Latest / The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast / Episode 92: Essays, Part II

Transcript

Episode 92: Essays, Part II · The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast

• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: this is the mooks and the gripes podcast hello everybody this is trevor and
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: dreaming paul paul how are you doing it's halloween for many of our listeners i
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: know it is yeah i'm doing well it's uh been not a super spooky fall so far but i'm
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: hoping things will turn around you know we'll get a little more misty weather and
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: things like that but yeah i'm doing great
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: oh misty what you needed that you didn't mean like i haven't seen any demons or
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: ghosts we've been too busy at work to go you know do some seances yeah no figures
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: have appeared outside my window recently it's very disappointing oh man well i've
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: had a great one actually do you want to know something kind of fun that i didn't
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: know about yeah so my wife and i are out on a walk the other day and she says
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: something about the headless horseman uh riding around our town
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, that's fun.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then she goes, wait, did you not know that's real?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And in my head, I'm thinking, we don't live in Sleepy Hollow.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: No,
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've never heard of the myth of the Headless Horseman riding around our town,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: even though it's a lovely town at the foot of a mountain in Utah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: It turns beautifully fall.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I've never heard of this myth.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, it's not a myth.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, well, I think it might be.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: You're starting to have some concerns about her.
• 1:45
  Yeah.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: But no, there is a person.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know who it is.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: She might.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know who dresses up like the Headless Horseman and rides around town
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: periodically at this time of year.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, she showed me the costume.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: It looks really good.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: It looks, I mean, you know, I think he has a head and, but I can't tell.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how they do these things.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I looked at him, you know, not too closely.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to, I don't want to spoil it for me.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to think he's not a real demon when I see him and just think it's a costume.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to confirm that.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's, it's actually, you know, a ghoul.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's, I've not seen, I also have not seen the headless horseman
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: riding around town yet but i've i've seen the evidence that there is one that's
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: very cool has that been an ongoing thing for years or is it relatively new well
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: that's what i wondered i thought have i just been missing out on this my whole time
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: i've lived in this town say you've been there for a while and uh i think it's
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: relatively new like maybe the last four or five years or something she was saying
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: nice and i'm i don't know why i've never heard of it until this year but i i
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: last night we were on another walk and i think it was the high school band hitting
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: you know their their drums and she turns around is that the those horses you know
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: is he behind us that's so funny uh it's not not the headless horseman right behind
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: us but does that make you more inclined to get out for the next little bit until
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: halloween or oh yeah yeah no more more i'd i'd
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to have a brush up with the supernatural.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: You have to wait for some misty night where there's a full moon.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: If such a thing happens soon, that'll be your best bet, I think.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I guess Halloween night,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: might not be a full moon,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: but that's probably the best night to go out.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Very true.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: But he might be busy cutting off other people's heads.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: How disappointing.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what bridge is the safe one here in town either.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: There are, there are a couple.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: You might want to do a little research first just to be safe, but, but no, it's been, it's been fun.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And listeners, we are, you know, again, happy Halloween.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you're having a great time of year.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: I like that my mind does go to ghost stories, not just for Halloween, but for
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know, through kind of the winter.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm looking for some good,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: something fun to read to my kids this year for the holidays,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: because over the last couple of years,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: I read Green Glass House and then The Ghost of Green Glass House.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: The year before all of that, I read The Westing Game.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: All of them kind of mysteries, fun.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: The Green Glass House ones in particular have a little bit of like an old...
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: folksy uh holiday feel you know not necessarily current like it's not christian
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: based christmas even though i guess there's probably a little bit of that i don't
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: know it's hard to explain and i absolutely love them they're about stories and and
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: um you know there's a little bit of ghostiness and so i'm trying to find something
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: kind of like that if anybody has any ideas
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that would be fun.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: I,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: I can't remember,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I know that your kids vary in age range,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: but when our kids were around that age,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: we had a lot of fun reading Sherlock Holmes with them.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: There's a few that are, have a little bit of that to it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that would be one option.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then of course,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: when you get closer to Christmas itself,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: there's always,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: good old Dickens and stuff,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: but yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'd be curious if, if people do share, make sure you fill me in.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Cause I would love to hear some of those too.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds good.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds good.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I will do so.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, as we said a couple weeks ago, we would come back on Halloween night.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: to talk about essays again, because we weren't able to finish our episode last time.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I also, uh, was not able to start a year.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe remember at the end of that episode,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I said,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hey,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'll,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'll read,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: maybe a couple of these essays out of the unforgivable,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: by Sylvia Campo,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: the essay collection from NYRB classics.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, that didn't happen over the last four weeks.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to put that on my still to do list.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And, uh,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Really looking forward to it for sure.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't have anything to report on that today.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want anyone who came specifically for that, you know, to get disappointed.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hundreds of people are now just like blogging off.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Done.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Done.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: But we wanted to kind of revisit the topic because we were having a good time
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: talking about it and sharing passages.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And also we,
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: wanted to see if there was anything kind of in the spooky category.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get to that in just a moment, because first, Paul, what have you been reading?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, this will segue nicely into what I've been reading.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: It is October,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: and every October over the last,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: it's been probably at least the last five years or so,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: I've been kind of revisiting my old buddy Stephen King,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: just going back,
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: mostly reading or rereading some of my favorites that I hadn't read in sometimes 15,
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: 20 or more,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: many more years in some cases.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: and this year I was planning on doing that,
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: but then I don't know,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: people who follow him or follow the bookish world to some degree have probably
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: heard that he has a new short story collection that came out just a couple of
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: months ago called you like it darker.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: And, um, so I was kind of excited to jump on that.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I've been doing.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: And as always,
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: when I'm talking about Stephen King,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: I have to put a little disclaimer in there just to say,
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: yes,
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: I have a soft spot for him based on,
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: years of reading him,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: you
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: especially growing up during those formative years, you know, he's had a huge influence on me.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I always like to mention that because I don't think I have like necessarily a
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: subjective view of his work,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: but that said,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have been kind of blah about some of his newer stuff over the last,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: 10,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: 15 years with a few exceptions.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I was a little bit not wary about this one, but I will say his newer stuff.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: I do always go into it with my eyes wide open a little more than I probably used to, but yeah,
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: we've always talked about how horror tends to lend itself pretty well to like short
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: stories and novellas,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: because there's that freedom to not necessarily explain everything,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: or you can just kind of throw some ideas against the wall and see how they stick.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: And historically,
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: a lot of Stephen King short stories,
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think have been some of his more fun works just because it's kind of these
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: flights of fancy and imagination where he can just try things.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I was pretty excited about this one.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um,
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: Some of the stories have already appeared in different places, but I haven't read any of them.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you have,
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: but Harper's,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: McSweeney's,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Esquire,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: quite a few of them have appeared in there,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: but the vast majority are previously unpublished,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: which is pretty fun.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I'm about halfway through right now.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: And some of the standouts so far for me are a short story called Willie the Weirdo,
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: which is super unsettling.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: If anybody's worried that Stephen King is getting soft in his older age, definitely not the case.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: This is,
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: this really like just disturbing story about this 10 year old boy and his
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: grandfather and they have this incredibly morbid and disturbing relationship
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: centered around death his grandfather will tell him you know willie will say can
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: you tell me the one about you know cleopatra can you tell me the one about the
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: civil war and his grandfather will go back and tell him these stories seemingly as
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: if he lived through them with some very just dark
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: you know, edges to them.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then as the story goes on, there's even some, even more dark things that happen there.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: So that one disturbing, but very good.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's another one called the fifth step,
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: which is another really short,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: short story that packs a really big punch.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I would just say, it might make anybody out there think twice about being a good Samaritan.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then that same theme of maybe not helping out others extends into the novella
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: that I just finished yesterday because there are several novellas that make up big
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: chunks of this book too.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the one I just finished is called Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it centers around this guy who has this very detailed dream where there's this
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: gas station and this creaking sign and all these different things that are very specific.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then he comes across a body within this dream.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so he wakes up and he just can't shake this nightmare that he's had.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so eventually it gets to the point where he starts trying to figure out where
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: this location in his dream actually is in real life.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: And he finds it, goes there just to kind of clear his head and kind of convince himself that it's fake.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: But no, he actually does find a body there.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so he kind of struggles with what to do,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: but he ends up calling anonymously,
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: calling it in anonymously just to let somebody,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: the authorities know that there's this body out there.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: And what follows after that is just this nightmare about.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: again,
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: like might discourage you from ever trying to do the right thing because his
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: well-intentioned attempt just goes down the tubes for sure.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, yeah, just been so nice to be back in the world of Stephen King.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: I always loved his stuff.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: This time of year, obviously is a great time.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: And.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: you and I talked a little bit about to do a little spoiler.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we talked about looking for some horror based or spooky essays.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have any luck doing that,
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: but I did mention that in the past,
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Stephen King's kind of either his forwards or his afterwards to books are good
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: examples of some kind of nonfiction writing touching on the idea of horror.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I did skip ahead on this one just to see what it had.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I, I,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: kind of browse through his afterword to this book.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I found this quote that I think is really excellent.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'd be curious to see what you think of it, Trevor.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: It says,
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: horror stories are best appreciated by those who are compassionate and empathetic,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: a paradox,
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: but a true one.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: I believe it is the unimaginative among us,
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: those incapable of appreciating the dark side of make-believe who have been
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: responsible for most of the world's woes.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: In stories of the supernatural and paranormal,
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: I have tried especially hard to show the real world as it is and to tell the truth
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: about the America I know and love.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, I don't know.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that was pretty cool.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Horror stories by those who are compassionate and empathetic.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's some truth to that.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I like... Yes, that fits me and you to a T. Also intelligent and attractive.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think there's something potentially to all of that.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm sure they're cold hearted, you know, folks too.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I may have mentioned this.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: But my wife was taking some continuing education classes for the library.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a presenter who's a professor here in Utah who also writes ghost stories,
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: spooky stories,
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: horror stories for kids.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: mentions that a lot of times parents are,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: concerned like,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: my kid has,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: an unhealthy attraction to dark things.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: They want to I want to try and push that out of them.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: uh, idea.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if he put it in,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: in any kind of relationship with that,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: but he also had good things to say.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of times this helps kids to feel and to, um, cope and to work through things.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the people I know who really get into it,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: kind of do fit that bill a little bit.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it was just interesting.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I really liked the line.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: I believe it is the unimaginative among us who have been responsible for most of the world's woes.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that's one of the things that I like just in general about what we've
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: talked about,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: just reading widely,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: lots of different films,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: like going out and exploring things.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's just that idea of expanding your boundaries and,
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: and not becoming unimaginative.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: But anyways,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: this is,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: yeah,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: a really good,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: as always,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like there's some unevenness in some of his short story collections.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously some I like more than others,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: but the strong ones that I've read so far,
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: I would say are right up there with some of my favorites of his.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's always nice.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how he continues to do it.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: He's like Brandon Sanderson, where
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: just based on sheer volume, you would expect there would be a drop-off in quality.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: And in Stephen King's case, there definitely have been those moments.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: But generally speaking,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always just so happy to know he's still out there,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: plugging away and just doing his thing.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very cool.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you're enjoying them.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think our experiences have been similar,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: but I still often find myself wanting to give everything another go.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Did you pick one for this year, an old one too?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't yet.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm going to run out of time just because this one is so big.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've actually been listening to the audio.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: We have it in at the bookstore and I haven't looked at the page count, but it's a chunkster.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's like 24 hours of audio.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: I do listen to it a little bit faster, but it is also read.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to forget his name.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: We've talked about him before.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: The great audio.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: narrator and actor who has read a lot of Dennis Johnson's things and Stephen King's.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: I do know who you're talking about and also can't think of the name right now.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can look it up.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want me to tell you what I've been reading while you look it up?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, actually, I just looked it up.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Will Patton.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Will Patton.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, yeah.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, on to you.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: What have you been reading?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we both got in the mail yesterday and
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: a copy of a book that will come out after this episode, but before our next one.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it is Sergio de la Pava's Every Arc Bends Its Radian, his latest.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm attracted to it because it's shorter than A Naked Singularity,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: which was kind of his breakout,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: a big story in publishing because it was self-published and did super well.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: I admit I still have not read it, partially because of my fears that
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it's big and also that it was self-published.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, is it really good?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I know you have.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I finally did.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was one of those where you just kept hearing about it.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I will admit I like,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: like you,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: I was,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if skeptical is too strong of a word,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: but I was wary.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, it kind of won me over, and I did.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it's fabulous.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's really, really good.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's propulsive and strange and odd.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm very excited about this one, too.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that may be the word for this one, too.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I do want to point out, look on the back of your book.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: We got arcs, but do you see that little eye with an eye on the clouds?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's in the first little bit.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So this is going to be potentially...
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it just reminds me of Pynchon and the little symbols in his.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not the only one.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go to what the publishers,
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: they'll often send these arcs and there's a letter at the beginning.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine if Nathaniel West wrote 2666.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you come close to the genius work of fiction that Sergio de la Pava has created
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: in his new novel,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Every Arc Bends Its Radian.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So does that sell it to you?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: That does.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I didn't need much selling, but that further sells it, yes.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: and it seems to be,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the things I've read about it talk about it being,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: very fast-paced,
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: very fun,
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: very weird.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think I have read,
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: because I was like,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know anything about this,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: nor have I read any of his work to know anything about how to really approach it,
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: and that there are folks who are mentioning Pynchon.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm assuming there's going to be some of that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I did read the first the first little bit last night and I was tempted just to
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: read like the first,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: couple of pages here to show that pacing and to show how kind of fun it is.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that that might not be the best way to approach it.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it is somebody who's leaving the U.S.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: to go back to Colombia and doesn't know exactly what he's going to find there or why he's going.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I do like this part when he gets to customs at the airport in Cali.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: The agent there says, you know,
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you going?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Where am I going?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: She means hotel o familia.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm off on the deeper question.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Her voice doesn't help, you know, just kind of thing.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay, this is, I am, I think it'll be fun.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I dove into it last night because I just got it yesterday and I'm already, already enjoying it.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So nice.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's another one.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'll be curious.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm planning to get in that one soon too.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: I would love,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is another example where I would highly advocate.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if this one, I assume this one will probably have an audio book eventually.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: It might take a while.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure what their plans are,
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: but I listened to the audio of Naked Singularity and it worked really well with
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: that frenetic,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: fast paced style.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I would argue that for anybody who's kind of curious,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: maybe it would be one of those to do that thing where you read it and listen at the same time.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because I do,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think the narrator,
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: which I don't have that person's name in front of me right now,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: did a great job on A Naked Singularity.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, again, what the plans are for this one.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: But he is an author,
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: that due to some of the dialogue and just the way that the book is paced,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: at least in the case of A Naked Singularity,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: it's that kind where it does pull you along.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I think having an audio element might be a good way to dip your toe in if you're interested.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it does have an audio coming out.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And just so folks know, this comes out on November 12th.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the same day the audio drops.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's narrated by Lee Osorio,
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: who has in his credits,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Chain Gang,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: All Stars,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of big book from a few years ago.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not seeing here that he did...
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: The Naked Singularity.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it The Naked Singularity?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's A Naked Singularity.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: A Naked Singularity.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: That one was done by Luis Moreno.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, hopefully you do have that option.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, without having listened to obviously this new one, though, I would just throw that out there.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: There's lots of different ways to access great literature these days,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: and some combination of those might be a good one to try for people.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And just so folks know too, I know it's Halloween where you are at.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: But we have also been reading for NYRB Women 24,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Edith Wharton's ghost stories,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: which we did talk about one of them a couple of years ago on Halloween show that we made,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: we named,
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: we named,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: we read.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they're so fun.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're very good.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're spooky without being absolutely horrific.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're just weird and ghostly.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times about absence or people's psychological, you know, things going on.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I highly recommend it.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you mentioned that.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to bring that up,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: too,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: because that's been another nice part of my spooky October between Stephen King and
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: Edith Wharton's ghost stories.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's been lots of good, you know, creepy stuff going on in my life.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I really like those.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: I like...
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: I will say,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: I like all of them,
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: but the one that you and I read a couple years ago afterward,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: I still feel like is...
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it's the strongest...
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: but one of the strongest that I've read.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think so too.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: We're about halfway through.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: so if anybody's looking for one to see if they like that collection,
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: they could go back and listen to our episode or just dive right into Afterword.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think that is a really good story.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then listen to our episode.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's how Edith would want it, I think.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Good point.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're right.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: But all right.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: you mentioned that you didn't have a whole lot of luck finding horror essays or
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: things written about that.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I really didn't either.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was surprised.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: I kept on Googling, Googling, Googling and trying to find something.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, it's weird.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, come on, Google, do you not get it?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not asking about horror short stories.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm not typing that.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm typing essays.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And there are some there are some lists.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: that I wanted to point out for people.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: there is,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: on electric lit and article,
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: our favorite essays and stories about horror films,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: which I thought was kind of fun to see.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's,
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: there's nothing scarier than a hungry woman by Laura Ma is an essay that,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: that you can find there and horror lives in the body by Meg pillow Davis.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so these are all, you know, that I'm finding here.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: and here's another one,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Halloween,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: the movie,
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: taught me about queerness by Richard Scott Larson.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: so they're,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: they're,
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: they are interesting,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: kind of taking,
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: feminism or,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: or,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: other,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: other,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: ways of,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: of reading that I think are important and really good.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: to look at horror movies.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's not what I was looking for necessarily when I was looking for something on horror itself.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but these are still of interest.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: I do like, you know, horror movies.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: I probably do a lot more with horror movies than horror stories and everything like that.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I was kind of curious about things on, um,
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: horror itself or on what is it that we're looking at?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: There is one by not Mark Haber's favorite writer,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: but soon to be one of yours, Montaigne.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just waiting to become his biggest fan.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's on fear.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I like that it starts with, uh, I was stunned.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: My hair stood on end and my voice stuck in my throat.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then, and it just goes through, um, the, the strangeness of the emotion fear, uh,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would recommend that that's more kind of what I was looking for.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Again, you know, I didn't know what I was looking for.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: But when I found this, I thought that that's one of them.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good one.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Another one that I thought about and I didn't.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's one I've not read by him.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: But there's a speaking of Stephen King.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: He wrote a book, a nonfiction book back in 1981 called Danse Macabre.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just reading from the Wikipedia entry,
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: but it's about horror fiction in print,
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: radio,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: TV,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: film,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: and comics,
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: and the influence of contemporary societal fears and anxieties on the genre.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I remember hearing about that one back when I was a big fan of his.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: That would probably be another one for people
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Looking at this, and actually the more I read about it, the more I'm like, why haven't I read that?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because it says it examines the various influences on King's own writing and
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: important genre texts of the 19th and 20th centuries.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it explores the history of the genre as far back as the Victorian era,
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: but primarily focuses on the 50s to the 70s.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: which I know was a big influence on him with all the,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: um,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: kind of pulp comics and some of that kind of horror,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: like twilight zone and things like that.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that would be another one to, to maybe explore a little bit.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's something I should kind of slate in for next year to read around this time of year.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think you mentioned you've read Stephen King's, is it called Why We Crave Horror Movies?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what it's called, yeah.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember reading that one back in high school and enjoying it.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not sure I fully believe it.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of like the idea that you said of,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: it's not that we're mentally,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: insane,
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: mentally ill.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it isn't an outlet for my darker self.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it can be that for some people.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I think sometimes maybe he buys into the more like this is this is to prevent
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: me from becoming a murderer or whatever.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that's true.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a safe way to experience fear and emotions and to begin to be able to process things.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he would probably acknowledge that.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think it's just because I like...
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: to experience some of the other stuff.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know though.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe he's right.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's me avoiding something.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: The telltale heart that's under your floor right now.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think there's probably truth to all of that.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: And like you said,
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure it's a spectrum where for different people,
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: it's more of one thing than the other,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: but I kind of tend to lean towards your idea of
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Just like we talk about books that focus on something like terminal illness or
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: death where it makes you uncomfortable.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: But to your point,
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: it's kind of also this way to reckon with it or at least to not avoid thinking
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: about it.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of it can be cathartic to just at least for a moment glance at kind of
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: the worst case scenarios of life and,
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: spend some time at least thinking.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: adjacent to it I think that there's something at least for me and obviously for
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: many other people that's both fascinating but also it can be kind of I don't know
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: if comforting is the right word but I don't know I think there's something healthy
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: about it yeah yeah
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: But that in the past now.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get back to more of a general discussion on essays.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't entirely remember.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know we both still had a collection to go over.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm going to back off again.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And rather than go right to it,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: talk about some other avenues for people wanting to explore essays.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: And an author that I would like to bring up is, you know, a fantastic essayist.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: She did write some novels and she died fairly recently in March of 2023.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is Dubrovka Grishik.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh,
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: and her,
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: she's wrote Yugoslav,
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Croatian,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: who wrote many collections of essays that are published by open letter books.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I, and I pulled them all out, uh, just to, to kind of look through them.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's Europe and sepia karaoke culture.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and, and they, they even just had her, uh,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: her last collection of essays that they have, that they published.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: She is so good writing about contemporary culture.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I didn't mention what that one is.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to say, that's like one of my... Oh, sorry, go ahead.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's Muzzle for Witches, and it's translated, as many of them are, by Ellen Elias Bursak.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And just fantastic.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: This one, I have not read it yet, but that's one of the reasons I didn't...
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: say its name is because i was moving on to the other ones um but a muzzle for
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: witches is a apparently a conversation with the literary critic marima omerajic
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: covering topics such as women and the male perspective the culture of self-harm and
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: the melancholy of vanishing
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the book is more than a simple interview.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's a roadmap of the literary world exploring the past century and all of its
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: violence and turmoil,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: especially in Yugoslavia,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Ugresik's birth country,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: and providing a direction for the future of feminist writing.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't even know if this is specifically a collection of essays.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think it probably is.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: maybe a little bit more broad than that, but can maybe, maybe apply.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know you'll be okay with that.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm okay with that.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of her other ones are specifically essay collections,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: but do still range in this area of women and the,
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: the last century's violence.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just the culture surrounding all of this.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: they are often creatively written,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: not just sitting down and starting an essay,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: but she will go into different modes of writing or different,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: it can,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: it can seem like she's transcribing an interview,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: and it's not,
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: it's an essay.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's just really, really fantastic, um,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: and thoughtful uh essays and it's you know i was i was very very sad when when she
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: when she died um but uh we do have all of this still to go through if you haven't
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: read any of her her collections yet um you know they're again like i said there's a
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: whole bunch of them published by um
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: open letter,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: including one of the first ones that was originally published by Dahlke,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: but is now with open letter.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for not reading and definitely recommend it.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad you mentioned her.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: I know that Chad has mentioned her many times as maybe the foundational author for open letter.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to put words in his mouth, but at the very least one of the foundational authors for them.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um,
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I will admit, I have only read Fox, which is her novel.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: I've not actually read any of her essays,
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: but what you described about her style seems like it must carry over because that's
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: one of my big memories of Fox is just the creativity and the way it would break off
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: into different styles of writing.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm also so glad you mentioned the title of her new one,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: because I think if we were talking about great book titles,
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: that one's got to be up there,
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: A Muzzle for Witches.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's one of the best titles I've heard in a long time.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: So no, I'm glad you mentioned her.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: And she's one that I am definitely looking forward to kind of digging more into her essays in particular.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Going forward.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: But also, I think you'll love them.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: And for anybody who hasn't read Fox, that one, just add that to the list.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's not essays, but she's a great writer for sure.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we can just kind of be a little bit more flowing with this part of our conversation.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: You may have some, some others that you want to bring up.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: I take it from here, Paul.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: I can,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'll save my,
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: my last one for now,
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: but what I was thinking is just kind of touching on some other ones that we missed.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: This is our chance to cheat a little and, you know, maybe,
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: put a few of our honorable mentions in there,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: I guess,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: but also just talk about,
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: I have the idea of maybe we could also talk about a little bit of our essays TBR pile,
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: what are some,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: some essay collections that you would like to get to that you haven't yet,
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: or maybe in my case,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: many of them were ones I'd like to revisit because there were quite a few essay
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: collections that I read over the years that when I was looking through my shelf of essays,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: I was like,
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man,
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: I remember really liking that,
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: but it's been long enough that I don't remember a lot of the details about it.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: So that's another area I thought we could go in.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: And one of those,
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: i thought i'd mention here is a collection by um elliot weinberger i don't know if
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: you've read anything by him but he has one called an elemental thing which is out
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: from new directions that i have dipped in and out of but i've not quite completely
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: ever committed to and i would like to i'll just read a little bit from the blurb it
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: says with an elemental thing weinberger turns from his celebrated political
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: chronicles to the timelessness of the subject of his literary essays
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: With the wisdom of a literary archaeologist,
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: astronomer,
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: anthropologist,
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: zookeeper,
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: he leads us through histories,
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: fables,
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: and meditations about the 10,000 things in the universe,
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: the wind and the rhinoceros,
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Catholic saints and people named Chang,
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: the Mandeans on the Iran-Iraq border,
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: and the Kaluli in the mountains of New Guinea.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: Among the 35 essays included are a poetic biography of the Prophet Muhammad,
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: which was praised by the London Times for its,
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: quote,
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: great beauty and grace,
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: and The Stars,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: a reverie on what's up there that has already been translated.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of all over the place, but I know that he's really highly regarded as an essayist.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: And as we've talked about, no matter how much you read, there's always going to be those blind spots.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like he's one of those where
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: I've bought both of his, not both.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: he has more than two,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: but I've read,
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: I've bought two of his essay collections and not really read either one of them
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: cover to cover.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: So he's one that I thought I would just bring up is on my TBR pile.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: if you want one on my TBR pile,
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: have you seen one of the more recent releases from NYRB Classics,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: A Chance Meeting,
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: American Encounters by Rachel Cohen?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think I have seen that one.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: It came out just earlier this year and it is a series of,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: of encounters with like,
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: what does it say?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: American encounters, but you know, American artists or, or thinkers.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I, I,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I do have a copy of it.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: They call it a group portrait that offers a striking new vision of the making and
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: remaking of the American mind and imagination from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: And a series of encounters with such folks as Henry James, W.E.B.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Dubois,
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: and his professor, William James, when they visit Helen Keller.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think these are her personal meetings.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think these are historical meetings that she is bringing to light, or at least exploring.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Willa Cather,
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth Bishop,
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Marianne Moore,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: James Baldwin,
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: just a bunch of...
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'll keep going.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, a lot of different...
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: familiar names.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very excited about this one, but I have not read it yet.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now there's so many that are coming out.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'll dip back into my TBR pile in a minute,
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: but I'm going to go back and talk about SAS2 I mentioned fairly often here.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: that falls under the nature writing category again, which will shock no one.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: But Kathleen Jamey, I've mentioned her several times.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: In particular, her collection Sight Lines.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I know I've read several excerpts in different episodes from these,
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: but I thought I would do one more.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: for those who've listened in the past,
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: you might remember she's the one that wrote an essay called Pathologies that I read
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: a little bit about where she looks through a microscope at some diseased cells
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: while drawing some really beautiful parallels to geology and natural landscapes,
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: which I thought was just stunning.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then another favorite essay of hers is,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I'm going to pronounce this right,
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: but the Havalsalin
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the one where she's helping a museum crew up in the rafters of a museum
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: clean the giant skeletons of these whales and kind of reflecting on the lives of
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: the whales as both individuals,
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: but also kind of in evolutionary time.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I just thought that was amazing.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: The one I was going to read today is from a essay called Voyager Chief.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it's again talking about whales.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: And in particular, she comes across
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: this giant set of jaws on an island.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so she starts off by describing it saying,
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: of all the whale jaws I know of,
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: this is the most majestic and unsettling.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: then she starts talking about where it is it says it's an unlikely place being so
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: domestic by one of these houses a modern bungalow just a few yards from the road in
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: a garden of long grasses and leggy blue geraniums and accessed by a little garden
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: gate almost if one can say this on protestant lewis which is the name of the island
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: like a wayside shrine is mounted the jawbone of a blue whale
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: and it is just monumental, bound by iron hoops onto the ends of two stone walls.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's 20 foot high and deeper than my own arm is long, but still with a tapering elegance.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: It comes with a terrible story, a whale's story.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: In about 1920, the animal was sighted just offshore, already dead.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: It had died of wounds.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: An explosive harpoon, which had been fired into the animal, had failed to detonate.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: The whale had broken free of its captors and swum on,
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: trailing fifty fathoms of rope,
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: the harpoon head bitten into its flesh.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: At length it succumbed.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: Where it had come from no one knew,
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: but blue whales and fin whales were hunted off the Scottish coast then.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: The Norwegian-owned whaling station operated on Harris.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Its chimney and slipway still stand.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: Even now the whale is not free of the wretched harpoon.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: The four-barbed head hangs like a pendulum from the jaw's apex, where it swings a little in the wind.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Swings in the wind.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: Despite the bungalow and the little garden gate and the flowers,
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: the whole affair has a feel of the gallows.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, every whale relic represents a disaster for that individual animal.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: A death, a wreck, a stranding, a slaughter.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: And something of that atmosphere cleaves to their bones.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: But there's something else, something about the whale.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's just the scale that makes them appear to us as near mythic,
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: part mammal,
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: part architectural,
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: inhabitants of an imagined other world.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: There's a kind of whale-inspired religiosity which must have suited the Victorian mind,
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: whalebone corsets and religiosity.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: Toads were said to have a jewel in their heads.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Render down a whale, and what do you find but the arch of a church door?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: I just I love her stuff.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: I know that I've I definitely have a thing for whales,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: from Moby Dick to I was reading that Leslie Jameson piece last time about Blue 52.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I think that's part of what caught my eye about this one.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: But I just think Kathleen Jamie is amazing.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I know she's also a poet and you can kind of tell that.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: in some of those passages i think so she's an author again i know i've talked about
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: her before but i also feel like at least in the u.s and i assume in other places
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: she's maybe not as well known as i feel like she should be so i just wanted to give
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: her another quick mention as well as somebody who i both have read and loved but
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: also she kind of does apply to the tbr pile because i've been kind of saving some
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: of her other stuff for down the road a little bit nice yeah
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll bring up someone that I think we've also talked about, but I can't remember.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: If so, it was some time ago.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like I brought this book up.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's The Possessed Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember us talking about this book?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Any memories as to why it came up?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't done like a Russian literature episode or, you know, anything like that.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I remember.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: I do remember us talking about it and I can't remember the context either.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it was during one of our war and peace or, you know, I don't know, but yeah.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: I do like Alif Batuman though.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: She's fascinating.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that collection in particular.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: and this is a collection of essays about,
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: as it says here,
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Russian books and the people who read them.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I'll pull out one of the things that I find the most memorable.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this is when she has been tasked with reading and maybe writing a little bit
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: about the American short stories.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is in the early 2000s.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Using best American short stories of 2004 and 2005,
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: she's going through it and trying to figure things out and write about it.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think probably I like a lot of these short stories, but I hear what she's saying.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think what she's saying is still important.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: But she says,
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: I remembered then the puritanical culture of creative writing embodied by colonies
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: and workshops and the ideal of craft writing.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: I realized that I would greatly prefer to think of literature as a profession,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: an art,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: a science,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: or pretty much anything else rather than a craft.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: What did craft ever try to say about the world, the human condition, or the search for meaning?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: All it had were its negative dictates.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Show, don't tell.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Murder your darlings.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Omit needless words.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: As if writing were a matter of overcoming bad habits, of omitting needless words.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was the dictate of craft that had paired many of the best American
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: stories to a nearly unreadable core of brisk verbs and vivid nouns.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like entries in a contest to identify as many concrete entities as possible in the
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: fewest possible words,
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: the first sentences were crammed with so many specificities,
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: exceptions,
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: subverted expectations,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: and minor collisions that one half expected to learn they were acrostics or had
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: been written without using the letter E.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: They all began in medias res.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Often they answered the five W's and one H.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: The premium on conciseness and concreteness made proper names a great value.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: So they came flying at you as if out of a tennis ball machine.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Julia, Juliet, Viola, Violet, Rusty, Lefty, Carl, Carla, Carlton, Mammy, Sherry.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sharon, Rose of Sharon, a Native American.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hassan.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Each name betrayed a secret calculation, a weighing of plausibility against precision.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: On the one hand, John Briggs and John Hillman.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: On the other, Sybil Mildred Clem LeGrand Pascal, who invites the reader to call her Miss Sibby.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: On the one hand, the cat called King Spanky.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: On the other, the cat called Cat.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: In either case,
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: the results somehow seemed false,
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: contrived,
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: unlike Tolstoy's double Alexeys,
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: and unlike Chekhov's characters,
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: many of whom didn't have names at all.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: In Lady with Lapdog,
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Gurov's wife,
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: Anna's husband,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: Gurov's crony at the club,
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: even the lapdog are all nameless.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: no contemporary American short story writer would have had the stamina not to name that lapdog.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of my favorite lines.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I get where she's coming from.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: probably don't hate all of these,
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: nor do I think that a lot of our best writers who do go for that or have written
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: things similar to that have nothing to say about the world.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I like this pushback.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Being like, no, it's okay to have confusion in names.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay for there to be two people named Alexei.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's how the world works.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it isn't just that.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, she is going through her own encounters with these Russian writers.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that that can be a transformative experience,
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: and she does it in a series of essays,
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: each with various points and all,
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: but a very good collection of essays.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Every time I even think about it,
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: it makes me want to go pick up a Russian either story collection or novel and get
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: to work.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'm glad you mentioned that one.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm with you.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: I love reading more modern things,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: but I do think an essay like that is a good reminder of the importance of reading
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: widely because over time things change so much,
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: but there's so much value to be found.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: And like we've talked about,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: even what some people might term the big baggy things of the past or overly verbose authors,
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: at least based on modern standards,
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: but there's so much value brought there too.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: It can be its own bias that occludes your ability to recognize what the thing is actually going for.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's those literary trends like she alludes to there about sometimes it can go
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: too far the other way where you can just read
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: something written in a certain decade and automatically know when it was written
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: based on,
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: like she was saying,
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: some of the things that were taught in the schools at that time.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that is funny.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: I like her irreverence towards academia in general too, while still, like she still loves it.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: She still loves literature.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: She still,
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like,
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: she does a nice job of walking a balance between being irreverent,
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: but still not going too far with it,
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody appreciates her irreverence, though, Paul.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is probably why I brought it up,
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: or at least I may have said this in the episode where I brought it up,
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: but this kind of inspired one of my literary run-ins.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: On Twitter, of all places.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure I've told you this before,
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: but I was reading a collection of short stories by a fairly popular author.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to say who it is.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: I probably said it in the prior episode, wherever this came up.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it is someone who has a novel coming out early next year,
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: and I've started it,
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm running into the same,
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: like wanting to bang my head against the wall,
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: where I'm like,
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love so much about this,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: and I hate so much about it.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: But,
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: I took a picture of one of the first paragraphs of a,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: of one of the short stories and,
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: posted it and,
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: and,
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: and,
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: And she and I were talking about how much it encapsulates her thoughts here.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, it was one name after another.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: These very weird,
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: but,
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: almost like they're supposed to tell you something about the whimsical nature of
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: this particular person.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it was exactly what she's saying.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: And Joyce Carol swooped in.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, no.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: And she was not pleased with our irreverence about this particular author.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, Elif Batuman said, well, I won't feel too bad if I were her.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'd just laugh my way to the bank,
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: because it is,
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: again,
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: someone who is selling a collection of short stories who'd been very successful.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, no less, which now so is she.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: Elif Batuman is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her own fiction.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so it is a fun little run in.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, Joyce Carol Oates did not appreciate that I was essentially calling out an author.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: Not that she hasn't done the exact same thing many times over her career.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: And if there's one thing we've learned about Joyce Carol Oates, she's always watching Trevor.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: I can't get her off my back.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: I know, seriously.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think she's known for kind of those occasional, she swoops in and lays waste.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, hey, that just means you've made it.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: She didn't start following me, though.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what the heck?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: What the heck?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: Got to keep trying, I guess.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: Keep stirring that pot.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody knows you're a rabble rouser.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she blocked and unfollowed and blocked.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, just kidding.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think she swooped in because Elif was the one that somehow got on her radar that we were talking about.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: who did follow me and who I regret just not post there anymore.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I do either, but yeah, no, I know that is a bummer.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well,
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: I do have some more kind of like brief touches on,
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: on TBRs and stuff,
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: but if you don't mind that,
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: maybe I'll dive into my last one.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_02: from the previous episode that we didn't get to.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then I'll tee up my own.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, perfect.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: So this one is quite a departure in many ways from both what we've been talking
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: about with horror and spooky and all that stuff,
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: but also generally like our penchant towards like darker literature.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: This one is kind of the opposite of that in many ways.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's called The Book of Delights by Ross Gay.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is a book,
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember if you've read this,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: but if not,
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's one that you'd really like.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: we've talked about how we're both very happy content people in our lives,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: but we are often drawn to kind of
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: melancholy and dark literature.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: But this one, like I said, is quite an exception to that.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: So he wrote this book,
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: actually he wrote quite a few essays as well as some other ones that didn't make it
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: into this book in the final draft over the period of one year.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess he kind of set these rules for himself.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: So he had to write them quickly and he had to write them by hand.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the goal was focusing on finding the delight in every day of his life.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: So as a result of these rules that he set up for himself,
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: writing one a day by hand kind of quickly,
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: they do take on kind of a stream of consciousness or fragmented quality at times,
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: which I really like.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: But I'll also admit if somebody described this book to me based on trying to find
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: delight in everyday life and all that stuff,
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: like I would probably roll my eyes a little bit and be a little skeptical because I
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: think it could be kind of twee or modeling if it was done the wrong way.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: But Gay doesn't fall for that, despite this idea and kind of this goal he set up for himself.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: It does address some pretty heavy topics, you know, racism and mourning and things like that.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I just thought I'd read a couple of quick excerpts just to give people an idea
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: of what he's doing here.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: So in one,
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: he says,
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: I love,
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: I delight in unequivocally pleasant public physical interactions with strangers.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I like that he's talking about how
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: Even in his daily interactions,
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: he really enjoys public physical interactions,
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: but he acknowledges that that is very problematic for other people or viewed
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: through different lenses.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: So that's just an example of,
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: even though it could be light and fluffy,
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_02: he's also delving into some bigger issues.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's another essay about how everyone has experienced sorrow at different times in their lives.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: And he writes, is sorrow the true wild?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: And if it is, and if we join them, you're wild to mine.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: What's that?
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: For joining too is a kind of annihilation.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: What if we joined our sorrows, I'm saying?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm saying, what if that is joy?
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I just think,
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: that is another good example of it's almost there's some almost poetry to it at
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: times that is pretty beautiful.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: But like, I do really like the premise of finding delight in small things.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've talked about that with Robert McFarlane,
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: the idea of finding nature in your own backyard,
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: that kind of idea.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I like that he focuses on that.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: He writes at one point.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: essays occasioned a kind of delight radar,
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle,
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: something that implies that the more you study delight,
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_02: the more delight there is to study.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like reading this book has a similar effect to me.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_02: It just kind of retrained my brain to think about
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: The idea of even if you're having a bad day or the week you're not looking forward
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: to just looking for some glimmers of hope.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll read one more longish part from this just to give people an idea.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because this is one of my favorite parts.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: It says,
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: this morning I was walking through Manhattan,
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_02: head down,
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: checking directions when I looked up to see a fruit truck selling lychee,
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: two pounds for five bucks.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I had 10 bucks in my pocket.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: Then,
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: while buying my bus ticket for later that evening,
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: I witnessed the trans bridge teller's face soften after she had endured a couple
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: unusually rude interactions in front of me as I kept eye contact and thanked her.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: She called me honey first, delight, baby second, delight, and almost smiled before I turned away.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: On my way to the Flatiron building,
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: there was an aisle of kusa dogwood,
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: looking parched but still prickly knobs of fruit nestled beneath the leaves.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: A cup of coffee from a well-shaped cup.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: a fly,
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: its wings hauling all the light in the room landing on the porcelain handle,
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: as if to say,
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_02: notice the precise flare of this handle,
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: as though designed for the romance between the thumb and index finger that holding
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: a cup can be,
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: or the peanut butter salty enough,
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: or the light blue bike the man pushed through the lobby,
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: or the top knot of the barista,
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: or the sweet glance of the man in his stylish short pants,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: well-lotioned ankles gleaming beneath,
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: walking two little dogs,
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: or the woman stepping in and out of her shoe, her foot curling up and stretching out and curling up.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: So again, they're short and one written each day.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: I know a lot of people who've read this have read one per day just to kind of
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: remind themselves,
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: almost like a daily journal.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: And again,
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: like I said,
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: in the wrong hands,
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think this could have been for me kind of a nightmare because there's stuff like
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: this that has been done that I'm just like,
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: ugh.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: But I think for him, he manages to pull off very well.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I will add also that he has a follow-up collection called The Book of More Delights.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: So if people do like this one,
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_02: that would be one to follow up on,
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: which I'll admit I haven't read yet,
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: but he's one that won me over.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: I was pretty skeptical.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: I actually saw him speak and talk about this and that's kind of what started to win
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: me over a little bit because I could kind of see his
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's more going on here than might at first meet the eye.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the last one from last time that I wanted to touch on.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, I like that a lot.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've not read it either, so I appreciate that.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see if you've read the one I'm going to bring up for that.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: John Jeremiah Sullivan, name ring a bell?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: Name rings a bell for sure, but I have not read it.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: So so he came out with a collection of essays.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, it's been let's see when it was 2011 called Pulphead.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: That was pretty, pretty big, you know, a big release.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was a New York Times notable book.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was in the Times top 10 nonfiction books of the of the year.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: which I was surprised about at the time.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm, I'm not as surprised.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I guess at the time I thought, Oh, they're putting a book of essays on here.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think they do that more often than I,
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: than I realized,
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: but maybe more,
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was surprised because I had read,
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: the,
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: maybe the main essay from that book,
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: Lytle that,
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: it was published in the Paris review,
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: a year or two before the book came out.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's such a fantastic essay.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I thought before I introduced the essay, I would talk a little bit about Pulphead.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is a book of essays on a variety of subjects,
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: but it is about American culture and pop culture to an extent as well.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's an essay on Axl Rose, on Michael Jackson.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: I really like Upon This Rock.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: which is the first essay in it that's about a Christian rock festival.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he puts it at the very first, this is how that begins.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is how the book begins, Paul.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: It is wrong to boast, but in the beginning, my plan was perfect.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's how he starts that essay.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of fun.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: It ends with that first paragraph ends with,
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: Later that night,
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: I might sneak some hooch in my rental car and invite myself to lie with a prayer
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: group by their fire for the fellowship of it.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: Fly home.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: Stir in statistics.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: Paycheck.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: I guess that's the perfect plan.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, there is his essay.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I really like them.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're well written.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're fun.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: to read, and they're often really insightful.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: Mr. Lytle, though, is a relatively long one about his time as an apprentice.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: I guess he says it here at the start.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: He says,
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: when I was 20 years old,
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: I became a kind of apprentice to a man named Andrew Lytle,
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: whom pretty much no one apart from his negligibly less ancient sister,
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: Polly,
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: had addressed except as Mr.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: Lytle in at least a decade.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: I remember just starting this and thinking it's quite long and thinking,
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: I pick up the parish review for many reasons,
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: the interviews,
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: the fiction.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'll start this essay, which I wasn't very good at reading essays.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I just,
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: kept on reading,
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: kept on going,
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: kept on going as I learned about his interactions and his changing perspectives and his,
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: relationships.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: with this Mr. Lytle.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: Again, very well written, very interesting.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I would put that as my,
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: the essay,
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: this was the essay collection,
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: but the essay in particular that I was going to,
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: to end that last episode with,
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: because it's,
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: it's fun.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: And, and, and it made me look, you know, what, what has John Jeremiah Sullivan been up to?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was just doing.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's, he is still, still writing.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: But this was the, you know, he hasn't published another book since 2011's Pulphead.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: But there, there, there might be another collection on its way.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: Cause there are plenty of, of essays that he's been publishing all over the place.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he did publish a novella with The New Yorker.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was an online novella called Mother Nut back in 2019, which I printed out, Paul.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: I got that far.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I haven't read it yet.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now I don't know where it is printed out.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll have to pick that up again.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because I really thought that this was a really good essay collection of someone
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: who I wanted to kind of see how they interacted with the world.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's another fun thing about essays is they can, they can be personal.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: They, they can, I mean, they, they clearly are.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times the essayist is putting themselves into the,
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: the work because they're exploring an aspect of themselves as they're,
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: as they're doing this and,
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: and more explicitly,
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: maybe than,
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: than many others.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, clearly there are just essays.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I brought up essays last time, um,
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: that maybe don't do this as explicitly,
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: but certainly John Jeremiah Sullivan is one who's like,
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: here's me going through this experience with these people or thinking about,
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: this is me thinking about this American culture,
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: not me necessarily saying how everyone should think about it.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now that's really good.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you mentioned him because I do remember that
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_02: buzz around that book and i've it's one that i always wanted to read and just if
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: you hadn't mentioned it it might have slipped beneath the waves for me so i'm gonna
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_02: bring that one back up and try to track it down and what you were just saying i
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_02: mean without having read him i'm not going to make any comparisons but the idea of
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: pop culture and its impact on you and bringing yourself into it does remind me of
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_02: some of those essays about by zadie smith that i was talking about last time and in
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: particular you know that joni mitchell one where she is talking about joni mitchell
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_02: but also her own personal
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_02: journey towards first reactions towards things and then kind of you know opening up
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_02: to them and being willing to kind of reconsider things so um i wasn't going to
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: mention him but i do notice looking at john jeremiah sullivan's works that several
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: different times he's written essays about david foster wallace who when you were
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: talking about somebody experiencing something and bringing themselves into it you
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_02: know he was such a master at doing that and um
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_02: I have not yet read much of his fiction and infinite jest.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: I keep circling.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've mentioned it before, but he's a wonderful essayist.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, consider the lobster in particular, that collection.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: And he does exactly what you just described.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: he'll take some premise,
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_02: either as an assignment from a magazine or just some wild hair that he gets and
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_02: he'll go do it.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then write often hilariously, but also very intelligently about the result of that.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: So he's another one that, um,
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: Just looking at the works of John Jeremiah Sullivan, it brought to mind to me.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in some ways, contemporaries and probably would be difficult to separate them.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had a similar thought and do really like David Foster Wallace's essays very much so.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was definitely a consideration to bring up on here.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, any others, any other honorable mentions or TBRs that you want to bring up?
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: A little of both.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just do one more that is kind of falls in the category of TBR,
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: but also a reread because it's one that I,
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: again,
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: read a while ago.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just like, man, I wish I remembered more about this one.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_02: I remember really liking it.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a collection by Melissa Pritchard called A Solemn Pleasure to Imagine, Witness and Write.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_02: And since I don't remember tons of details, I'll read a quick excerpt from it in a second.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_02: But the blurb is, we'll give people a little bit of an idea too.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: It says, in an essay entitled Spirit and Vision, Melissa Pritchard poses the question, why write?
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_02: Her answer reverberates throughout A Solemn Pleasure,
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_02: presenting an undeniable case for both the power of language and the nurturing
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_02: constancy of the writing life.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: Whether describing the deeply interior imaginative life required to write fiction,
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_02: searching for the lost legacy of American literature as embodied by Walt Whitman,
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: being embedded with a young female GI in Afghanistan,
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: traveling with Ethiopian tribes or revealing the heart-rending story of her
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: informally adopted son William,
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_02: a former Sudanese child slave,
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_02: this is nonfiction,
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: vividly engaged with the world.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: so you know that should give you a good idea of it it's wide-ranging but a lot of
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: it is about interiority and writing and and reading which obviously is one of my
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: go-tos but this little excerpt i'm going to read here is kind of about it's part of
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_02: a bigger theme obviously but it's talking about she's walking through a graveyard
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_02: and just looking at the gravestones and things like that so it says
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_02: What is it that draws us to linger over half-ruined inscriptions,
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_02: puzzling out dates,
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_02: to the romance of old cemeteries,
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: stones sunk,
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_02: overtipped,
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_02: inscriptions blurred to unreadability,
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: moss,
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: scabs of lichen and rotting leaves overtaking the imperturbability of marble,
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_02: the endurability of granite?
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_02: One gravestone,
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_02: fallen to the ground,
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_02: is so covered over by an inch or more of grass and buttercup,
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_02: a thick green hide,
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: it could be mown.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_02: near it an angel of marble once celestially white soaring upward now gray and black
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_02: tipping sideways and hidden beneath an overgrowth of hawthorn a cadbury biscuit
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_02: wrapper obscenely prosaic by its base
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_02: all this is homily in stone all this what we are coming to ourselves those of us
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_02: who stroll with solemn pleasure among the dead finding poetry in the biblical or
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_02: sentimental or stark inscriptions on the stones yet glad too to end our reverie
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: close the iron gate and walk the gravelled hill back up to the chapel or inn or
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_02: tea-shop
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: Glad to turn our thoughts from a sweet,
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: melancholic ramble to our appetites,
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: our calendars,
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: our health,
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_02: our families and friends,
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: the petrol level in the car,
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_02: the need for a drink,
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_02: or to take a child or ourselves to the bathroom.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_02: We need to pee or to kiss and hold hands or to help grandmother into the car,
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: for we are,
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: with thrilling vengeance,
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_02: alive.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: So again,
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_02: I like to find like just a little bit of one of these bigger essays,
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_02: but I just,
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_03: man,
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_02: that's so good.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think,
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_02: like I said,
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: reading through that and other little bits,
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: it was like,
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: man,
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: I need to go back and revisit this because I don't want the rest of it.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: So that's one that I, as far as I know, isn't very well known.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember how it came across my radar,
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_02: but it's always kind of nice to throw a few out there that maybe people haven't
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_02: heard of.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I would definitely recommend people, you know, checking out that one.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_02: A solemn pleasure.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: I've not read that or I don't even know if I've heard about that.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think a fun place to stop would be another essay collection that I,
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm kind of with you on this.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is an essay collection that I have read bits of.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of a recommendation while also I've not read the whole things and I intend to
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_01: as part of a project that I've been working on for some time, read all of them.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's also on my TBR.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: But this is Virginia Woolf's The Common Reader from 1925.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought it might be fun to end with her very,
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: very,
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: very short introduction called The Common Reader.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: See, I want to know how this strikes you, Paul.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is a sentence in Dr.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: Johnson's Life of Gray which might well be written up in all those rooms,
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_01: too humble to be called libraries,
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: yet full of books,
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_01: where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private people.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the quote.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: I rejoice to concur with the common reader,
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: for by the common sense of readers,
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: uncorrupted by literary prejudices,
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: after all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning,
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: must be finally decided all claim to poetical honors.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's the end of the quote.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: It defines their qualities.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: It dignifies their aims.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_01: It bestows upon a pursuit which devours a great deal of time and is yet apt to
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: leave behind it nothing very substantial.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: the sanction of the great man's approval.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and the scholar.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: Above all,
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: he is guided by an instinct to create for himself,
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_01: out of whatever odds and ends he can come by,
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: some kind of whole nature.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: He never ceases,
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: as he reads,
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: to run up some rickety and ramshackle fabric which shall give him the temporary
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of affection,
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: laughter,
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: and argument.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hasty,
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: inaccurate,
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: and superficial,
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: snatching now this poem,
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: now that scrap of old furniture,
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: without caring where he finds it,
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: or of what nature it may be,
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: so long as it serves his purpose and rounds his structure,
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: his deficiencies as a critic are too obvious to be pointed out.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: But if he has,
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: as Dr.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: Johnson maintained,
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: some say in the final distribution of poetical honors,
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: then perhaps it may be worthwhile to write down a few of the ideas and opinions which,
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: insignificant in themselves...
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: yet contribute to so mighty a result.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's so good.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering where I land on that.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I have studied, you know, literature.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_01: I got a master's degree and my focus was modern British literature.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Have I been tainted by the dogmatism of learning or am I the common reader who, you know,
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where I'm at on this spectrum,
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: but I like to align myself with the common reader and say that,
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of what I have to say means nothing,
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_01: but it does contribute to so mighty a result.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just the pursuit of reading and of reading for oneself, I think is wonderful.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I love this introduction to her.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: her book of essays.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she herself, such a common reader.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, exactly.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Geez.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_02: No,
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_02: I was going to say there's entire sections of that that I think could be the
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_02: tagline for our podcast,
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_02: actually.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_02: I like it.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, I love that too.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_02: I feel the same way.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_02: I studied literature,
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_02: not,
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't end up getting an advanced degree,
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_02: but that,
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_02: as we've talked about,
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_02: helped fuel my already existent love and kind of
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_02: It is a tricky or an interesting thing because I do think I absolutely identify
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_02: with the common reader where most of it is just the passion and the joy and the
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_02: magpie quality of what was described there of just picking up this poem,
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_02: this piece over here,
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_02: and just kind of whatever you need at the moment.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_02: But I do love that there is more to it.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to dig in more deeply...
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't love the word craft either,
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_02: but I do love to read books by authors and translators who are talking about those
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_02: aspects at times.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Other times I'd like to just turn off that part of my brain and kind of dive into a good story.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I love that.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: like you said,
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: there's a wide spectrum available both out there,
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_02: but also I would argue just within each reader,
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_02: there are times where,
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_02: at least for me,
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_02: all of it is appealing,
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_02: you know?
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe we should be the mooks and the gripes or the common reader podcast.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Take our inspiration from her.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_01: But this whole book of essays,
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: again,
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't read all of them,
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_01: but I have read several of them because there's an essay on Jane Austen.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's an essay on George Eliot.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's an essay on
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_01: the Brontes famous ones.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_01: I read them as part of,
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: classes dedicated to,
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: to those other works,
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_01: because what she has to say,
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: you might not agree with it,
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: but it is influential and insightful.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you,
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: it's,
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: it pays to know what she's saying and to,
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: to develop your own articulation of your response to it.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I, I think she, and she's always just so,
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: weirdly clear even though it's it's there there's so much that she's saying and and
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_01: she she is she is rather labyrinthine sometimes in her long sentences and yet in
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: the end i'm like i couldn't change anything about that to make what she's saying
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: more clear um i i love i love reading her you know her work so she's i need to get
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_02: back to it i was gonna ask like yeah we know you'll have to give us an update in
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_02: the future about where where that project stands but um
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Not that we're checking in on you, just out of curiosity.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_01: No,
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_01: it got waylaid just slightly because of my delve into War and Peace and the
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Brothers Karamazov at the same time last year as I was reading The Voyage Out.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: That seems fair.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good excuse.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Which I did finish, but then I said I need to put her down and finish these.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then I, even before I finished War and Peace, started the George Eliot series.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_01: um read along we are just about done with felix holt and then we'll take a little
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_01: break and start middle march at the beginning of next year everyone's invited i
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_02: think i'm going to join you for middle march well and then you know you have that
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_02: guy trollop who wrote a couple things that you've been reading through so who's
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_02: this yeah yeah exactly no you need to go on trevor you're not really doing anything
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_01: the the the group is already like introducing themselves on the
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: for middle mark,
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_01: you don't have to join yet,
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_01: or,
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_01: you can join the day we read it or at the end,
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_01: but you can also join right.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'll send you the link so that you can decide.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And, and, uh, if you want to jump in there and introduce yourself, um,
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: it should be fun.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And anybody,
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I hit me up if you want,
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: if you're interested and I'll figure out how to get you the information.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_01: So very cool.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, as always, this conversation has inspired me to go out and read every book ever written.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I want to do right now.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've got to go to some meetings and some, some various things this morning.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_01: maybe you have a couple of pages on your phone that you can kind of sneak a quick
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_02: read under the table if you need to.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, um, I, I do a couple of quick report packs cause I feel bad.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_01: I sometimes say I'll report back the God of endings.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I, I mentioned that last time.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Great Halloween book.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_01: spooky, but literary, just really, really good.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I highly, highly recommend it.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm also, uh, about a third of the way through Rodrigo Fraison's, uh, Melville.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_01: That is, it is weird.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, um, I don't know.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's something else, but I would recommend it too.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's about, um,
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Herman Melville's father so far.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's Melville writing it in these short segments with tons of footnotes.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: that are clearly, you know, it's not Melville.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is Frisson all over the place, you know, his playfulness and all that.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: But even that in and of itself is quite playful.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know about Melville's dad and about his death.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how the first part plays out is what happened there.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And when Melville was around 12, I think is how old he was when his father died.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I'll just leave it, leave it there as a, as a bit of a tease.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you mentioned that.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Cause I am going into the bookstore later today to work and I have a copy there waiting Melville.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I'm excited about that one for sure.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_02: And doing a quick check-in, let me just say, I'm still making my way through, um, Ms.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_02: McIntosh, my darling and absolutely loving it.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_02: But, um, we, our friends, Lori and
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Anthony are still continuing their very cool literary discussion.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_02: And they've had another person jump in.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Is, is joining the fray, which is Tara Cheeseman, which is really cool.
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_02: And just a quick shout out.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Lori was on a podcast with Chad post his,
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_02: his 3% podcast talking about miss McIntosh,
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_02: my darling,
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_02: which I've been saving that.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Cause I'm so looking forward to that conversation.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'll admit I haven't listened to it.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: I want to, I'm the same boat for the perfect time, but,
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Our friend Mel on Twitter,
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_02: she and I were in a conversation the other day,
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_02: and she actually finished Miss Macintosh,
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_02: My Darling,
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: recently,
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: which I know there are people out there who have finished it,
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_02: but I'm still just plugging away,
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_02: loving every second of it.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_02: But I think she started reading it, she said, in May and finished it.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, geez, that's about when I started.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm behind.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm like 300 pages in, which again, I'm loving it.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in no hurry to finish,
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_02: but I just wanted to give a shout out to her and all the other people out there who
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_02: either quietly or maybe they've talked about it,
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_02: have finished that book because it's just,
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_02: that's quite an achievement.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_01: You do need to finish it soon though,
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Paul,
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_01: like really soon because Dalky is releasing Angel in the Forest.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: In just a couple of weeks.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've had the thought.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's Marguerite Young, an earlier novel by Marguerite Young, for those who don't know.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, you can't start it until you're done with Miss Macintosh, my darling.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And yet you need to start it when it comes out.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's okay.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_02: in that case,
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not reading anything else and I'm not going to be eating or working or not working.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Chad did write a nice post about that one too, that it sounds very intriguing.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it does.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_02: No, it does sound really good.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's concerningly intriguing.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, come on, come on.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Cause like, as he put it, it's a brief, what, like 420 pages.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_02: I know,
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_02: as we sit here at the end of October,
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_02: there's a part of me that's like,
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Miss Macintosh,
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_02: whenever I finish,
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_02: it is guaranteed to be on my end of the year list for that year.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_02: Is there any chance it would be on this year's end of the year list?
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_02: But I will leave that as a small possibility that it could.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_02: But unfortunately, that might be a 2025, even if I finish it early in the year.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_02: Whenever I finish it, based on even 300 pages, I feel confident in saying it'll be on my list.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I just picked up my, it sits on my desk at home, you know, my big one.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I can't haul this thing around.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_01: But fortunately,
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_01: the way we got it,
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_01: we were able to also get electronic versions in various formats,
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_01: PDF or Kobo,
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Kindle,
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_01: whatever you use is.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have been reading it on those and then I'll come and highlight the parts.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of my favorite things is to,
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_01: put things aside, sit down at this desk and pull out the big book and do the physical marking in it.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoy that review.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_02: I've been hauling the big one around only between the backyard and like within my house.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm reading.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a lot.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_02: Even that I don't have to go to the gym ever again,
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_02: but,
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_02: um,
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_02: I will say when,
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_02: when we went to Portland last week,
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_02: um,
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_02: I did not take it with me in my suitcase,
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_02: but yes,
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_02: exactly what you said,
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_02: that the digital version that we received when we bought the physical or when you
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_02: bought it for me,
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_02: thank you,
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_02: came in very handy because I could read it on the plane or at the hotel.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I could kind of keep going at my snail's pace and just kind of soaking in.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's such a beautiful book.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_01: It is remarkable.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be a top 10 book when I finish it too.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Probably, maybe not just of that year, but it's definitely got the ability to be of all time.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_01: I am with you, for sure.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, lots of fun.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Paul, you have a great day working.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_01: You got dressed for the occasion.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're wearing?
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Is that your work uniform?
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Swan's Way, Marcel Proust t-shirt.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we've probably mentioned there's that...
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to look it up real fast to make sure I say it correctly.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_01: I myself, just while you're looking it up, I'm wearing my Criterion t-shirt, Criterion collection.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_02: We not only talk the talk, we walk the walk.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_02: For anybody who doesn't know about this, it's, I don't know if I'm saying it right.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Obliterature tees, O-B literature tees, t-shirt.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_02: So look it up on Instagram or online and
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_02: man they put out some really cool shirts and yeah what Trevor was alluding to is
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wearing the Swan's Way shirt that they have the Proust shirt and my wife it's
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_01: the Penguin Deluxe Classics cover of like this is it a chandelier I can't remember
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I can't see it right now yeah I think so or
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_01: flower yeah very ornate and who knows what that is it's swan's way i guess it's
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_02: swan's way that's that's a dangerous dangerous website um my wife got me this one
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_02: and she got me another borges shirt fictiones which is the cover which i'm still
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_02: waiting for that one but i would just recommend people go check out that website
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_02: because there's all kinds of cool stuff fun yeah
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let me know how sales go today.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_01: I will.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'll send you.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_02: I always send Trevor my exciting small press or translate whenever I sell something.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor, guess what?
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Guess what?
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'll keep it going.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, give us a pitch, Paul.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_01: The Peregrine.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_01: A customer comes in.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_01: A customer comes in.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know they want the Peregrine.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_01: How do you sell it to them?
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because we have listeners who have not read
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_01: J.A.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Baker's The Peregrine what do you say I always say it's some of the most beautiful
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_02: nature writing I've ever come across and I talk about how it's a blend of beauty
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_02: but also the violence of nature talking about the obsession of this man who comes
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_02: across these this pair of peregrines in the UK and just you know takes all of his
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_02: own problems and puts them into this pair and just becomes obsessed but in a
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_02: beautiful beautiful beautiful way
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_01: The madness.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_01: I would lean...
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_01: it's fun to see the different ways that we approach the book,
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_01: but I would talk about the madness as he drifts further and further away from humanity,
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_01: which he hates,
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: and more into a desire to be...
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_01: part of the Peregrine world and isolated and the nature, the harsh winter, it's like ideal to him.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's punishing, but beautiful.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_01: See, that's good.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_02: I should have you come with me.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it just depends on who we're talking to.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think I would have to be like, that person looks a little bit crazy.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's sell it this way.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now I always preface any of my descriptions with these of just like a quick
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_02: conversation because there's a couple of ways that you can sell some of these books
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_02: to people and yeah,
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_02: lean into the beauty or lean into the madness.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's both in that book.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks everybody.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was very nice to,
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_01: to talk today and we hope you're having a beautiful fall.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll be back here in a couple of weeks.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks everybody.
• 1:23:52
  Bye.
• 1:23:52
  Bye.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to donate to the show,
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_01: anything and everything,
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_01: even a dollar a month helps and is deeply appreciated.
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can become a Patreon at patreon.com slash mooks.
• 1:24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time.