From a particular vantage, it's easy to assume that modern life is lonesome, aesthetically horrifying, and extremely uncool: energy drinks, vape pens, virtual reality, twenty-four-hour news, online banking, Bluetooth, airport sandwiches, omnipresent social anxiety. Believing otherwise-engaging in any sort of willful hedonism, or submitting to the notion that pleasure is a serious pursuit and joy is still abundant-has come to feel nearly irresponsible. (Fun? In this economy?) Much has already been made of the phenomenon of young people having less sex, and struggling more with depression; it's natural, some days, to worry that we have collectively lost touch with a fundamental sense of exuberance.
This story is from the October 23, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the October 23, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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ART OF STONE
\"The Brutalist.\"
MOMMA MIA
Audra McDonald triumphs in \"Gypsy\" on Broadway.
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
\"Black Doves,\" on Netflix.
NATURE STUDIES
Kyle Abraham's “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful.”
WHAT GOOD IS MORALITY?
Ask not just where it came from but what it does for us
THE SPOTIFY SYNDROME
What is the world's largest music-streaming platform really costing us?
THE LEPER - LEE CHANGDONG
. . . to survive, to hang on, waiting for the new world to dawn, what can you do but become a leper nobody in the world would deign to touch? - From \"Windy Evening,\" by Kim Seong-dong.
YOU WON'T GET FREE OF IT
Alice Munro's partner sexually abused her daughter. The harm ran through the work and the family.
TALK SENSE
How much sway does our language have over our thinking?
TO THE DETECTIVE INVESTIGATING MY MURDER
Dear Detective, I'm not dead, but a lot of people can't stand me. What I mean is that breathing is not an activity they want me to keep doing. What I mean is, they want to knock me off. My days are numbered.
