A few last words on Naive Super

Reading all the comments at once, Naive Super seems so much a product of its time. We loved the pithy one liners and lists which are reminiscent of the endless cleverness of pop culture -- shows such as The Office, John Stewart et al., New Yorker cartoons, the better advertisements.

At the same time, all of this reflects a kind of emptiness that Jackie noted. I wondered why the narrator had so little self-awarnesss that he never commented on the fact that he had the leisure to mope and ponder the universe. Perhaps it is no accident that this book came from Scandinavia where the welfare state creates a cocoon in which some people can, with no pushback, simply live, unreflectively, off others because of society's great wealth and the agreement that not everyone has to work. I think Holden was a bit more aware of his privilege, as I recall.