Do You Even Lit?

Wandering through Samuel Beckett's 1953 absurdist play Waiting for Godot.

Did Beckett actually have an interpretation in mind, or did he deliberately write a maximally vague story that everyone could map their own interests onto?

How well does the humour hold up over time? Where does Beckett rank in the canon of absurdist and existentialist writers? What proportion of reported suicides are actually autoerotic asphyxiation accidents...

Our final session with W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge (chapters 5-7).

Elliot Templeton as the last relic of a dying age. Was he really happy? We consider his self-worship and clout-chasing Catholicism as a counterpoint to Larry's spirituality. Rest in power queen.

Sophie MacDonald attempts to climb off the wheel of suffering via more prosaic means. Did she get what she wanted? An argument over whether Isabel is a total psyc...

Discussing chapters 4 and 5 of W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge.

Larry becomes aloof and reserved. Is he really bringing anything to the table besides his sexy forearms? Has he gone full woo-woo granola cruncher? Why can Kosti only talk about spirituality when he's drunk? Why aren't muses a thing these days?

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) Synopsis
• (00:02:23) What do we think of Larry now?
• (00:13:54) Curing Gray’s headache
• (00:16:50)...

Cracking into the first three chapters of Maugham's 1944 spiritual odyssey.

Why do we love Larry so much? Rich talks about his own years of loafing around. Is Larry's decision to take a step off the beaten path less admirable given his 'trifling' $54,000 inflation-adjusted stipend?

Talking about the spergy drive to collect All the Knowledge, and how to think about which problems to work on. Is the pursuit of knowledge for its own s...

Starts with light and breezy over-sharing of our masturbatory habits, ends with a downer discussion about how we should re-contextualise Wallace's work thru the lens of the abuse allegations against him.

The main stories we talk about:

Brief Interview #59: Logically coherent masturbation fantasies (00:01:34) is this a universal experience, why are adolescent boys so creepy, the rare 'gooner to godhood' pathway.

Brief Interview #28 ...

This week's discussion is loosely based around the story Octet, but really we just drill down on what David Foster Wallace is trying to achieve in this collection.

How much metafiction is too much metafiction, does DFW stray into self-indulgence, the leap of faith he asks from his readers, is it possible to tactically and deliberately try to be sincere (or is this another double bind), and whether Brief Interviews is really about t...

Wallace's 1999 collection of short stories takes us to some uncomfortable places (and as always, is eerily prescient).

In this week's discussion we talk about his 'juvenilia' coming-of-age story Forever Overhead, his famous piece The Depressed Person, and a smattering of the titular brief interviews.

We kinda fucked up the format on this by trying to talk about everything. But salvaged some bits about nostalgia, the blurred lines b...

An anticlimactic final discussion to an anticlimactic book. We are confused and afraid. Cam is on the brink of quitting reading altogether.

This discussion covers Parts 2 and 3 of To The Lighthouse. Actual book-related content starts at 11 minutes.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) Normative ethics and incest cold open
• (00:11:00) Infectiousness of social energy

Rich waxes lyrical about the dinner party scene. Do men have impaired theory of mind, or are they just assholes? On the invisible mastery of social reality, and capturing subjective experience in literature. It goes well enough that the boys decide to actually read the rest of the book.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) pre-roll jibber jabber
• (00:12:55) a man monologues on the male te...

A fragmented jumble of multiple shifting perspectives, punctuated by abrupt jumps between topics and timelines, infused with the frustration of trying to express intensely-felt experiences within the bounds of mere words.

(oh and we also talked about a Virginia Woolf book)

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) - we are NOT going to the lighthouse
• (00:11:16) -...

These days the 'multiverse' idea is standard marvel slop. But if we read this story in 1941 it would have blown our tiny little minds.

how tf did Borges sit at the cutting edge of philosophy and physics without doing the classic info-dump spergy thing?

We read one of our favourite stories in search of Clues

(actual plot-related analysis starts around the 1 hour mark)

Our critical consensus on John William's sleeper bestseller Stoner:

• There is almost no plot
• The main character doesn't get the girl, or really succeed at anything
• Gigantic violation of 'show don't tell', starting on literally page one
• WE FUCKING LOVE THIS BOOK

could it be...a perfect novel?

we try figure o...

closing out the last section of the book with death, entropy, and thwarted ambitions:

• Why David Deutsch wouldn't approve of Houellebecg
• True artists impose their vision upon the world
• Sacred values and euthanasia
• Should kanye get back on his meds

Not sure why the audio cuts off abruptly at the end but it does feel appropriate

CHAPTER...

This section is light on plot but we do get a coherent theme: the perversions that emerge from consumer capitalism's relentless optimisation process.

will our hero Jed maintain his artistic integrity and stop feeding the beast? does Houellebecq think of himself as a kind of ethnographer? Does the g-spot actually exist? etc

benny's audio still sucks. actual book content start...

Some good stuff coming up already in part 1 of The Map and The Territory:

• how our models of the world can change underlying physical reality
• is modern art a psyop?
• why plato would hate 'brand-name' tourism experience

benny's audio is completely cooked on this. I lost the files so I can't fix it sorry

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) playdough’s cave
• (00:04:01) is modern art a psyop
• (00:07:59) straussian readings of plato
• (00:12:21...