Dr. Justin McDaniel teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. One popular class that he teaches is called Existential Despair. In this class, 13 students arrive at his apartment where they are given copies of a short novel. When Vulture magazine visited his class, that novel was Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome.
The students silently read for a few hours. They are forbidden to talk or use their phones. They may not take notes. That's because they're not studying the novel--they're experiencing it.
McDaniel then conducts a discussion of what they've read with an inevitable emphasis on the despair of the characters and themselves. McDaniel, at 53 and recently divorced, is intimately familiar with despair. He tells his students:
I always say, ‘I’m not concerned with their 19-year-old self.’ I have no interest in their 19-year-old self. They’re hopeful. They have their life ahead of them. I’m 53. I’m worried about their 53-year-old self. I’m worried about the midlife crisis. I’m worried about the divorce.
McDaniel is, fittingly, composing a book about the literature of despair titled This Will Destroy You: How Literature Teaches Us to Flourish in the Face of Existential Despair.
Photo: University of Pennsylvania
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