.” How do you find your way through a problem that seems to have no exit?

Butler’s "Bloodchild" is visceral and unsettling, asking what we owe the people we love.

Didion’s "The White Album" treats memories as snapshots, raising questions about how we make sense of a life at all.

O’Brien’s "The Things They Carried" explores both physical and emotional burdens, especially the pull of home.

The Big Book is strikingly direct: change begins with honest self-confrontation and surrender.

And Wallace—unexpectedly one of my favorites of the whole year—follows a drifting young man who stumbles into meaning, not heroism, but something smaller and real.

Together, they offer a glimpse into what it means to be a modern human. But here's a spoiler: I don't really think it's all that different than it ever was.

Come back next week for the season finale and a wrap-up of the whole project!

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

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