It is not rare to hear plaints of the sort "I waited for a table at Boogaloo's for literally five million hours until I was so hungry I had to go to WeBe instead!!" or endorsements such as "This bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Chocolate Clusters is literally the most delicious thing I have ever tasted." These statements do not read as flip or caustic, and I don't even think they're intended as ironic although by definition they are since "literally" is being used in place of its opposite, "figuratively." (Is it ironic that these ironic statements are meant earnestly?)
This would lead one to believe that the standard stock of comparatives and superlatives are not sufficient to the intensity at which we register quotidian disappointments and thrills. To describe our experiences in less forceful terms ("I waited for a very long time," "This tastes good") would make them seem muted, drained of color, hardly worthy of retelling...British, even, in their damp calm. The French may offer such limp praise as "well, it wasn't terrible" but Americans have patience for only the very best and the very worst.
Or perhaps it doesn't have to do with what we feel but with how we know. A generation steeped in narrative, swimming in RSS feeds and news aggregators, in videoblogs and celebrity profiles and HBO mini-series, we watch the artificial and the actual shape each other. When a real University (Cornell) can actively recruit a cartoon character (Alex Doonsebury), there is no question of art imitating life anymore than we imitate our own reflections in a mirror.
The literal is most useful to us as a figure for something else.
The literal is most useful to us as a figure for something else.
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