Latest / The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast / Episode 99: Books We Think About All the Time

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Episode 99: Books We Think About All the Time · The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast

0:12
SPEAKER_00: This is the Mooks and the Gripes podcast.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: This is Trevor.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Magically delicious.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Paul.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Paul, how are you doing?
0:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't... That was just on my mind.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: It's breakfast time.
0:26
SPEAKER_02: I might just skip over that.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: I don't even know where to go with that one.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, no, I'm doing well.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: I was thinking about it this morning.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm just very glad January is over.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: Happy to be in a new month.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:37
SPEAKER_02: I think all of us, most of us are... You know, January is never...
0:41
SPEAKER_02: the easiest month to get to, I would say.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, this month there was just other stuff going on.
0:47
So anyway,
0:47
yeah,
0:48
I'm excited to move on and,
0:49
you know,
0:51
see how February treats everyone.
0:52
So I do want a really little bit of a life update for this
0:56
because a few years ago,
0:58
SPEAKER_00: you know,
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Paul and I started this in 2021.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: And I hated January.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: I still don't love January for, for itself.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't,
1:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm not that kind of person,
1:08
SPEAKER_00: but it was,
1:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I kind of thought,
1:11
SPEAKER_00: man,
1:11
SPEAKER_00: do I have seasonal affective disorder?
1:13
SPEAKER_00: I just don't like these.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: I would dread them.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: And then living through, you know, the winter months was, was just awful.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of our conversations about reading and about kind of,
1:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
1:28
SPEAKER_00: finding the joy in the
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Have helped.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: I,
1:32
SPEAKER_00: again,
1:33
SPEAKER_00: didn't love February,
1:33
SPEAKER_00: but I've got to be honest,
1:35
SPEAKER_00: looking back on it wasn't too bad for myself.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of terrible things that happened.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: The news, I don't think it's going to improve in any month too soon.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:49
SPEAKER_00: just for me and trying to have some kind of inner peace for me,
1:52
SPEAKER_00: it's been very helpful.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: So I always appreciate these conversations.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: I echo that.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, absolutely.
1:59
SPEAKER_02: It's been so nice to,
2:00
SPEAKER_02: like you said,
2:00
SPEAKER_02: we've explored some of the,
2:02
there's the cozy reading in winter or just some different ways
2:05
that you can reach it,
2:06
SPEAKER_02: broach it that make a big difference.
2:08
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, no, I agree with you.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: We are so excited today.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Because we are being joined by Elisa Gabbard.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: Elisa, hello!
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Hello!
2:18
SPEAKER_01: Hello!
2:18
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: We've been looking forward to this episode.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Listeners may remember we talked about your book,
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Any Person is the Only Self,
2:29
SPEAKER_00: a collection of essays.
2:31
Last year we did a couple of episodes,
2:33
too,
2:34
because we couldn't fit it all into one on essays.
2:37
and your book was one of the inspirations for hunkering down
2:41
and doing that and
2:42
SPEAKER_00: enjoying the form.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the only thing that you've written.
2:46
Elisa,
2:47
do you mind introducing yourself to the extent that you want to
2:51
on this podcast?
2:54
SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: I think of myself as a poet, essayist, and critic.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: So I started my
3:03
my writing slash publishing career with a few poetry books um
3:08
they were on small
3:09
presses definitely a small press baby and um and yeah then i
3:15
feel like kind of
3:16
halfway through my my career so far i i just started publishing
3:20
a ton of essays and
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SPEAKER_01: It seems like that's what I've almost become more known for,
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SPEAKER_01: even though I started out as a poet.
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SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of people out there that love poets' essays.
3:35
They love the idea of poets,
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but they would prefer to read prose,
3:40
is how it seems to me.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, so I do still write both.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Right now I'm working on
3:50
SPEAKER_01: some poetry, but I'm also still writing essays.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: I just wrote an essay last weekend.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: That was my first in a little while.
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SPEAKER_01: Something I've been thinking about for like a year and a half,
4:01
SPEAKER_01: which is my favorite kind of essay to write.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's fun.
4:05
Yeah.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: So that's, that's me.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: You just made my morning because,
4:10
SPEAKER_02: you know,
4:11
SPEAKER_02: just hearing you're working on more essays,
4:12
SPEAKER_02: you know,
4:13
SPEAKER_02: my heart good.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm also a January hater.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: I just want to get my January thoughts.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: Very glad it's over.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: I had a good reading month, but everything else was bad.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, a quick question.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: When you do sit down to write one of these essays,
4:36
SPEAKER_00: do you,
4:38
SPEAKER_00: do you already,
4:39
SPEAKER_00: is it,
4:39
SPEAKER_00: is it a discovery process?
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You've been thinking about this one for a year and a half and
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it may be different.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: I get that,
4:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:45
SPEAKER_00: different every essay,
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SPEAKER_00: but I'm just curious,
4:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:48
SPEAKER_00: what would you say on this one?
4:49
SPEAKER_00: You've been thinking about it for a year and a half.
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Do you find that you discover so much more about it when you
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sit down to write it?
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SPEAKER_00: And does it go where you kind of,
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or have you got it formed in your head and you're just trying
4:58
to put it to words?
5:02
SPEAKER_01: I have a lot formed in my head.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: Ideally,
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if I'm not working under a very tight deadline when I have to
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just force myself to
5:09
SPEAKER_01: figure everything out while I'm writing,
5:12
SPEAKER_01: those are typically hard writing days.
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SPEAKER_01: But this one, it was like, I really had the structure in mind.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: I knew I wanted it to be a three-part structure.
5:21
I knew I wanted to have a little one-word title for each of
5:26
these three parts.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: I had a rough idea of how long I wanted them each to be and the kind of
5:33
pace of the insights or thinking so that it would feel like by
5:40
the time you get to
5:40
SPEAKER_01: the end,
5:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
5:41
like each part is contributing something to this kind of
5:44
greater sense of like,
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Oh,
5:46
SPEAKER_01: I've,
5:46
SPEAKER_01: I've learned something about this topic.
5:49
SPEAKER_01: So that is a lot to have figured out,
5:53
SPEAKER_01: I think,
5:53
SPEAKER_01: but the fun part is like actually writing the sentences.
5:58
And so it's like,
5:59
I may have a vague idea of the idea that I want to put down,
6:03
but
6:04
SPEAKER_01: Um,
6:04
but often just putting the words in the order and choosing the
6:08
punctuation and like
6:09
SPEAKER_01: this particular adjective or not,
6:11
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:11
SPEAKER_01: that part I think is really,
6:12
SPEAKER_01: really fun.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: And you discover a lot of,
6:18
SPEAKER_01: um,
6:19
SPEAKER_01: like resolution,
6:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:20
SPEAKER_01: like the idea becomes higher resolution in the writing of the sentence.
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SPEAKER_01: And I am never sure if it's like,
6:31
that age old thing of you're deciding what you think you're
6:34
finding out what you think,
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SPEAKER_01: or it's more like what I thought was already there,
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SPEAKER_01: but I understand it better when I put it into the right language.
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SPEAKER_01: Um,
6:46
SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
6:46
SPEAKER_01: again,
6:47
SPEAKER_01: it was just,
6:47
it was like one of those great writing days where I felt like I
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had figured out the
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SPEAKER_01: hard stuff and really just got to do the fun stuff.
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SPEAKER_01: And so when I have the luxury of procrastinating,
6:57
SPEAKER_01: just thinking about it for as long as possible,
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SPEAKER_01: it always pays off on the writing day,
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SPEAKER_01: I find.
7:05
That actually ties into one of the books I'll bring up in a
7:07
little bit,
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actually.
7:08
But I was just going to say what you just described as the
7:11
writing process.
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SPEAKER_02: When I read your essays,
7:13
I think I go through a similar process in some ways in that as
7:17
I start to read it,
7:17
SPEAKER_02: I think I start to get an idea of what it's about.
7:19
SPEAKER_02: But you always lead to such interesting places.
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SPEAKER_02: I think it's just fascinating.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: As an essay, you're so good at like
7:27
SPEAKER_02: Like what you just said,
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SPEAKER_02: describing things that I already have in my head,
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but you help kind of like filter them and elucidate a little
7:34
bit more on them.
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SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's really cool to hear about the process.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
7:40
And just for our listeners,
7:41
so you do,
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I think you have,
7:44
let's see,
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two essay collections.
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SPEAKER_00: The more recent one that we talked about, three.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Three.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, I appreciate that.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: So I know about the unreality of memory and the...
7:58
SPEAKER_00: any person is the only self.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I apologize.
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SPEAKER_00: What is the, the other one?
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SPEAKER_01: So just before that in 2018,
8:05
SPEAKER_01: um,
8:05
SPEAKER_01: I had a,
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SPEAKER_01: my first book of essays,
8:09
SPEAKER_01: it was called the word pretty.
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SPEAKER_01: Um, well it's still called the word pretty.
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SPEAKER_01: I haven't changed the name.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Um,
8:17
SPEAKER_01: so that my,
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SPEAKER_01: my kind of former poetry publisher,
8:20
SPEAKER_01: black ocean,
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SPEAKER_01: which is a great little small press.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: They make really beautiful books.
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SPEAKER_01: Um,
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SPEAKER_01: my editor just happened to tell me at the same time that I had finished a
8:30
SPEAKER_01: manuscript of essays that they wanted to try publishing,
8:34
SPEAKER_01: um,
8:35
SPEAKER_01: like a prose series.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: They were previously just a poetry press.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, that's fortunate timing.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: And it felt like a little bit of an experiment.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: And so,
8:45
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
8:45
SPEAKER_01: that was their first,
8:48
SPEAKER_01: um,
8:48
SPEAKER_01: their first book and they called it the undercurrent series,
8:51
SPEAKER_01: I think.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: Um,
8:53
Yeah,
8:54
and it's actually,
8:55
I think,
8:55
in a similar kind of mode as any person is the only self.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of essays about reading and writing,
9:03
but also personal stuff and kind of just random meditations on
9:08
things that I had
9:08
SPEAKER_01: been thinking about at the time.
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SPEAKER_01: Mostly kind of shorter essays.
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SPEAKER_01: You would like it.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: I know I would.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: I know I would.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to grab it.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: I see it now.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: I do see it now.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: My apologies.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's okay.
9:24
SPEAKER_02: It's been on my list for a long time.
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SPEAKER_02: I need to get to that one too.
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And then I've read one of your poetry collections,
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but I need to keep delving in.
9:30
SPEAKER_02: And then correct me if I'm wrong,
9:32
SPEAKER_02: but you're still writing the column for the New York Times as well,
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SPEAKER_02: the poetry column,
9:35
SPEAKER_02: right?
9:35
SPEAKER_01: I am.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one went up this month.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: That's just quarterly.
9:40
So I typically get to think about things for a few months
9:44
before I write them,
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which is nice.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: And then your always amazing end of year,
9:49
SPEAKER_02: what I read throughout the year collection,
9:51
SPEAKER_02: which is always so dangerous to my TBR.
9:55
SPEAKER_02: So much fun to read.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: That's one of my highlights of the year, so.
10:01
We'll put some links in the show notes to some of those and as
10:05
well as to your books.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And then anything with...
10:11
SPEAKER_00: I know that I'm talking about the essay collections,
10:14
but I would love listeners to also benefit from hearing more
10:17
about your poetry collections.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: We also did a poetry episode last year that was a lot of fun.
10:23
I think Paul and I both love poetry when we get a hold of it
10:28
and are able to...
10:30
SPEAKER_00: kind of grapple with it.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: But for whatever stupid reason, we don't do that often enough.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Am I speaking out of turn, Paul?
10:39
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: It's something that I always am drawn to and always,
10:43
SPEAKER_02: I think probably like a lot of people,
10:44
there's an intimidation factor and you don't think you're
10:48
worthy of reading it,
10:50
SPEAKER_02: but then you are always drawn back to it.
10:51
SPEAKER_02: So it's like this endless cycle,
10:52
SPEAKER_02: at least for me,
10:53
SPEAKER_02: of approaching,
10:54
SPEAKER_02: trying and loving it,
10:55
SPEAKER_02: but then backing away.
10:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:58
My last column actually opens with this quote from a Robert
11:02
Frost essay that I love
11:04
SPEAKER_01: where he says,
11:04
SPEAKER_01: the best way to read a poem is in the light of all the poems,
11:08
SPEAKER_01: all the other poems ever written.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: And he goes on to just basically say, you have to start somewhere.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: And so the first poem you read,
11:14
you're not going to get very much out of because you haven't
11:16
read any other poems.
11:18
But then you read B,
11:19
whatever the second poem you read is,
11:21
and A makes a little more sense.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: And then you read C, and A and B both make a little more sense.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: And then you eventually come back to A,
11:27
SPEAKER_01: and A makes more sense in light of D and E and F.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: And to me,
11:32
it's such an inviting way to think about poetry because I do
11:35
think it's like,
11:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:38
film or like graphic novels or anything other than just like
11:43
prose on a page,
11:45
SPEAKER_01: you kind of have to learn how the art form works through exposure.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: And there's not much of a better way.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
11:51
it's good to have somebody smart who can tell you things about
11:55
that art form,
11:56
SPEAKER_01: but like nothing works as well as exposure,
11:58
SPEAKER_01: just like more and more and more.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: And
12:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
12:02
SPEAKER_01: I just think,
12:03
SPEAKER_01: like,
12:03
the reason that people who read a lot of poetry understand
12:06
poetry more is just
12:07
SPEAKER_01: because they read a lot of poetry.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: That's all there is to it.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I hope you do.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: I hope you feel...
12:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm less intimidated and more excited and continue to read more.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: And I am going to be talking about some poetry today.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: I did notice Paul put for what you read in January, you did finish.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Is it the hurting kind by Ada Limon?
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did.
12:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:31
SPEAKER_02: She's amazing.
12:32
SPEAKER_02: You, you won me over to her by reading a few of her poems.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: I don't remember if it was during our poetry episode or anyway,
12:38
you read a couple of the one about the dandelion stuck in my
12:40
head and yeah.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: No, that was great.
12:43
I bought the collection that she did,
12:44
which I don't have it right in front of me.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: That was nature poems where she kind of edited and compiled it.
12:49
SPEAKER_02: So I bought that and have that on my list.
12:51
SPEAKER_02: And then I did that kind of aspirational 25 and 25 thing on social media.
12:56
Everybody was talking about in the big book of Jim Harrison's poetry,
13:00
like his complete works.
13:02
I put that on there because I've talked before about the essays
13:05
I've read or the
13:06
SPEAKER_02: poems I've read with him and Ted Kuzer in conversation.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: And they're some of my favorites.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: They're very accessible, a good place for people to start.
13:12
And I've always wanted to read more of Jim Harrison's poems
13:16
based on that.
13:16
SPEAKER_02: So I'm not saying I'll read the whole thing this year,
13:18
SPEAKER_02: but I definitely dig it in because it's a big,
13:22
SPEAKER_02: beautiful book.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: I think anthologies are the perfect way to kind of get a good survey,
13:30
SPEAKER_01: just dip in,
13:31
SPEAKER_01: find a few things that you like a little more than other things,
13:33
SPEAKER_01: and then follow those paths.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: So that's a good way to go.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: All right.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: We can keep exploring some of these topics or,
13:42
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:43
SPEAKER_00: we can meander like the best of them,
13:45
SPEAKER_00: I think.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: I think that's one of our skills.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's one of our superpowers, actually.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: But we'll jump into what have you been reading?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And Elisa,
13:53
SPEAKER_00: if you don't mind,
13:54
we'll start with you if you've got something in mind to talk
13:57
about for a second.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: So I...
14:02
I tend to think in terms of the three categories that I split
14:07
my year in list into.
14:08
So I'm kind of always reading one novel,
14:13
you know,
14:14
or a book of short stories.
14:15
But truthfully,
14:15
I read like 99 novels to every one book of short stories,
14:19
typically.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: Something in the nonfiction world.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: So that might be an essay collection,
14:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:26
SPEAKER_01: might be a memoir,
14:27
SPEAKER_01: might be history,
14:29
SPEAKER_01: pop science,
14:29
SPEAKER_01: who knows.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I'm always reading some poetry too.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: And so I did pull out like a few different books that I've been reading.
14:38
Um,
14:39
but I think that what I will talk about most,
14:43
well,
14:43
I'll just touch on.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: So that the first book that I read this year on January 1st holiday,
14:48
SPEAKER_01: of course,
14:49
SPEAKER_01: um,
14:50
SPEAKER_01: was 77 dream songs by John Berryman.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: which I've never read that full book like all in one day before.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm a slow reader and I,
15:01
SPEAKER_01: poetry books are,
15:02
SPEAKER_01: if I was going to read something all in one day,
15:04
SPEAKER_01: that's the easiest way to do it.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: But regardless, I had never done it before.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: I've always been a Berryman fan and it was just, it was great.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: It was like a perfect one day reading experience.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: You could really see how like,
15:18
would be certain topics that he became kind of obsessed with
15:22
and wrote a few poems
15:23
in a row about and so it gave me this insight i think that he
15:26
ordered that book in
15:27
the order that he wrote the poems which is also something that
15:31
like i've been
15:32
trying to do with my current poetry manuscript is just keep the
15:35
poems all in the
15:36
order that i wrote them and like see what happens and so that
15:39
was a very fortuitous
15:41
SPEAKER_01: discovery
15:45
SPEAKER_01: But what I want to talk about a little more,
15:47
SPEAKER_01: because I think maybe you two have read this or not,
15:50
SPEAKER_01: or we could at least talk about the author,
15:51
SPEAKER_01: is The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: This is what I just read.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I totally loved it.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: So good.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: I actually haven't read this one.
16:05
It's been on my list of...
16:07
I've read her Ripley novels and maybe one or two of her other ones.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And this one's always the one that I'm like,
16:14
SPEAKER_00: I know I need to read that,
16:15
SPEAKER_00: but maybe,
16:16
SPEAKER_00: maybe,
16:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:16
SPEAKER_00: sometimes it's not conscious or maybe sometimes it is.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I want to read it yet.
16:22
Cause it might be the last of her like big ones that I have in
16:26
front of me,
16:27
SPEAKER_00: but that's,
16:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:30
SPEAKER_00: that's silly.
16:30
It just means I'm just deferring indefinitely and probably
16:33
forever reading some of
16:35
SPEAKER_00: the books that I really want to read now.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: That's like a whole other podcast topic.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: Like the books that you like save from yourself for yourself.
16:45
I was doing that with a passage to India for a while,
16:48
but I did find it really last year.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: So the price of salt,
16:52
SPEAKER_01: I,
16:52
SPEAKER_01: I had seen the movie,
16:54
SPEAKER_01: which I normally hate reading books when I've seen the movie version of,
16:59
SPEAKER_01: because I can't stop picturing the actors, which that did happen.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: But the good thing was like, I didn't really remember the plot points.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: And I also have no idea if the movie is faithful to the novel.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: So I just let myself forget what I knew about it for the most part.
17:18
just go with the novel as a novel and um yeah it was like so
17:25
romantic it's it's so
17:26
interesting because you know she she wrote a lot of suspense
17:30
and in a way this
17:31
isn't a suspense novel but it sort of is like i'm curious what
17:35
you think about this
17:35
paul there's a real sense of like dread and like what's gonna
17:39
happen and um like
17:41
how bad are things gonna go all throughout while it's also this
17:45
very like romantic
17:47
SPEAKER_01: love story
17:48
SPEAKER_02: I agree.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:49
SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: No, you go ahead.
17:51
SPEAKER_02: I was just going to say,
17:52
SPEAKER_02: no,
17:52
I have the same thought with it is the underlying love story is
17:55
so well done,
17:56
but then it's almost like in some ways has some of the Ripley
18:00
book aspects of like,
18:01
SPEAKER_02: they're trying to get away with something in this case,
18:04
SPEAKER_02: it's not a crime,
18:05
SPEAKER_02: although society might view it as a crime,
18:06
SPEAKER_02: but like,
18:07
SPEAKER_02: you know,
18:08
SPEAKER_02: they're,
18:08
SPEAKER_02: like you said,
18:09
SPEAKER_02: it's almost like a,
18:10
SPEAKER_02: on the road,
18:10
SPEAKER_02: um,
18:11
SPEAKER_02: not a heist novel,
18:12
SPEAKER_02: but like a,
18:13
SPEAKER_02: they're,
18:14
SPEAKER_02: escaping from society in a way.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: It's like a slow chase.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:18
SPEAKER_02: It's so fascinating.
18:20
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I agree with you.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: And did you like the movie?
18:23
SPEAKER_02: Like I thought they did a nice job with it.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: I remember quite liking it.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: And I remember being, I don't know.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: There's a movie.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: This book has been out for 70 years.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: It's fine to spoil it.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: So the movie, I didn't know anything about it.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: Obviously hadn't read the book when I saw the movie.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: But I did remember being pleasantly shocked that it had a happy ending.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: But again, I didn't know if the movie was faithful to the novel.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: So I was really afraid that the book wouldn't have.
19:01
it was like as I approached the end I was like getting angry
19:05
and like so ready to
19:06
be mad at the book for like toying with my heart that way um
19:12
but it's it's just
19:13
crazy like and I again I feel bad spoiling this for you Trevor
19:17
like maybe plug your
19:18
ears but don't worry about it you literally don't know if it's
19:22
gonna have a happy
19:23
ending until the last sentence the last sentence it's like it's
19:27
teetering it's
19:29
SPEAKER_01: teetering and then like
19:32
I'm getting chills just thinking about it again because I got
19:35
chills reading it.
19:36
It was a rare experience of like,
19:39
oh my God,
19:39
I really couldn't tell what was going to happen.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: She writes suspense, I think, better than almost anyone I can think of.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: And like you said,
19:47
SPEAKER_02: it's like a slow burn over...
19:49
SPEAKER_02: I keep going back to Ripley,
19:50
but I think it has a lot of the same qualities where just for
19:53
the entire book,
19:54
SPEAKER_02: you're on the edge of your seat.
19:55
SPEAKER_02: It's amazing.
19:55
She's able to keep you right on that knife's edge for so long
20:00
and keep you interested.
20:01
SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't seem...
20:03
me at least it doesn't seem formulaic or like i don't know how
20:05
she does it so yeah
20:07
yeah it's incredible and i and after i read it um oh it's
20:11
snowing a little bit oh
20:12
nice yeah that's nice um so john gave me her her diaries and
20:21
notebooks um this big
20:22
hardcover edition i think i find it very interesting that it
20:26
distinguishes like on
20:27
SPEAKER_01: the cover
20:28
SPEAKER_01: She kept diaries and also notebooks at the same time,
20:31
SPEAKER_01: and they're both in there like mixed together,
20:33
SPEAKER_01: but she used them differently.
20:35
And I've had it on my shelf for a couple of years because I
20:39
love diaries and notebooks,
20:41
SPEAKER_01: which read my recent book,
20:43
SPEAKER_01: you know that there's a whole essay about that.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I hadn't read any of it.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: And after I finished this book,
20:49
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
20:49
SPEAKER_01: oh,
20:49
SPEAKER_01: I have to go read her diaries,
20:52
SPEAKER_01: like from the time when she was writing this.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: And it's so interesting.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: She, she had only written one other book.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: Do you, do you know this?
21:01
SPEAKER_01: Are you interested in this?
21:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: So her first novel was Strangers on a Train, which I've also read.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: It is amazing.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: I love that book.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: And it was like a big hit.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: And shortly after it was published,
21:16
SPEAKER_01: they sold the movie rights to Alfred Hitchcock,
21:19
SPEAKER_01: like pretty great first novel experience,
21:22
SPEAKER_01: right?
21:24
SPEAKER_01: But she had already started working on this second novel,
21:28
SPEAKER_01: which she kind of knew the contours of it.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: And her agent and her publisher and everyone were like,
21:34
SPEAKER_01: well,
21:34
you should definitely write another like suspense crime novel
21:38
because that's what
21:39
SPEAKER_01: people are expecting from you.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: And this is such a big hit.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: And she was like, well, I'm kind of doing something a little different.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: And her publisher didn't want it.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: And so she ended up publishing it under a pseudonym, different publisher.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: And it was never published under her own name until like 1990.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: Even though it sold millions of copies, it was also an instant hit.
22:07
And part of it was because it was so rare for a queer romance
22:12
to have a happy
22:13
SPEAKER_01: ending at the time.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: The characters always had to be punished.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: It was part of the kind of system.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: But I just found that so... God, nothing changes.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: Because I know so many writers who go through the same...
22:26
situations of like getting pigeonholed you know if you have one
22:29
successful book
22:30
publishers expect you to keep doing that same thing over and
22:34
over again um so yeah
22:36
i just i thought it was fascinating that it was like so much so
22:40
much the same yeah
22:43
or fans who you consider yourself a poet but they keep
22:45
clamoring for essays all the
22:47
SPEAKER_02: time yeah like you yeah i know exactly guilty i'm guilty yeah
22:56
SPEAKER_00: Paul also won't let me stray out of my lane.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Can't you all just do what I like all the time?
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: That's perfect.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Like I say, we love the meanderings and that's not even meandering.
23:14
Again,
23:15
one of the blurbs on your publisher's page is contagiously curious.
23:23
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: So it's all right, Paul, what about you?
23:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I continue to, I say plug away, but it's not plugging away.
23:32
It's truly enjoyable reading the three big books that I keep
23:35
talking about,
23:36
SPEAKER_02: you know,
23:36
SPEAKER_02: and part of what helped get me through January,
23:38
SPEAKER_02: like we were just talking about was
23:40
Still working my way through Miss Macintosh,
23:41
My Darling,
23:42
Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, Middlemarch.
23:46
SPEAKER_02: And I'm loving all of those.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: But me being me, I couldn't just stick with those.
23:50
SPEAKER_02: You know, that's not keeping me busy.
23:51
And I just wanted to scatter in a few smaller,
23:54
you know,
23:54
works in between.
23:55
SPEAKER_02: And so three books that I've touched on,
23:57
SPEAKER_02: I'll just real briefly touch on them,
23:59
SPEAKER_02: that they've all ended up kind of in conversation with each other.
24:01
SPEAKER_02: And I didn't plan it.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:03
SPEAKER_02: So Slow Productivity by Cal Newport is one of them.
24:07
SPEAKER_02: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Georges Barak.
24:10
And then A Month in Siena by Hisham Mattar,
24:14
which I actually- I just read that.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: I know, that's how I heard about it.
24:17
SPEAKER_02: I heard about it in your end of year list.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
24:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
24:21
SPEAKER_02: in different ways,
24:22
SPEAKER_02: they're all kind of about the idea of slowing down,
24:24
SPEAKER_02: paying attention,
24:27
SPEAKER_02: details and things like that.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: So
24:29
SPEAKER_02: slow productivity isn't the type of book I normally read really.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit businessy and self-helpy,
24:34
but what drew me to it was this idea of getting away from like
24:37
this faux busyness
24:39
SPEAKER_02: that we all get called into.
24:41
SPEAKER_02: And the fact that it mentions like Jane Austen and George McPhee and,
24:45
SPEAKER_02: or I'm sorry,
24:45
SPEAKER_02: John McPhee and people like that was my entry point for that.
24:49
But it reminded me,
24:49
that's the one Elisa when you were talking about how you were
24:52
sitting there.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes you think about a work for months or years
24:58
SPEAKER_02: that's a lot of what this is about.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: It's really well done.
25:00
And just talking about like how our society has moved us away
25:03
from creating truly
25:05
SPEAKER_02: great work,
25:05
which sometimes on the surface looks like you're not really
25:08
being productive,
25:08
SPEAKER_02: but if you look at the body of work or a lifetime,
25:11
SPEAKER_02: it is.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: So that one's really good.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I want to read that.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's really good.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: I would highly recommend that one.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: And then the Parekh book,
25:19
SPEAKER_02: is just this really short,
25:20
it's like 50 pages and it's literally him sitting on like three
25:23
different cafes
25:24
over the course of three days and just noticing things and just
25:28
writing them almost
25:28
SPEAKER_02: in a journal form with like an occasional bit of commentary,
25:33
SPEAKER_02: but mostly it's almost just lists.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: So it's really odd, but kind of fascinating.
25:39
Pigeons and buses and somebody walking by in a crazy hat or
25:42
something like that.
25:43
But the one I wanted to talk about was yes,
25:45
A Month in Ciena,
25:46
which I discovered through Elisa.
25:49
SPEAKER_02: just such a beautiful book about place and art and grief.
25:54
And the idea is basically it's a nonfiction book and I haven't
25:58
read his other book,
25:59
but apparently it explores his father was kidnapped and nobody
26:05
ever knows what came
26:06
SPEAKER_02: of that.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: And so this is taking place a couple of years later as he is
26:10
SPEAKER_02: finally getting a chance to go to Siena,
26:12
which is a place he's always wanted to go based on how
26:14
meaningful the art that was
26:16
SPEAKER_02: created there has become to him.
26:18
SPEAKER_02: And so it's just this book about him.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: He's with his wife for a couple of days,
26:21
SPEAKER_02: but then she leaves and he's just wandering through the city,
26:25
looking at all these pieces of art that have meant so much to
26:27
him and just kind of,
26:29
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:29
a lot of the books that I've read recently in the last few
26:32
years have been about
26:32
SPEAKER_02: this idea of just staring at a piece of art almost obsessively.
26:35
SPEAKER_02: And it has a lot of that in there.
26:36
SPEAKER_02: And so it's just beautiful.
26:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad that you helped me discover it.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: And I just want to read really quickly a couple of quotes from it.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: So as he's walking around Siena,
26:45
SPEAKER_02: he says,
26:46
Siena had already succeeded in making my eyes unaccustomed to
26:50
the horizon.
26:51
I suddenly felt as if I understood and could see from Siena's
26:54
point of view that
26:55
SPEAKER_02: infinity is a claustrophobic prospect.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: then it is perfectly appropriate,
26:59
SPEAKER_02: given the chaotic nature of life,
27:01
SPEAKER_02: to cordon off an area in which to interpret ourselves,
27:05
SPEAKER_02: where one can decide what is important,
27:07
SPEAKER_02: what is to be privileged,
27:08
SPEAKER_02: and what can be left out.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: And so there's it's full.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: I remember that page.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: It was like on the right hand side.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: I definitely marked up that page.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: I really love that passage, too.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he has so many.
27:22
And then there's another part I'm sure you remember where he is
27:25
wandering and kind
27:25
SPEAKER_02: of comes unexpectedly onto the cemetery.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: And it's a huge cemetery.
27:30
And he says,
27:30
I was looking down at battalions upon battalions of headstones.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: The scale was unfathomable.
27:36
it is one thing to consider the particular intimacy of a single
27:38
grave another to
27:40
glimpse death's endless appetite the deceased outnumber the
27:44
living the present is
27:45
the golden rim of a black cloth how outrageous it is to be
27:49
alive i thought it fills
27:50
me with such enthusiasm and dark pride for my race for how
27:54
brave and heroic we are
27:55
in the face of the undeniable evidence that life cannot be
27:58
maintained that
27:59
SPEAKER_02: regardless of what armor we choose all things must pass
28:04
And so just filled with passages like that that just kept
28:08
stopping me in my tracks.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: So I remember that too.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's really beautiful.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: It is.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:13
SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
28:15
SPEAKER_02: that's,
28:15
SPEAKER_02: I've been a little bit all over the place reading lots and lots of books,
28:18
SPEAKER_02: which that's Trevor's bad influence on me.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: Um,
28:21
SPEAKER_02: I used to be a very dedicated one book at a time kind of guy.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: Not anymore.
28:25
SPEAKER_02: No, but it's great.
28:25
SPEAKER_02: I love it.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: And I've been getting a lot out of that.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: And like I said,
28:28
SPEAKER_02: one of the great things is coincidences like this where I didn't plan it,
28:31
SPEAKER_02: but just these three books in different ways,
28:33
all connected and made January a lot more enjoyable and
28:37
interesting than it
28:38
SPEAKER_02: otherwise would have been.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: All right.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: How about you, Trevor?
28:42
SPEAKER_02: What have you been reading?
28:44
SPEAKER_00: So I'll bring up two.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm reading many of the same ones too.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Um,
28:49
Making progress,
28:50
daily reading does get you through even these big books eventually.
28:56
But one that I had never heard of,
28:59
but doing a little bit of research on it.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: It's apparently well known.
29:05
In 2016,
29:06
The Guardian put out a list of the 100 best nonfiction books
29:09
and it placed number 37.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: And it really is a book that I could see,
29:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:16
SPEAKER_00: some of our favorite publishers,
29:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:18
SPEAKER_00: NYRB Classics,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: if they got the rights,
29:21
SPEAKER_00: saying,
29:22
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
29:22
SPEAKER_00: we'd like to publish that one.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: And it is so interesting.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: It is M.F.K.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: You're nodding your head, Elisa.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: Is this something you're familiar with?
29:36
Well,
29:36
I haven't read it,
29:37
but I feel like I know a lot of people who really love that book.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: It is a wartime cookbook, broadly speaking.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: It's also nothing of the sort in many ways.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: It was first published in May of 1942.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: She wrote it after Pearl Harbor.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: She was American.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: wrote it after Pearl Harbor.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And the idea was to put together a,
30:04
SPEAKER_00: a way to get through some of this,
30:07
SPEAKER_00: some of,
30:08
SPEAKER_00: and it's,
30:08
SPEAKER_00: it's amusing.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: It's funny.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: But it is about the wolf at the door,
30:13
SPEAKER_00: meaning your hunger,
30:14
SPEAKER_00: your appetite,
30:15
SPEAKER_00: because there's going to be,
30:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
30:18
SPEAKER_00: tough times,
30:19
SPEAKER_00: tight times,
30:20
SPEAKER_00: financial times,
30:21
SPEAKER_00: and the appetite of the wolf as well,
30:24
SPEAKER_00: as well as,
30:26
I think the wolf can stand for many things that might be
30:28
creeping outside your
30:29
SPEAKER_00: front door,
30:30
SPEAKER_00: threatening to break in and take over.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: But it has been categorized as barely a cookbook.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Part experimental cookbook, part escape reading.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: and part war protest.
30:48
And so it's a 1942 book,
30:50
but the edition that I have is a revision that she made in 1951
30:54
or 54.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember which one of those,
30:59
SPEAKER_00: the numbers looking a little weird in my mind,
31:02
SPEAKER_00: where in brackets,
31:03
she will comment on the changes or the things that haven't
31:08
changed since living in
31:09
SPEAKER_00: that wartime.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting to have that perspective because
31:14
SPEAKER_00: you'll have her talking about economy and this war thing.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: And then,
31:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:17
SPEAKER_00: her from over a decade later or so saying,
31:23
that is so weird to get back into that headspace now that we
31:26
have more times of plenty.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: And almost talking about how do we maintain some of the,
31:33
SPEAKER_00: maybe the good habits that we learn,
31:35
SPEAKER_00: some of the economy.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, a lot of the war stuff is
31:40
SPEAKER_00: how do you save heat?
31:42
SPEAKER_00: You know,
31:43
SPEAKER_00: looking at heat as not just this,
31:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:45
SPEAKER_00: turn on the stove and,
31:46
SPEAKER_00: oh,
31:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:46
SPEAKER_00: I might have to pay for it,
31:48
SPEAKER_00: but that thing will run forever if I can pay for it.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: But like, we only have one log.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: How do we cook a meal with one log?
31:57
Or even if you do have gas,
31:59
how do we cook it for 10 cents,
32:01
you know,
32:02
versus 20?
32:04
SPEAKER_00: And it's so fun and interesting and relatively short.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: And I just,
32:11
SPEAKER_00: one of the quotes she has,
32:12
SPEAKER_00: kind of looking at how she's always commenting on the times as well,
32:17
SPEAKER_00: it says,
32:17
perhaps this war will make it simpler for us to go back to some
32:21
of the old ways we
32:21
SPEAKER_00: knew before we came over to this land and made the big money.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps even we will remember how to make good bread again.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: But it is a little bit strange to read a book that,
32:34
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: again,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: is looking at a unique time and
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Then to think of our own unique time and going back through it,
32:42
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:42
SPEAKER_00: at least your,
32:43
SPEAKER_00: your recent essay collection,
32:44
SPEAKER_00: there's a lot of stuff in there about COVID.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: And while I remember it well,
32:49
it's also a little bit different than we are right now and
32:51
stepping into it.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: it sure is.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: It's almost shocking as an alternate, um, dimension almost in many ways.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: And I,
33:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:01
SPEAKER_00: with her having the,
33:02
SPEAKER_00: the edits and such in brackets,
33:04
SPEAKER_00: um,
33:05
SPEAKER_00: some of them glib and funny and some of them more serious.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: It's just really, really cool to, to read.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm, I'm loving it.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how I would do it.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: It's, it's a, here's the other part of it.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: It's a library, um, book club book for February.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: My wife chooses those and was a little bit like,
33:22
SPEAKER_00: this just has such a unique title and people aren't,
33:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:25
SPEAKER_00: I can't get a handle on what this even is.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: It's a cookbook,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: but not,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: there are recipes in it,
33:30
SPEAKER_00: but it's like an essay form,
33:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:33
SPEAKER_00: all these different things.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: And so we're reading it and I have just been delighted by it,
33:40
SPEAKER_00: but it'll check off also my library,
33:42
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: card for a book with a culinary element.
33:47
Oh, nice.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: So though it could also check off like,
33:50
SPEAKER_00: um,
33:50
SPEAKER_00: a survival,
33:51
SPEAKER_00: a book about survival,
33:52
SPEAKER_00: but I'm going to go with the culinary elements.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if I'll read any more of those this year.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: Unless you want to read a cookbook.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: Are you making any of the recipes?
34:02
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of them are like omelets or bread or,
34:06
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:06
SPEAKER_00: they're fairly simple recipe soups and such.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: And I love to cook and I love to read cooking.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: I want, you know, geez, I YouTube cook videos.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: I just adore them.
34:18
And so I haven't yet because I am,
34:21
you know,
34:21
maybe two weeks into reading it.
34:24
But they're all they're all basic and they're all things that
34:27
you can you could do.
34:29
But some of them,
34:30
like some of her omelets,
34:31
I'm like,
34:31
I've never done it that way.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: So I will be.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: But I haven't yet.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: I haven't yet.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: But it'll it'll function for that for anybody who's interested.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: But that's that's another part that's kind of interesting.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: We don't cook this way, you know, entirely.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: And in other places, we cook exactly the same way.
34:47
And it's just kind of fun to see how times change and also how
34:51
they don't.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a good one.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: Again, I could see like NYRB Classics running away with this one.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know what the rights or anything like that are with it.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: But it's just a delight.
35:08
The other one that I'm going to bring up is one that I'm going
35:10
to bring up kind of
35:10
SPEAKER_00: as a segue into our topic.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: But we are rereading, both Paul and I, Middlemarch right now.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: It is absolutely a book that I think about all the time.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: And this past week, we ended on chapter 20.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: That was kind of the reading outline for the group.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: And chapter 20 is a chapter that I think about all the time.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: And within that chapter is a passage I think about all the time.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: I share it with people on the street.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll be talking to somebody and it just comes up.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: I am an evangelist for this.
35:52
It's a chapter where we,
35:55
you know,
35:55
for people who have read the book or even if you haven't,
35:58
SPEAKER_00: It begins by telling the story of Dorothea and her nuptials,
36:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:05
leading up to her nuptials with a gentleman who is much older
36:09
than her and
36:09
SPEAKER_00: relatively boring named Kazaban.
36:13
And Dorothea is so looking forward to this marriage because
36:17
it's not what people want for her.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's like 18, 19, and he's in his 40s.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: But for her, that is the noble thing.
36:29
She has quite a Spartan attitude about life and wants to help a
36:34
brilliant mind make
36:35
SPEAKER_00: something brilliant.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: And she thinks Kasuban is a brilliant mind.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: So she walks into this marriage with their head up and very happy.
36:43
And then we leave them for,
36:45
what,
36:45
eight,
36:46
nine chapters to meet other people in town.
36:50
And we're disappointed to leave them,
36:52
but also eventually start to really get caught up in the
36:56
These other people,
36:57
Ladislaw and Rosamund and Lydgate,
37:01
we're meeting them.
37:02
And then chapter 20,
37:03
we get back and we run into Dorothea and she's been crying.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: She's in Rome.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: She's on her honeymoon and she's alone in her room crying.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: And I love this particular quote from this.
37:18
It says,
37:19
not that this inward amazement of Dorothea was anything very exceptional.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: She's kind of realizing, you know, what the heck is going on here?
37:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm in, I'm in, I'm in Rome and here, why am I feeling this?
37:31
SPEAKER_00: But it says,
37:31
many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among
37:35
incongruities and left to
37:36
SPEAKER_00: find their feet among them while their elders go about their business.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Nor can I suppose that when Mrs.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: Casabon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding,
37:48
SPEAKER_00: the situation will be regarded as tragic.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: Some discouragement,
37:54
some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces
37:57
the imaginary is not unusual,
38:00
SPEAKER_00: and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: That element of tragedy,
38:07
SPEAKER_00: which lies in the very fact of frequency,
38:09
SPEAKER_00: has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind,
38:15
SPEAKER_00: and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life,
38:24
SPEAKER_00: it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat,
38:28
SPEAKER_00: and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: This passage about the ordinary tragic,
38:44
SPEAKER_00: something that's going on that just isn't out of the ordinary,
38:49
Dorothea learning that her real future is not what it was in
38:53
her imaginary future,
38:55
SPEAKER_00: and weeping because of that,
38:58
SPEAKER_00: and George Eliot's way of putting that as
39:01
real and significant and earth-shattering and even
39:06
life-shattering that we kind of
39:08
SPEAKER_00: just move along.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: I think about this all the time.
39:12
It's one of those passages that I think really did change the
39:15
way that I think
39:16
SPEAKER_00: about people and myself and look around me.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: A lot of my books today are going to be similar, maybe in theme.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: When you brought up books we think about all the time,
39:29
SPEAKER_00: particularly contrary to books I can't stop thinking about.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: I thought,
39:34
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
39:34
these are the ones for me that I almost tried to deliberately
39:38
keep them in my mind.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, Paul's talking about me as an evangelist.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: I do think these things have changed me.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to keep them
39:46
SPEAKER_00: in my heart.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: You know,
39:48
I want to be thinking about them because I don't want to lose
39:53
some of these
39:53
SPEAKER_00: perspectives that they brought on.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: And this is one of them.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: So I thought it might be kind of an interesting way for me,
40:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:01
SPEAKER_00: to share what I'm reading,
40:03
SPEAKER_00: but maybe segue into it.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: But Elisa, this was your topic and we've been excited about it.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to give you a chance also to introduce why you chose it.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: and what,
40:13
SPEAKER_00: what it brings up for you,
40:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:14
SPEAKER_00: this,
40:15
SPEAKER_00: when you think of,
40:16
SPEAKER_00: of the topic,
40:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:18
SPEAKER_00: what,
40:19
SPEAKER_00: what kind of comes up,
40:21
SPEAKER_00: um,
40:21
SPEAKER_00: in your mind?
40:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: Um,
40:24
SPEAKER_01: this is one of those things that I,
40:26
SPEAKER_01: I wish I'd like,
40:28
I wish I had sort of written a little paragraph or mini essay
40:31
about this to,
40:33
SPEAKER_01: to gather my thoughts.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: Um,
40:37
because I think there would be a lot to discover and say about
40:40
it as a category.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: It feels distinctly different from my favorite books,
40:47
SPEAKER_01: but like,
40:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure why,
40:50
because inevitably my favorite books are books that I think
40:53
about all the time.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: But that's, you know, that's not the question that people ask.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: People say, what are your favorite books?
41:01
SPEAKER_01: But I just, I find that it's a phrase I reach for a lot when
41:06
SPEAKER_01: certain books come up,
41:09
or if I find out that a friend of mine has read something that
41:13
fits into this
41:14
SPEAKER_01: category for me,
41:15
SPEAKER_01: I always say,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: oh,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: I think about that book all the time.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: Like,
41:19
SPEAKER_01: it's just,
41:20
it's like this particular category that I always use those same
41:23
words to attach to.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: And I just...
41:29
I had the feeling that if you asked anyone who reads a lot and
41:32
cares about books,
41:33
SPEAKER_01: like what are some books that you think about all the time?
41:35
SPEAKER_01: Like they would have fascinating answers.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of like what I was saying about,
41:42
it's easier for me to write an essay if I just think about
41:44
something for a year and
41:45
SPEAKER_01: a half.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: Um,
41:47
People are going to have something interesting to say about a
41:50
book that they think
41:50
SPEAKER_01: about all the time.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, that's it really.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: I was just like, I bet they would have great, great answers for this.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: No, I love that.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: I think you and I were chatting a little bit over email.
42:02
And I think I can't remember the phrase that I kept using,
42:05
like on the podcast you brought up.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: I think it was like I'm haunted by that book or something like that.
42:09
and it's that same kind of idea where there's those certain
42:11
books that just get
42:12
into your head or your heart or somewhere in between and just
42:16
come up all the time
42:17
SPEAKER_02: and i think it's going to be fascinating as we talk about the books today
42:20
SPEAKER_02: I do think there's different ways to approach it.
42:22
SPEAKER_02: Like you said,
42:23
SPEAKER_02: some of them,
42:24
SPEAKER_02: I think middle March is that,
42:26
SPEAKER_02: by the way,
42:26
SPEAKER_02: that passage,
42:26
SPEAKER_02: when I read it,
42:27
SPEAKER_02: I stopped,
42:28
SPEAKER_02: I had read this,
42:28
SPEAKER_02: that book like 10 years ago,
42:30
SPEAKER_02: but I don't know if I remembered that particular passage,
42:32
SPEAKER_02: except I think you've mentioned it before Trevor,
42:34
SPEAKER_02: but anyway,
42:34
SPEAKER_02: I stopped and like read it to my wife,
42:36
SPEAKER_02: like,
42:36
SPEAKER_02: Oh,
42:37
SPEAKER_02: just blows you away.
42:38
SPEAKER_02: But there are those types of passages,
42:39
SPEAKER_02: but then there's also,
42:41
SPEAKER_02: I think there's some,
42:42
SPEAKER_02: as usual,
42:42
SPEAKER_02: some corners or edges that we can poke around with on this topic as well.
42:47
SPEAKER_02: Cause I think it can go in different directions and,
42:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.
42:51
SPEAKER_02: Fascinating.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm excited about it.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: And you also,
42:56
SPEAKER_00: when Paul was writing back to you,
42:58
SPEAKER_00: he said,
43:01
SPEAKER_00: we're excited to talk to you about books you can't stop thinking about.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: And I love that you were like, I think that's a different topic.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: You're wrong, Paul.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:13
And that's one of the things that we love about doing these
43:15
conversations is
43:17
SPEAKER_00: looking at that and thinking,
43:18
SPEAKER_00: what is the nuance there?
43:22
And for me,
43:22
I thought,
43:22
yeah,
43:23
there are books that I can't stop thinking about.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: It's almost involuntary.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: They're there, and that can be either unpleasant or pleasant.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're working something on me.
43:34
And I kind of looked at this one as the books I deliberately do
43:39
and have thought a
43:39
SPEAKER_00: lot about over the years.
43:41
So I like your thought of,
43:43
you know,
43:44
these really are books that I've thought about.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: Like I haven't they don't just pop into my mind and,
43:54
SPEAKER_00: you know,
43:54
SPEAKER_00: like maybe a good story or something like that.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: But I have I have considered them and continue to consider them.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: They come up when I read other books, even if they're not related at all.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, they they.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: they are part of, of my ongoing dialogue with myself.
44:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I love,
44:14
SPEAKER_00: I love that,
44:14
SPEAKER_00: that distinction there of not,
44:16
SPEAKER_00: not necessarily,
44:17
SPEAKER_00: they might be the same books for many people,
44:19
SPEAKER_00: but they could also be different.
44:21
You know,
44:21
books I can't stop thinking about versus books I think about
44:25
all the time.
44:27
Thanks for doing that because that,
44:29
that really is,
44:30
that really is the joy for me in this.
44:33
SPEAKER_02: I agree.
44:34
SPEAKER_02: I think it's going to be interesting.
44:35
SPEAKER_02: I think several of mine,
44:37
might cross that line or blur that line because i i was
44:40
thinking about it and i
44:41
couldn't decide where they would fall as you guys were talking
44:45
so maybe both a
44:46
little both yeah yeah well you know for me i think um if
44:51
somebody asked me like is
44:53
SPEAKER_01: there a book that you can't stop thinking about i would automatically
44:58
SPEAKER_01: think of something that I recently read.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, so, or like, actually what I think of is that last weekend, right?
45:05
That was the day after I wrote this essay that I've been
45:08
thinking about for so long.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: I watched lost highway, which I had never seen before.
45:13
Um,
45:14
I really liked David Lynch,
45:15
but I haven't,
45:16
I haven't seen all of his movies.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: So,
45:18
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:19
SPEAKER_01: obvious reasons,
45:20
SPEAKER_01: a lot of people talking about Lynch last month,
45:23
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
45:23
SPEAKER_01: Oh,
45:23
SPEAKER_01: I should really watch some of those that I haven't seen.
45:26
SPEAKER_01: Um,
45:28
SPEAKER_01: So Lost Highway is what I started with.
45:30
And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it,
45:32
but it was just a week ago.
45:33
SPEAKER_01: And actually,
45:34
SPEAKER_01: John,
45:35
my husband and I watched it together last night because he
45:39
hadn't seen it since it
45:40
SPEAKER_01: came out,
45:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:41
SPEAKER_01: like in the 90s or whatever.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: And he wanted to see it again.
45:44
And I really love watching a movie twice within like the span
45:48
of a week because you
45:51
SPEAKER_01: just notice totally different things.
45:54
and it feels like okay I thought it was like that but maybe it
45:57
wasn't quite like I
45:58
thought so that was fun but like yeah when I think okay books
46:04
you think about all
46:04
the time that sort of opens it up to this could be anything
46:08
like my whole life this
46:09
could be something I read when I was a child but for whatever
46:12
reason like I still
46:13
think about it and I do have a lot of books like that I
46:15
probably could have chosen
46:17
some books that I haven't read since childhood I didn't but I
46:20
could have yeah for
46:21
SPEAKER_00: sure
46:22
SPEAKER_00: that's a really good way to maybe distill it for, for people too.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: Because when you bring up David Lynch,
46:28
SPEAKER_00: like,
46:28
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
46:29
SPEAKER_00: if I watched lost highway,
46:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to not be able to stop thinking about it.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:33
For David Lynch,
46:35
the movie I think about all the time is Mulholland drive.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, ever since I saw it, I watched it over and over and over again.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: I still think about it all the time.
46:43
Like I,
46:44
because of the mysteries and such,
46:46
but because of that emotion,
46:47
like I love it.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: And so I, I get what you're saying there.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:52
yeah all right well we can start and at least if you want you
46:56
know to to share one
46:58
of your books you know we each picked three and we can let this
47:01
go we can either do
47:02
it round robin or you know however works best for you um but i
47:05
would love to
47:06
explore some of these nuances as we look at some of the
47:09
particulars and i'm sorry i
47:11
SPEAKER_00: cheated got an extra one yep um
47:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would love to do round robin.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: Again,
47:21
SPEAKER_01: because we had three,
47:23
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to choose a book of poetry,
47:26
SPEAKER_01: a nonfiction book,
47:27
SPEAKER_01: and a novel.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: So I did.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm deciding on the fly which one I'm going to start with.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: It was hard to choose.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things I was considering was,
47:39
can I find books that I think about all the time that I haven't
47:42
already written about?
47:43
SPEAKER_01: Because...
47:45
SPEAKER_01: If you happen to have some Gabbert completist listening to the podcast,
47:51
SPEAKER_01: they'll be like,
47:51
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
47:52
SPEAKER_01: I know,
47:52
SPEAKER_01: because I read your book about that.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: But it was almost impossible.
48:00
Like if there's a book that I think about all the time,
48:02
I've probably written about it.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: So that was like too strict a criterion.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: I had to throw it out.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: But regardless, I will start with my nonfiction book.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: And again,
48:17
SPEAKER_01: anybody who's read my recent writings will come as no surprise,
48:21
SPEAKER_01: but it's a pattern language.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna show you two since we're on video by Christopher Alexander.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: which is an architecture book,
48:30
SPEAKER_01: I guess I would say,
48:31
SPEAKER_01: broadly speaking,
48:33
SPEAKER_01: but it's much more than that.
48:37
SPEAKER_01: It's more like architectural theory, but it's just interesting.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: I think everybody in the world would be interested in this book.
48:49
And if I met somebody who didn't think it was interesting,
48:51
that would be a huge red flag for me.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: we're not going to be friends and you might not be a good person.
48:58
I just,
48:58
I just think it's like one of the most interesting books in the world.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: And so it's this,
49:04
SPEAKER_01: this guy,
49:04
SPEAKER_01: Christopher Alexander,
49:05
SPEAKER_01: he just spent all this time thinking about the elements of,
49:11
SPEAKER_01: let's see,
49:11
SPEAKER_01: it says on the cover,
49:12
SPEAKER_01: towns,
49:13
SPEAKER_01: buildings,
49:13
SPEAKER_01: and construction that make people happy.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: So it's like,
49:20
It's like the aesthetics of spaces,
49:22
but just raised to the level of true life philosophy.
49:26
And he has so much conviction in his ideas that this is the way
49:33
hallways should be.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: You just completely believe him.
49:38
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to read the whole book at all.
49:40
SPEAKER_01: It's like 900 pages or something.
49:43
But it's so fun to flip through because it's these little short
49:46
chapters and each...
49:48
each chapter is based on like a pattern um that's why it's
49:50
called a pattern
49:51
language so um it might be sleeping to the east so he has this
49:58
theory that like
49:59
even if you think you don't want to wake up with the sun you're
50:02
wrong you do want
50:04
to wake up with the sun because it's going to make you happier
50:06
you're going to feel
50:07
more awake and your whole day is going to be better and then
50:09
you're going to sleep
50:10
better at night so it's like strong encouragement you should
50:14
have your bedroom with
50:15
SPEAKER_01: east facing windows
50:17
um children's realm couples realm he uses the word realm a lot
50:22
which is something i
50:22
love and the idea is when you're designing your house or even
50:25
just choosing a house
50:27
you should be thinking like is there going to be a realm where
50:31
the couple at the
50:32
heart of a family can kind of be alone but it's like still open
50:35
to the children but
50:37
that's an element that is important to like the structure of
50:40
your life and so
50:41
SPEAKER_01: there's millions of things like that like
50:45
SPEAKER_01: There should be more than one way to enter and exit a room.
50:49
If there's only one door in a room and you can only go in that
50:52
way and out that way,
50:53
it's less pleasurable than a living room where there's multiple
50:56
doorways and you
50:57
SPEAKER_01: can choose your own path through the house.
51:01
And there's things like a visible roof makes us feel more
51:04
secure because you can see the roof.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: towns with a lot of tipped roofs feel like cozier,
51:12
SPEAKER_01: happier,
51:13
more safe towns than towns where all the roofs are flat and you
51:16
can't see the roof.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: So it's just dozens of things like that.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: But I just, I think about them all the time.
51:22
I think about them when I'm in a space that feels good or
51:24
doesn't feel good.
51:25
I think about it when I'm in a town that seems especially
51:27
beautiful and welcoming,
51:28
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:29
like in a little terrace town in Italy where you see all the
51:32
roofs scattered down,
51:33
SPEAKER_01: like
51:34
SPEAKER_01: people should live that way, you know?
51:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's just great.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
51:40
SPEAKER_01: even if it doesn't,
51:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:42
SPEAKER_01: even if you're not an architect,
51:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm not,
51:44
SPEAKER_01: even if it doesn't actually change,
51:46
SPEAKER_01: like how you design a building,
51:49
SPEAKER_01: it just,
51:49
SPEAKER_01: it completely changes the way that you move through,
51:52
SPEAKER_01: through space.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: Um,
51:54
SPEAKER_01: I find.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: And I,
51:55
SPEAKER_01: I've just really enjoyed it also,
51:56
SPEAKER_01: like as a writer,
51:58
thinking about the structure of books and pieces of writing in
52:03
similar ways.
52:04
SPEAKER_01: Like, does this essay have rooms that can be entered in different ways?
52:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, that kind of thing.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: Like, does it feel like it have realms?
52:12
SPEAKER_01: Like it has realms.
52:13
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's just, it's completely changed the way my, my brain works.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that.
52:19
SPEAKER_00: You held up the book and I'm,
52:22
I know she's going to be able to convince me that I need to go
52:25
and read this
52:25
SPEAKER_00: 900-page book about architecture.
52:28
Although tread lightly,
52:29
because if you don't like it,
52:30
you're off her friend list.
52:33
SPEAKER_02: Is that from experience, Paul?
52:35
SPEAKER_02: No,
52:36
SPEAKER_02: she just made it sound like,
52:37
SPEAKER_02: you know,
52:37
SPEAKER_02: I was thinking if you gave that to someone as a gift,
52:40
SPEAKER_02: they'd be like,
52:41
SPEAKER_02: oh,
52:41
SPEAKER_02: God.
52:43
I could see someone not liking it and having like a strong
52:46
point of view about why
52:47
SPEAKER_01: they don't like it.
52:48
SPEAKER_01: But even that would be like they're interested in it.
52:51
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
52:52
It's more like they thought it was boring and like were not at
52:56
all intrigued to at
52:57
least sort of flip through it because it's a very it's like
53:00
eminently flip through
53:01
SPEAKER_01: a ball.
53:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:03
SPEAKER_01: If they weren't interested at all, that would be a red flag.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, totally.
53:07
SPEAKER_02: Did you read it cover to cover?
53:09
SPEAKER_02: You said it can be flipped through.
53:11
SPEAKER_02: Have you read it?
53:11
I have not read it cover to cover because there are sections
53:15
that are like,
53:18
SPEAKER_01: they're kind of more municipal, I guess.
53:22
SPEAKER_01: And I'm a little bit less interested in those parts.
53:24
SPEAKER_01: The parts about houses in particular, like how windows should be.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: There's a part about intimacy gradients,
53:31
SPEAKER_01: which is that like,
53:33
it should feel like you're slowly getting to more intimate
53:37
parts of the house,
53:38
SPEAKER_01: like starting from the street.
53:40
So if there's like a courtyard or a path that winds or
53:43
something like that,
53:44
SPEAKER_01: or an increasing number of
53:46
plants or trees as you're entering the front door of a house
53:49
things are getting
53:50
slowly more intimate instead of just like a straight up and
53:53
down flat house where
53:55
you're either out or you're in um like that's when you just
54:00
flip there when you see
54:01
a phrase like that and you're like what does that mean and you
54:03
just you just need
54:04
SPEAKER_01: to know but um yeah i haven't i haven't read it cover to cover i'd like
54:09
It's just one of those books that I'm constantly opening and
54:12
flipping through and
54:13
SPEAKER_01: like falling down into a little hole and getting excited about.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
54:19
SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: All right.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul, what have you got for us?
54:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
54:23
SPEAKER_02: So like I said,
54:24
SPEAKER_02: I think as you guys were talking,
54:25
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I'm definitely,
54:27
SPEAKER_02: I agree with you,
54:28
SPEAKER_02: but I might,
54:28
some of mine might border in between a little bit because some
54:31
of them are like,
54:32
word i use haunted haunted me um so a lot of them i i didn't do
54:36
it on purpose but
54:36
really quickly um elisa when we did our our epic books episode
54:43
one of paul's was
54:44
SPEAKER_00: dennis johnson's train dreams
54:47
SPEAKER_00: He made a convincing case that,
54:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:50
SPEAKER_00: I didn't see it the same way anyone else sees it,
54:54
SPEAKER_00: but here's why it works.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: Because it's a whole life.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: He was right.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: He was right.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: But that was me just introducing that when Paul says,
55:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't,
55:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
55:05
SPEAKER_00: I agree with you,
55:06
SPEAKER_00: but I'm like,
55:07
SPEAKER_00: okay,
55:07
SPEAKER_00: here we go.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: Paul's going to be a pain again.
55:10
SPEAKER_02: No, I don't do it on purpose.
55:11
SPEAKER_02: I think, I don't know.
55:12
SPEAKER_02: No, but it's just, I was thinking like books like this,
55:16
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I,
55:17
SPEAKER_02: like we've talked about this Trevor,
55:18
SPEAKER_02: like I consider myself to be a pretty optimistic,
55:21
SPEAKER_02: like happy guy,
55:22
SPEAKER_02: but a lot of the art that I'm drawn to isn't always that way.
55:25
SPEAKER_02: And some of it is just the fact of kind of what you were describing with
55:27
SPEAKER_02: Middlemarch of just embracing the other parts of life.
55:30
SPEAKER_02: And there's a comfort in knowing and reading about
55:33
that you know and so anyway this book um is duck's newberry
55:38
port by lucy elman
55:40
which is a book it just it's always on my mind and i do love it
55:44
i think this is one
55:44
of them that crosses over both kind of ways that you guys were
55:47
breaking it down for
55:48
me um most people probably know by now it's like a thousand
55:51
page book um called
55:54
SPEAKER_02: stream of consciousness i mean that's probably accurate it's
55:57
you know,
55:57
like so many books,
55:58
it's falsely identified as being all one sentence.
56:01
It's not really,
56:02
but you know,
56:03
it is that idea of just kind of this steady flow of thoughts.
56:05
SPEAKER_02: And it's all about this on the surface,
56:08
nondescript average woman who lives in Ohio and she's married
56:12
with four children
56:13
SPEAKER_02: and she has recently been battling cancer.
56:16
SPEAKER_02: So she quit her job as a professor.
56:18
And so now she's kind of making ends meet by baking,
56:22
you know,
56:22
pies and other things.
56:23
SPEAKER_02: And
56:25
SPEAKER_02: The book is just basically,
56:27
much of it is just in her head as she's thinking about recipes
56:31
and errands she
56:32
SPEAKER_02: needs to run and things that her family's going through.
56:35
SPEAKER_02: But then incessantly creeping in,
56:38
it was set during the first Trump presidency and there's all
56:41
kinds of dissonance
56:42
and anxiety that keeps creeping in with global warming and mass
56:47
shootings and all
56:48
SPEAKER_02: these different things.
56:50
think one of the reasons that i think about it so much it
56:52
reminds me in many ways
56:54
of your book unreality of memory where just this idea of we are
56:58
bombarded with
56:59
these things that sometimes or most of the time we would rather
57:02
not know about but
57:03
as citizens of the world now we should and do know about them
57:08
and so it's the
57:09
balance of like what we're talking about even in this january
57:11
just trying to
57:14
balance the the things that are truly important to family art
57:18
you know just even
57:20
you know,
57:20
baking or whatever it might be with all this stuff that keeps
57:23
popping into your head.
57:24
SPEAKER_02: And this book,
57:25
it's just the way it's written is one of the reasons that I
57:29
think about it all the time,
57:30
SPEAKER_02: but also just,
57:31
SPEAKER_02: it's so current.
57:33
I mean,
57:33
it has so many echoes of something like Ulysses or Mrs.
57:36
Dalloway,
57:37
but
57:39
SPEAKER_02: And those books are very modern still,
57:41
but this is like addressing modern things in a very similar
57:44
experimental way that
57:46
SPEAKER_02: to me just completely encapsulates the way that our minds really work.
57:50
SPEAKER_02: So,
57:51
SPEAKER_02: yeah,
57:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
57:51
SPEAKER_02: it's not a book that is pleasant in many ways,
57:54
although it is very funny and there's lots of good stuff in
57:56
there that it's not all
57:58
SPEAKER_02: just dark.
57:58
But I just think given probably any period in time,
58:02
but especially our current period of time,
58:04
SPEAKER_02: this book has just resonated and helped me too.
58:07
SPEAKER_02: Like I said,
58:08
SPEAKER_02: it's the fact that yes,
58:09
SPEAKER_02: it's tough to read about this stuff,
58:10
but just being in somebody else's headspace and going through
58:14
that with them for
58:15
SPEAKER_02: some reason to me is very cathartic.
58:17
And,
58:18
and so anyway,
58:18
yeah,
58:19
that's,
58:19
that's the first one that came to mind for me.
58:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:23
SPEAKER_00: I still haven't read it, Paul.
58:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
58:26
SPEAKER_00: I,
58:27
SPEAKER_00: it is one that I,
58:28
SPEAKER_00: that I'm,
58:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to,
58:29
SPEAKER_00: when I get to it,
58:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
58:31
SPEAKER_00: um,
58:32
SPEAKER_00: have you read it,
58:32
SPEAKER_01: Alisa?
58:33
SPEAKER_01: Mm-mm.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: No, I am.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: Why, why am I, why am I outing myself?
58:39
SPEAKER_01: I also haven't read Middlemarch.
58:40
I think I would read Middlemarch first,
58:42
but I think you should read Middlemarch first.
58:45
I think you could start them both today,
58:47
you know,
58:47
jump into two massive books right now.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: Join the big book club.
58:52
SPEAKER_01: I really,
58:52
SPEAKER_01: I have,
58:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
58:54
SPEAKER_01: you,
58:54
SPEAKER_01: you two inspire me a lot,
58:56
SPEAKER_01: but I have,
58:57
SPEAKER_01: it's like,
58:57
SPEAKER_01: it's almost a phobia of
59:00
really long books um just because I'm such a slow reader even
59:04
though I do read
59:05
every day I'm still really slow and I think like I'm getting
59:10
slower and slower and
59:11
slower because I just when I read I feel like I'm constantly
59:16
stopping to think and
59:18
it's just like you know I could be on a three-hour plane flight
59:23
and read like 25
59:24
SPEAKER_01: pages so
59:26
i honestly admire that no i mean i admire that i i am not that
59:32
way and sometimes i
59:33
wish i were more that way just because i think i mean it shows
59:36
in your writing the
59:37
way you you stop and think about things um because a lot of
59:40
times i'll blow through
59:41
a book and and love it but then i'm like you know what what do
59:45
i remember but so
59:46
SPEAKER_02: it's a constant battle i go through i don't think you should apologize
59:52
SPEAKER_00: All right.
59:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, the one that I chose to start with, I talked to my wife.
59:56
SPEAKER_00: I said, hey, what are some books that I think about all the time?
59:59
Knowing that she would have some insights because she probably
1:00:03
hears about them all the time.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: And at least that we did.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure Paul felt the same way.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: Some of that thing of like,
1:00:09
am I going to just be telling people the books I talk about all
1:00:13
the time on here?
1:00:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:14
Yeah.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: But I thought, who cares?
1:00:15
SPEAKER_00: This is a different way of talking about them.
1:00:20
And I don't think that I've explored all the reasons that these
1:00:24
books stick with me
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: and that I think about them all the time.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: But some of them people will have heard me talk about before.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: Probably this one, too.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_00: And that is The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky's massive book.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't read it, Alisa, you can start that one today, too.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: Throw it on the pile.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_00: It's fine.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_00: I haven't.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_01: I did just read Notes from Underground a couple months ago, and...
1:00:48
that,
1:00:49
that is one that I could say,
1:00:50
like,
1:00:50
I can't stop thinking about it a little bit.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and the backlisted pod just republished there.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_00: And speaking of kind of the interesting thing,
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: they,
1:00:59
they first recorded it kind of during COVID and then they
1:01:03
released it as a,
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: I guess,
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: like here's an old episode, we'll release it again.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: And to re-listen to it,
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: wow,
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: that haunting old reality and very fitting for that book too.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_00: The Brothers Karamazov,
1:01:20
SPEAKER_00: I first read it,
1:01:21
SPEAKER_00: I've told Paul this and probably therefore our listeners,
1:01:24
SPEAKER_00: but I was in a little store in my college town
1:01:27
SPEAKER_00: there weren't bookstores and this was like a craft store and,
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: but they had a,
1:01:32
a little shelf of books and a lot of them were little signet or
1:01:37
Bantam classics.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: And there was the Brothers Karamazov,
1:01:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:01:41
SPEAKER_00: little trade paperback size,
1:01:43
SPEAKER_00: but basically as thick as it was tall,
1:01:45
SPEAKER_00: it felt like,
1:01:46
SPEAKER_00: and purple.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_00: And I thought,
1:01:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to grab this.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_00: I finished a book the other day.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to grab it.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_00: This is the one I'm going to read next.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_00: And I fell right into it.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: Amazingly, I did that.
1:02:00
And then I reread it a couple of years ago now,
1:02:03
or a year and a half ago,
1:02:07
I guess.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_00: And
1:02:10
SPEAKER_00: It had changed a lot for me,
1:02:11
but I realized I've thought about this book the whole time and
1:02:14
think about it still.
1:02:15
And it still continues to be something I think about because of
1:02:19
his exploration.
1:02:20
You know,
1:02:21
it's a book of philosophy as much as it is a novel with any
1:02:25
kind of plot.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_00: But it was interesting because when I was younger and read it in college,
1:02:31
SPEAKER_00: the part that I thought about a lot was a part where Alyosha,
1:02:37
SPEAKER_00: the faithful,
1:02:39
SPEAKER_00: he's on his way to becoming someone who works in the church,
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: and someone that he admires,
1:02:47
SPEAKER_00: Father Zosima,
1:02:48
SPEAKER_00: is dying.
1:02:50
And I loved thinking about their conversations and about his
1:02:53
struggle with that and
1:02:54
then his crisis of faith that he goes through with everything
1:02:58
that follows that.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_00: But this time around,
1:03:04
this book talks so much about what we as a society are willing
1:03:10
to do to cede our
1:03:12
SPEAKER_00: own choice and
1:03:15
SPEAKER_00: in order to get comfort.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_00: And in particular,
1:03:20
SPEAKER_00: the Grand Inquisitor section,
1:03:23
SPEAKER_00: which I think the first time I read it,
1:03:25
SPEAKER_00: I didn't get it.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_00: I thought about it a lot, but I don't think I ever quite got it.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand why at the end.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_00: What is Dostoevsky doing here by presenting the Grand Inquisition
1:03:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:03:41
SPEAKER_00: these people who are working for the church,
1:03:43
SPEAKER_00: trying to cleanse things and all of that.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_00: And there,
1:03:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:03:47
SPEAKER_00: comes upon them,
1:03:49
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ himself,
1:03:51
SPEAKER_00: and they condemn him knowing it's him,
1:03:54
SPEAKER_00: knowing that he is the,
1:03:56
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:03:56
SPEAKER_00: the starter of their religion.
1:03:57
And one of the reasons that they do it is,
1:03:59
Hey,
1:04:00
you're going to mess things up.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know what we've got here?
1:04:03
SPEAKER_00: People want this.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_00: And I just love some of the parts in it.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_00: Like, um,
1:04:08
Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone
1:04:12
quickly to whom he can
1:04:13
hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated
1:04:17
creature is born.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_00: And that section, and it's much more, I don't have the ability...
1:04:24
to express all of my thoughts about it or the nuances
1:04:29
dostoevsky is is really um
1:04:32
exploring this from much more than just that kind of thesis you
1:04:37
know he's really
1:04:38
going into it uh but boy does do i look around and think this
1:04:43
applies so much you
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: know i i would
1:04:46
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to be that way.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: And the discomfort that can come from that,
1:04:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:04:50
SPEAKER_00: I recognize that there can be some comfort in having a certainty,
1:04:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:04:56
SPEAKER_00: show up here and all will be well.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_00: Show up here and do this and you'll be fine.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_00: Support us and we'll support you kind of thinking.
1:05:07
but the way that that can take,
1:05:11
take away the conscious and,
1:05:13
and the conscience.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_00: So I do think about this all the time.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I will be talking about who knows what,
1:05:21
SPEAKER_00: and I'm like,
1:05:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:05:26
SPEAKER_00: and so it is,
1:05:27
SPEAKER_00: it was,
1:05:28
SPEAKER_00: it was really something that,
1:05:30
SPEAKER_00: that continued.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_00: And again, that I, I deliberately keep thinking about because I,
1:05:36
SPEAKER_00: As you can see today, I've already lost some of the nuances.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, well, I got to go back and reread it again.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's another part of these is I love reading these quotes.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_00: I love rethinking about these books, but also then going back in.
1:05:50
And maybe similar to what you were saying earlier about writing
1:05:53
your essay,
1:05:54
SPEAKER_00: Elisa,
1:05:54
SPEAKER_00: like you have the thoughts,
1:05:56
SPEAKER_00: but then you get the shape or the higher resolution.
1:05:59
And sometimes that's how I feel with these is I have the
1:06:01
thoughts and then I read
1:06:03
SPEAKER_00: it again or I read a passage again.
1:06:06
And it becomes clear again in ways that I just can't quite hold
1:06:09
on to without that
1:06:11
SPEAKER_00: text in front of me.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_00: And I love that.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_01: I feel that in particular about poems.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I'm never experiencing a poem unless I'm actively reading it.
1:06:25
SPEAKER_01: Even though it's, what, 30 words.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06:29
SPEAKER_01: Often.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_00: It's like a haiku sometimes.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_00: There we are.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_01: I have to actually be like looking at it to like,
1:06:38
SPEAKER_01: remember like,
1:06:39
SPEAKER_01: oh yeah,
1:06:39
SPEAKER_01: this is all the texture of this whole poem world.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_02: It's one of the things that we've talked a lot about,
1:06:45
SPEAKER_02: Trevor,
1:06:46
SPEAKER_02: too,
1:06:46
SPEAKER_02: just conversations like this are so good about that,
1:06:48
SPEAKER_02: too,
1:06:48
because just hearing you talk about some of these books that
1:06:51
I've read and loved or,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_02: you,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_02: Lisa,
1:06:54
SPEAKER_02: it's just it's one of the things I love so much is writing about it,
1:06:57
SPEAKER_02: thinking about it,
1:06:58
SPEAKER_02: rereading it.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_02: It's just this constant conversation.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_02: Books like this,
1:07:02
SPEAKER_02: there's so many layers and so much depth there that I don't think I mean,
1:07:06
SPEAKER_02: luckily,
1:07:06
SPEAKER_02: you can never get to the bottom of it.
1:07:07
SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of part of the joy of it, I think, for sure.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:07:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, Lisa, what's your next one?
1:07:14
SPEAKER_01: So I'll do my novel next, which is Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_01: Have either of you read this?
1:07:23
SPEAKER_01: No.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited for you to read it.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_01: So this is actually, I love this.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_01: This is like the collected works of Jane Bowles.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_01: This is a great little edition.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_01: But Two Serious Ladies is a short novel, so you have no excuse.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm assigning it to you both.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_02: I was going to say, we both assigned, yep.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:07:46
SPEAKER_01: I would love to read a little passage from this one because,
1:07:50
SPEAKER_01: um,
1:07:51
SPEAKER_01: it's just great to,
1:07:53
SPEAKER_01: to see what the texture of it is actually like.
1:07:54
So as the title would suggest,
1:07:57
there's like two main characters in this novel.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:08:01
SPEAKER_01: and it's mostly sort of in their adult life that the novel takes place,
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: but this first chapter begins and Christina,
1:08:11
SPEAKER_01: one of the two ladies,
1:08:12
SPEAKER_01: It begins in her childhood.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_01: So I just want you to see how funny and strange this is.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_01: Mary, she screamed, come on up here.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_01: When Mary arrived in the tower,
1:08:25
Christina asked her if she would not like to play a very
1:08:27
special game with her.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_01: It's called, I forgive you for all your sins, said Christina.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_01: You'll have to take your dress off.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_01: Is it fun?
1:08:36
SPEAKER_01: Mary asked.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_01: It's not for fun that we play it, but because it's necessary to play it.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_01: All right, said Mary, I'll play with you.
1:08:45
She took her dress off and Christina pulled an old burlap sack
1:08:48
over Mary's head.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_01: She cut two holes in the burlap for Mary to see through,
1:08:53
SPEAKER_01: and then she tied a cord around her waist.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_01: Come, said Christina, and you will be absolved for your sins.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_01: Keep repeating to yourself, may the Lord forgive me for my sins.
1:09:05
She hurried down the stairs with Mary and then out across the
1:09:07
lawn towards the woods.
1:09:09
Christina wasn't yet sure what she was going to do,
1:09:11
but she was very much excited.
1:09:14
SPEAKER_01: They came to a stream that skirted the woods.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_01: The banks of the stream were soft and muddy.
1:09:19
SPEAKER_01: Come to the water, said Christina.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_01: I think that's how we'll wash away your sins.
1:09:23
SPEAKER_01: You'll have to stand in the mud.
1:09:26
SPEAKER_01: Near the mud?
1:09:27
SPEAKER_01: In the mud.
1:09:28
SPEAKER_01: Does your sin taste bitter in your mouth?
1:09:31
SPEAKER_01: It must.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_01: Yes, said Mary hesitantly.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_01: Then you want to be clean and pure as a flower is, don't you?
1:09:38
SPEAKER_01: Mary did not answer.
1:09:40
If you don't lie down in the mud and let me pack the mud over
1:09:43
you and then wash you
1:09:44
SPEAKER_01: in the stream,
1:09:45
SPEAKER_01: you'll be forever condemned.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_01: Do you want to be forever condemned?
1:09:49
SPEAKER_01: This is your moment to decide.
1:09:51
SPEAKER_01: Mary stood beneath her black hood without saying a word.
1:09:55
Christina pushed her down on the ground and started to pack the
1:09:57
burlap with mud.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_01: The mud's cold, said Mary.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_01: The hell fires are hot, said Christina.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_01: If you let me do this, you won't go to hell.
1:10:07
So it's often like that,
1:10:13
like mostly dialogue,
1:10:16
but partly I love that scene because
1:10:22
that child character,
1:10:24
like there's some character in her character that doesn't go away.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_01: And when she's an adult, everything she does seems very strange.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_01: Her decision-making is quite opaque.
1:10:36
And so this is one of those novels that I'm often like
1:10:40
assigning to my friends and
1:10:43
SPEAKER_01: some people love it,
1:10:44
SPEAKER_01: but I know people who really don't like it.
1:10:46
And the people who don't like it are often just like,
1:10:48
oh,
1:10:49
people just do things for no reason.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make any sense.
1:10:52
And so I'm constantly comparing novels to this when I think
1:10:57
that it's not that like
1:10:59
SPEAKER_01: what they do doesn't make sense,
1:11:01
SPEAKER_01: but that there's some kind of like,
1:11:05
obscure moral code that the characters are following so like it
1:11:09
does make sense in
1:11:11
the world of the novel but like only in the world of the novel
1:11:14
and like you don't
1:11:14
know anyone like this but i'm so willing to watch these
1:11:19
characters do their things
1:11:21
SPEAKER_01: in the novel world even though
1:11:25
they end up basically ruining their own lives by by following
1:11:30
the strange um
1:11:32
impenetrable moral code and so yeah i'm i'm often thinking like
1:11:38
oh that's one of
1:11:38
those novels where people run their own lives for no clear
1:11:41
reason just like two
1:11:42
serious ladies um or i'll think like that's one of those novels
1:11:47
that is mostly
1:11:48
SPEAKER_01: dialogue and like it somehow works um
1:11:53
like um true grit has tons of dialogue and like that's kind of
1:11:57
what makes that book
1:11:57
and so i'll think like oh that's kind of like two serious
1:12:00
ladies it's just it's one
1:12:01
of those books that has such a singular like a few singular
1:12:06
qualities really that
1:12:07
i'm just always using it as a point of comparison for other
1:12:10
kinds of books
1:12:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm sold for sure.
1:12:14
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
1:12:15
SPEAKER_00: I am too.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_00: And I'm, I'm happy to say that I do have it.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_00: In 2017,
1:12:21
SPEAKER_00: the library of America released for her centenary,
1:12:24
SPEAKER_00: her collected writings,
1:12:25
SPEAKER_00: which does include two serious ladies.
1:12:27
I was just,
1:12:28
I was looking back on my shelf to see if that,
1:12:31
if that was part of it.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's when I have, so it is, it's on there.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_00: So I'll take you up on the, on the assignment.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:12:39
SPEAKER_02: We were paying attention, I promise.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_02: But while you were talking,
1:12:41
SPEAKER_02: I was also looking because I was like,
1:12:45
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to order that as soon as this is over.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_02: So I saw that same collected works.
1:12:49
SPEAKER_02: That sounds really good.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_02: Your work is done.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_02: Evangelism.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:12:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, not quite.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_00: We've still got another book and I'm,
1:12:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm,
1:12:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm,
1:13:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited to hear what,
1:13:01
I think you said it was going to be a book of poetry and I'm
1:13:03
sitting here,
1:13:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:13:04
SPEAKER_00: way to,
1:13:05
SPEAKER_00: way to set the,
1:13:06
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:13:06
SPEAKER_00: the expectation of,
1:13:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:13:08
SPEAKER_00: the excitement,
1:13:09
SPEAKER_00: I guess,
1:13:09
SPEAKER_00: of,
1:13:10
SPEAKER_00: of,
1:13:11
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:13:11
SPEAKER_00: the promise of,
1:13:12
SPEAKER_00: of more,
1:13:14
SPEAKER_00: but first,
1:13:14
SPEAKER_00: but first,
1:13:15
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:13:15
SPEAKER_00: Paul,
1:13:16
SPEAKER_00: what have you got?
1:13:16
SPEAKER_02: Paul has to go first.
1:13:18
SPEAKER_02: Um,
1:13:18
SPEAKER_02: I inadvertently,
1:13:20
SPEAKER_02: I guess,
1:13:20
kind of did something similar to what Alisa did because I
1:13:22
realized I have a novel
1:13:23
SPEAKER_02: and then two other.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_02: It's not exactly the same breakdown,
1:13:26
SPEAKER_02: but this one is actually a graphic novel,
1:13:29
SPEAKER_02: which is not something that I'm typically a big reader of.
1:13:33
But I think it's one of the greatest arguments I've come across
1:13:36
for how powerful
1:13:37
SPEAKER_02: they can be and why I should read more.
1:13:39
SPEAKER_02: And I would argue other people should, too.
1:13:41
SPEAKER_02: And it's Sabrina by Nick Dernasso.
1:13:45
It came out,
1:13:46
I think it was around 2018,
1:13:47
and it actually was long-listed.
1:13:49
And I don't remember if it was short-listed as well,
1:13:50
but at least long-listed for the booker.
1:13:53
So it was one of the rare times where a graphic novel has
1:13:56
actually gotten that kind
1:13:57
SPEAKER_02: of attention,
1:13:58
SPEAKER_02: I think,
1:13:58
SPEAKER_02: in maybe the quote-unquote literary world.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_02: And for very good reason,
1:14:01
this book has stuck with me probably as much or more than most
1:14:05
other books that
1:14:06
SPEAKER_02: I've come across.
1:14:07
SPEAKER_02: And it's a blend, I think.
1:14:10
SPEAKER_02: If it had been written in any other way,
1:14:11
SPEAKER_02: if it wasn't a graphic novel,
1:14:12
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure it would have been powerful.
1:14:14
SPEAKER_02: But in this case, man, the artwork just adds this whole other layer.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_02: So the basic plot is there's this woman named Sabrina who's gone missing.
1:14:23
SPEAKER_02: And so now we're spending time with her boyfriend and her sister,
1:14:26
SPEAKER_02: Sandra,
1:14:27
as they're trying to kind of cope with the aftermath of her
1:14:29
disappearance and
1:14:31
dealing with their own grief as all these ripples and impacts
1:14:34
of the disappearance
1:14:35
SPEAKER_02: kind of occur.
1:14:36
SPEAKER_02: And so obviously it's a tough topic in the first place.
1:14:41
But like I said,
1:14:41
in addition to the subject matter,
1:14:43
the style is really sparse.
1:14:45
If you get a chance,
1:14:46
look it up online and you'll get to see some screenshots.
1:14:49
It's very simplistic drawing and all the characters' faces are
1:14:53
just blank.
1:14:54
SPEAKER_02: They don't have any expression.
1:14:56
And there's something about that in the themes of the book that
1:15:00
just really has stuck with me.
1:15:04
SPEAKER_02: On top of that, a lot of the
1:15:06
frames that aren't focused on the characters are like liminal
1:15:10
spaces like these
1:15:11
roads at twilight or there's um alisa you'll know this because
1:15:16
it takes place part
1:15:17
of it down in fort carson which is down in colorado springs and
1:15:20
so it's a military
1:15:20
base and there's something about those industrial military
1:15:25
bases and in other
1:15:26
SPEAKER_02: buildings but where there's like this soulless
1:15:29
quality just cinder blocks and these blank spaces that just
1:15:33
always fill me with
1:15:33
this kind of I don't even know how to explain it but like it's
1:15:36
kind of dread and
1:15:37
it's kind of melancholy and so all of that just kind of adds up
1:15:41
in this book to
1:15:43
create this just ongoing unsettling feeling that it really has
1:15:48
stuck with me and so
1:15:49
anyway as all of that is building up and we're getting to know
1:15:51
these characters and
1:15:53
the brother goes to spend time with this guy who works down on
1:15:58
the military base named Calvin.
1:16:00
And so Calvin spends a lot of time like playing these violent
1:16:06
games online and
1:16:07
SPEAKER_02: listening to conspiracy theories on the radio and everything.
1:16:10
SPEAKER_02: And so again,
1:16:10
SPEAKER_02: it does kind of tie into,
1:16:12
SPEAKER_02: I guess,
1:16:13
the theme of like somewhat Ducks Newburyport and maybe the
1:16:16
unreality of memory too
1:16:17
SPEAKER_02: is just
1:16:18
SPEAKER_02: our modern world and kind of all this stuff that's going on.
1:16:22
SPEAKER_02: So anyway,
1:16:23
SPEAKER_02: all of this just builds up and this is,
1:16:25
SPEAKER_02: it's kind of a horror book,
1:16:26
SPEAKER_02: I guess,
1:16:27
SPEAKER_02: but it's also just a really melancholy,
1:16:29
SPEAKER_02: strange book that,
1:16:31
SPEAKER_02: like I said,
1:16:31
in the form of the graphic novel has really just stuck with me
1:16:35
and I can't get it
1:16:35
SPEAKER_02: out of my head.
1:16:37
SPEAKER_02: There's a quote on the back from Zadie Smith who describes it as,
1:16:40
SPEAKER_02: quote,
1:16:40
SPEAKER_02: the best book in any medium that I've ever read about our current moment.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_02: beautifully written and drawn,
1:16:46
SPEAKER_02: possessing all the political power and polemic,
1:16:48
SPEAKER_02: and yet simultaneously all the delicacy of truly great art.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_02: It scared me.
1:16:53
SPEAKER_02: I loved it.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_02: And yes, I mean, that is like how I felt too.
1:16:58
And so,
1:16:59
like I said,
1:17:00
it's not,
1:17:01
I'm not a graphic novel person necessarily.
1:17:03
I mean,
1:17:03
I've come across several over the years that have really blown
1:17:07
me away.
1:17:07
SPEAKER_02: And this one is at the very top of the list.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_02: And so again, that's where I was like,
1:17:13
SPEAKER_02: the first two books I mentioned are both in some ways similar topics.
1:17:17
And it's not like I'm going back to books that I love that make
1:17:19
me feel good,
1:17:20
which is where I wasn't sure if I was poking at the edges of
1:17:22
our topic today,
1:17:24
SPEAKER_02: but they are books that I do love,
1:17:27
SPEAKER_02: even though the topics aren't very lovable because it's,
1:17:31
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
1:17:31
they're just so relevant and they're almost like tools in a way
1:17:34
for like dealing
1:17:35
SPEAKER_02: with what we're going through in our current lives.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I don't know.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_02: Something about this book from the artwork to the topic is just...
1:17:43
SPEAKER_02: I can't get it out of my head.
1:17:44
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's amazing.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_00: Well,
1:17:47
SPEAKER_00: I certainly,
1:17:48
I wouldn't even put the brothers Karamazov as like a favorite
1:17:51
book for the reasons
1:17:52
SPEAKER_00: I might talk about a favorite book.
1:17:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, nor is it super pleasant always to think about.
1:17:58
So yeah,
1:17:58
I mean,
1:17:59
I think I'm on,
1:18:00
even if we're wrong,
1:18:01
we're on the,
1:18:02
we're wrong together.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_00: We're always wrong together.
1:18:05
SPEAKER_00: I like it.
1:18:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh,
1:18:08
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:18:08
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I haven't read that one either.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_00: I had forgotten that it was long listed for the Booker Prize.
1:18:12
SPEAKER_00: I remember now when you said that, but I was like, oh yeah, that's true.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_00: The graphic novel.
1:18:16
SPEAKER_00: I forgot about that news.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_02: We stock it at the bookstore.
1:18:19
SPEAKER_02: We have like 10 graphic novels.
1:18:21
SPEAKER_02: It's like a tiny little section, but I asked if we could have that one.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_02: And I've only sold it like twice, but I try to hand sell it all the time.
1:18:29
SPEAKER_02: And every once in a while, I'll just flip through it again.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_02: And every time,
1:18:32
just the images it's something about images that can like
1:18:34
instantly get you back
1:18:35
SPEAKER_02: into that headspace even more than words sometimes so yeah
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: Well,
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: my next one,
1:18:44
SPEAKER_00: again,
1:18:44
SPEAKER_00: going back to a conversation we've already had,
1:18:47
SPEAKER_00: Paul,
1:18:47
SPEAKER_00: when we did our Jane Austen episode.
1:18:50
SPEAKER_00: But I always think about Emma by Jane Austen.
1:18:54
SPEAKER_00: It's my favorite of hers.
1:18:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love them all.
1:18:57
And we talk about them all and remember them all and think
1:19:00
about them all quite often.
1:19:01
SPEAKER_00: But Emma's the one...
1:19:03
that I think about not just for the fun things or the funny
1:19:06
characters and all of that,
1:19:08
SPEAKER_00: but also from,
1:19:10
SPEAKER_00: for me,
1:19:10
a very powerful and emotional story of a young woman who feels
1:19:17
confident and should be.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_00: She is smart.
1:19:20
SPEAKER_00: She is trying to do good and often I think does do good.
1:19:26
SPEAKER_00: But I love this story about someone realizing that
1:19:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm not as smart as I think I am, and I've hurt people because of it.
1:19:35
And I think my favorite part about all of this is that she
1:19:40
doesn't retreat.
1:19:42
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't stop and get bitter.
1:19:48
She humbles herself in many ways and still goes to these people
1:19:54
and loves them anyway.
1:19:55
SPEAKER_00: And they love her anyway.
1:19:57
SPEAKER_00: And I just love, I love that.
1:19:59
SPEAKER_00: To me,
1:20:00
SPEAKER_00: it's such a story of courage,
1:20:02
SPEAKER_00: of her going out there again,
1:20:06
SPEAKER_00: recognizing her foibles,
1:20:08
SPEAKER_00: you know.
1:20:08
And my wife brought up the other day when I was talking to her
1:20:10
about this,
1:20:11
SPEAKER_00: that,
1:20:11
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
1:20:11
SPEAKER_00: it's someone who...
1:20:13
who thought that she could do all of this and kind of help
1:20:16
people with their love
1:20:18
SPEAKER_00: because she herself was above it.
1:20:20
And so there's also that story of her recognizing that love
1:20:24
does some crazy things
1:20:25
SPEAKER_00: and not always do you think about things
1:20:29
um rationally or anything like that but it's it's just her kind
1:20:33
of coming out and
1:20:34
and learning and i think on the other side even though of
1:20:37
course she'll still make
1:20:38
mistakes turning into someone very compassionate and you know
1:20:43
who genuinely loves
1:20:44
SPEAKER_00: and trusts these people and again i love that they love her too
1:20:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_00: I just, I love that dynamic.
1:20:52
SPEAKER_00: And I also love when,
1:20:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:20:55
SPEAKER_00: kind of the famous scene where she's being,
1:21:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:21:02
SPEAKER_00: wooed finally,
1:21:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:21:04
SPEAKER_00: Knightley is telling her,
1:21:05
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:21:05
SPEAKER_00: I love you,
1:21:07
SPEAKER_00: all this stuff and saying,
1:21:08
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:21:09
SPEAKER_00: you don't have to say anything else.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_00: Just say no, if you want me to stop.
1:21:14
SPEAKER_00: And she can't say anything because she's overcome.
1:21:16
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, oh, you're silent.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_00: I ask no more at this time.
1:21:22
And then just when he comes back in and says,
1:21:25
I cannot make speeches,
1:21:27
Emma.
1:21:28
SPEAKER_00: He soon resumed.
1:21:29
SPEAKER_00: And in a tone of sincere,
1:21:30
SPEAKER_00: decided,
1:21:31
SPEAKER_00: intelligible tenderness,
1:21:32
SPEAKER_00: as was tolerably convincing,
1:21:34
SPEAKER_00: if I loved you less,
1:21:35
SPEAKER_00: I might be able to talk about it more.
1:21:37
SPEAKER_00: But you know what I am.
1:21:39
SPEAKER_00: You hear nothing but truth from me.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_00: And this is the part that I think about a lot.
1:21:45
SPEAKER_00: Because he's a jerk at times and has been the one who called her out.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_00: And he says,
1:21:52
SPEAKER_00: I have blamed you and lectured you,
1:21:55
SPEAKER_00: and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.
1:21:59
SPEAKER_00: And again,
1:22:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to make a comment on,
1:22:03
SPEAKER_00: oh,
1:22:03
SPEAKER_00: and this is the right relationship or anything like that.
1:22:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I like him.
1:22:07
SPEAKER_00: But we do this, right?
1:22:08
SPEAKER_00: We find ourselves in situations where like,
1:22:11
SPEAKER_00: man,
1:22:11
SPEAKER_00: I was really confident when I said that in the past,
1:22:14
whether it was to try to correct somebody or just how something
1:22:18
should be.
1:22:19
SPEAKER_00: And the realization that, hey, that's okay.
1:22:23
SPEAKER_00: That's part of where we all are together.
1:22:26
SPEAKER_00: We're not really, you know, always above each other.
1:22:29
SPEAKER_00: And I just love, I love this story for that.
1:22:32
And that's this,
1:22:32
you know,
1:22:33
again,
1:22:33
I think about the other parts of the story often.
1:22:37
But the thing that I try to think about consistently is just
1:22:42
that part of the joy
1:22:45
SPEAKER_00: that can come when you realize,
1:22:47
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:22:47
SPEAKER_00: I screwed up and people are still...
1:22:50
SPEAKER_00: here for me, and I still can be here for them.
1:22:54
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:22:55
SPEAKER_00: I love Emma.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_00: Love that.
1:22:58
SPEAKER_02: That was a nice way to uplift us after all that.
1:23:01
SPEAKER_00: I know, I feel so uplifted.
1:23:04
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
1:23:04
SPEAKER_00: man,
1:23:04
SPEAKER_00: I've got a really dark book here,
1:23:06
SPEAKER_00: but I've got to find something to counter Paul.
1:23:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
1:23:10
SPEAKER_02: The yin and the yang.
1:23:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:23:14
SPEAKER_02: Again,
1:23:14
that's just another book to your point about these books we're
1:23:17
talking about where
1:23:18
SPEAKER_02: for various reasons,
1:23:19
but just you can revisit them throughout your life and they can
1:23:22
provide different things.
1:23:23
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I love Jane Austen.
1:23:27
SPEAKER_02: I could read her just pretty much constantly on a loop and be happy.
1:23:32
SPEAKER_00: As part of that, continuing to think about them.
1:23:34
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:23:35
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:23:36
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:23:37
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:23:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, Lisa, we, we're, we're, we're back to you.
1:23:40
SPEAKER_00: And I,
1:23:40
SPEAKER_00: again,
1:23:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited because just like I'm going to take you up on Jane Bowles,
1:23:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of to the point where I'm like,
1:23:44
SPEAKER_00: whatever,
1:23:45
SPEAKER_00: whatever you bring up,
1:23:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm in,
1:23:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to,
1:23:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to jump on it.
1:23:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, boy, am I going to throw you for a loop here?
1:23:57
SPEAKER_01: No, the book I want to talk about, I'm pretty sure it's out of print.
1:24:01
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:24:03
Although,
1:24:03
you know,
1:24:03
maybe some angel will hear this episode and bring it back.
1:24:08
SPEAKER_01: I will say if you're dying for a third book to buy,
1:24:14
SPEAKER_01: I almost picked The Wild Iris by Louise Glick.
1:24:17
SPEAKER_00: I love that one.
1:24:18
SPEAKER_01: I do have that one.
1:24:21
SPEAKER_01: So these two books,
1:24:23
SPEAKER_01: as poetry books,
1:24:25
I feel like there's a similar reason that I think about them
1:24:27
all the time,
1:24:28
SPEAKER_01: which is that...
1:24:30
SPEAKER_01: they're just such great examples of like a way that poetry can be.
1:24:34
SPEAKER_01: And so like with the wild Iris,
1:24:37
I always think about it whenever I'm reading poetry where
1:24:40
there's like kind of a
1:24:43
SPEAKER_01: pseudo persona figure.
1:24:48
SPEAKER_01: And the way that in that book,
1:24:52
SPEAKER_01: the flowers become this like container that is partly the flower,
1:24:57
SPEAKER_01: but also partly whatever,
1:24:59
Glick wants to put in the container and you don't know how much
1:25:03
is flour and how
1:25:03
SPEAKER_01: much is like Louise.
1:25:06
SPEAKER_01: It's just like such an interesting,
1:25:09
SPEAKER_01: like fictive construct that allows the poet to sort of,
1:25:17
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
1:25:17
just create this like a flow between how much of this is me and
1:25:20
how much of this is
1:25:22
SPEAKER_01: something else that I'm pulling from the world.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_01: And sorry, I'm talking so much about the book.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_01: That's not even my book.
1:25:28
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to stop.
1:25:33
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
1:25:33
SPEAKER_01: that like,
1:25:33
SPEAKER_01: so that whenever I,
1:25:35
whenever I read a book of poetry that has like a similar kind
1:25:38
of use of figures
1:25:41
SPEAKER_01: that way,
1:25:42
SPEAKER_01: like a triangulation,
1:25:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm always thinking about the wild iris,
1:25:45
SPEAKER_01: but I decided to talk about this other book,
1:25:49
SPEAKER_01: which is sadly out of print.
1:25:51
SPEAKER_01: It's called survey says by Nathan Austin.
1:25:55
And I'm going to I'm going to read you first just the
1:25:59
description in the beginning
1:26:00
SPEAKER_01: of the book of what it is.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm going to read you just like 20 seconds of it.
1:26:05
SPEAKER_01: So you know what it's like.
1:26:07
SPEAKER_01: So it says it's a systematic reordering of all answers,
1:26:11
SPEAKER_01: both correct and incorrect,
1:26:12
provided by the contestants on Family Feud over five weeks in
1:26:16
spring 2005.
1:26:16
SPEAKER_01: OK, so this is what it's like.
1:26:22
SPEAKER_01: Cabbage, rabbit.
1:26:24
SPEAKER_01: Macaroni and cheese,
1:26:25
SPEAKER_01: vacation,
1:26:26
SPEAKER_01: vacation,
1:26:27
SPEAKER_01: vaccines,
1:26:28
SPEAKER_01: lace,
1:26:29
SPEAKER_01: dachshund,
1:26:30
SPEAKER_01: the little wiener dog,
1:26:31
SPEAKER_01: racing,
1:26:32
SPEAKER_01: back,
1:26:33
SPEAKER_01: back to me,
1:26:34
SPEAKER_01: Woody Allen and Diane Keaton,
1:26:36
SPEAKER_01: Macy's,
1:26:37
SPEAKER_01: ladder,
1:26:37
SPEAKER_01: paddle ball,
1:26:38
SPEAKER_01: daddy,
1:26:39
SPEAKER_01: sod,
1:26:40
SPEAKER_01: radio,
1:26:41
SPEAKER_01: Lady Bird Johnson.
1:26:44
SPEAKER_01: So the whole book is like that.
1:26:46
SPEAKER_01: It's just a list of words and phrases.
1:26:50
SPEAKER_01: But what's...
1:26:52
SPEAKER_01: amazing about it,
1:26:54
SPEAKER_01: aside from the fact that you're reading it and you start thinking like,
1:26:57
SPEAKER_01: oh,
1:26:57
I wonder what the question was on Family Feud that made
1:27:01
somebody say that.
1:27:02
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's really obvious and sometimes it's really not.
1:27:05
There start to be these little patterns that show up that are a
1:27:09
little unclear at first.
1:27:13
SPEAKER_01: Age,
1:27:13
SPEAKER_01: eggplant,
1:27:14
SPEAKER_01: a giraffe,
1:27:15
SPEAKER_01: I give them a hug,
1:27:16
SPEAKER_01: I give them a hug,
1:27:16
SPEAKER_01: I give them a kiss,
1:27:18
SPEAKER_01: a goat,
1:27:18
SPEAKER_01: a goldfish.
1:27:20
SPEAKER_01: And eventually you realize they're alphabetized by the second letter.
1:27:26
SPEAKER_01: And there's something so profound about the poetic effect of that.
1:27:33
If they were alphabetized by the first letter,
1:27:34
it would not be as sonically interesting.
1:27:37
SPEAKER_01: And it would be really obvious.
1:27:39
SPEAKER_01: You would see that pattern right away.
1:27:40
SPEAKER_01: But the fact that it's the second letter, it's not clear right away.
1:27:43
SPEAKER_01: And it creates a different kind of weird rhyminess and assonance.
1:27:49
It's not just like,
1:27:50
alliteration,
1:27:51
here's all the answers that started with R.
1:27:54
SPEAKER_01: So that is great because it just makes poetry out of nothing.
1:27:58
It just starts sounding really good because these rhythms and
1:28:01
rhymes that come out
1:28:03
SPEAKER_01: of nothing but this completely procedural ordering of found language.
1:28:09
SPEAKER_01: And it's just really, really, really fun to read.
1:28:12
And so the reason I think about it is it's such a good example
1:28:16
of a totally weird,
1:28:19
SPEAKER_01: chaotic concept
1:28:22
that like an execution is so much better than you would imagine
1:28:25
that it would be like,
1:28:27
SPEAKER_01: if you just heard the description and didn't read it,
1:28:29
SPEAKER_01: you would think like,
1:28:30
SPEAKER_01: but why?
1:28:33
SPEAKER_01: But then you read it and it's just like delightful.
1:28:35
SPEAKER_01: Like it's really hard not to laugh out loud when you're reading it,
1:28:38
SPEAKER_01: especially if you read it out loud.
1:28:41
And yeah,
1:28:42
I just,
1:28:43
I think of it as a great example of like,
1:28:45
it's like the idea isn't enough.
1:28:47
SPEAKER_01: The execution matters.
1:28:48
SPEAKER_01: And like, also like,
1:28:50
execution isn't really enough because something can be really
1:28:52
good but also feel pointless.
1:28:54
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
1:28:55
So this is just like an amazing unity of the concept and the
1:29:01
execution just feeling
1:29:02
SPEAKER_01: completely satisfying.
1:29:03
SPEAKER_01: It just feels very like art for art's sake in the best way.
1:29:08
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
1:29:08
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you may really have stumped.
1:29:12
I can't find that there's even like a really super expensive
1:29:15
used copy available anywhere.
1:29:16
SPEAKER_00: I can't, I can't find it.
1:29:18
SPEAKER_00: I've seen a lot of people talking about it.
1:29:20
It looks like it came out back in,
1:29:21
you know,
1:29:23
2009 and there's like a WNYC episode about it.
1:29:27
SPEAKER_00: So I can see that it's,
1:29:28
SPEAKER_00: it's out there and,
1:29:29
SPEAKER_00: and,
1:29:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:29:30
SPEAKER_00: it must be in the world,
1:29:31
SPEAKER_00: but I,
1:29:31
SPEAKER_00: I can't find it yet.
1:29:33
SPEAKER_00: I can't find it for sale.
1:29:35
SPEAKER_00: So yes, hopefully someone's listening will either say, hey, I've got one.
1:29:39
SPEAKER_00: I hope so.
1:29:40
SPEAKER_00: We'll slip it under the table or someone's listening and saying,
1:29:43
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:29:43
SPEAKER_00: I've got the means to publish that again.
1:29:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I hope so.
1:29:48
SPEAKER_02: That's so interesting.
1:29:48
SPEAKER_02: And it's so, like I said, these conversations are so fun because-
1:29:52
there starts to be connections which may or may not be true but
1:29:56
like parts of as
1:29:57
you were reading that reminded me so much of duck's new report
1:30:00
only because she
1:30:00
would do that same i mean i'm not saying the same thing but
1:30:03
just like these lists
1:30:04
where as you're reading that particular section it's like
1:30:07
doesn't necessarily make
1:30:08
a lot of sense but then it starts to create these patterns or
1:30:11
you start to like
1:30:12
think about you know how they connect and things so i'm not
1:30:15
saying that they're the
1:30:16
SPEAKER_02: same book by any means because they're definitely not but like
1:30:20
it's so interesting how things like that,
1:30:22
two books in conversation with each other.
1:30:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:30:24
SPEAKER_02: It sounds really good.
1:30:27
And definitely something I'd like to,
1:30:29
I would like to go through that experience.
1:30:30
SPEAKER_00: Cause it is tricky.
1:30:31
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:30:32
SPEAKER_00: when you,
1:30:32
SPEAKER_00: when you said what it was about,
1:30:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
1:30:34
SPEAKER_00: how I fully,
1:30:36
SPEAKER_00: fully trusting was still like,
1:30:39
SPEAKER_00: huh,
1:30:40
SPEAKER_00: how do I,
1:30:40
SPEAKER_00: how do you,
1:30:41
SPEAKER_00: how do you wrap your head around something like that?
1:30:43
But yeah,
1:30:43
I'm,
1:30:44
I would love the,
1:30:45
I would love to go through that experience for sure.
1:30:48
SPEAKER_00: But,
1:30:50
SPEAKER_00: All right, Paul, what's your last one?
1:30:52
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:30:53
Well,
1:30:53
my last one,
1:30:54
like I said,
1:30:55
I ended up doing three things,
1:30:56
not necessarily on purpose.
1:30:57
SPEAKER_02: So I did a novel, graphic novel, and then this is a nonfiction book.
1:31:00
And I think I have talked about it a little bit here and there
1:31:04
over the course of our podcast.
1:31:06
But I remember we were down in Albuquerque for a work thing and
1:31:10
we ended up going
1:31:11
SPEAKER_02: into the library there and they had one of those like library sale,
1:31:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:31:15
SPEAKER_02: like a dollar,
1:31:15
SPEAKER_02: two dollar kind of
1:31:17
SPEAKER_02: And I found this book called The World Without Us by Alan Wiseman.
1:31:21
And I picked it up and started reading the cover and just was
1:31:24
like drawn in right away.
1:31:25
SPEAKER_02: And so I bought it and this book, it just blew me away.
1:31:29
SPEAKER_02: And it's one of those I just think about,
1:31:30
SPEAKER_02: it reminds me a little bit the way you were describing your first book,
1:31:33
SPEAKER_02: Elisa,
1:31:33
SPEAKER_02: where it's just as I'm going about the world,
1:31:36
SPEAKER_02: it's one of those books I think about a lot.
1:31:38
SPEAKER_02: And so the premise is basically,
1:31:41
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:31:41
SPEAKER_02: what it says right in the title,
1:31:43
SPEAKER_02: like what would the world be like without humans?
1:31:46
SPEAKER_02: And so it's,
1:31:48
a mix of interviews he talks to scientists there's historical
1:31:53
examples there's lots
1:31:54
of data um but it's not dry it's if anything at times it almost
1:31:58
reads like a
1:31:59
thriller i guess in some ways because like for example he'll
1:32:03
talk about how if
1:32:04
SPEAKER_02: humans disappeared for whatever reason um in new york city
1:32:09
There would be no one to manage the pumps that control the
1:32:13
rainwater and things like that.
1:32:15
SPEAKER_02: So within a couple of days, all the subways would fill up with water.
1:32:19
SPEAKER_02: And then within a couple of,
1:32:20
SPEAKER_02: I think it was months,
1:32:23
SPEAKER_02: all the main thoroughfares of New York would start turning into rivers.
1:32:28
SPEAKER_02: And then over time,
1:32:29
SPEAKER_02: over the years,
1:32:30
the skyscrapers would start to break down and eventually they
1:32:33
would start toppling
1:32:33
SPEAKER_02: like trees.
1:32:34
And so it's got a little bit of like the Hollywood blockbuster
1:32:38
feel to it that
1:32:38
SPEAKER_02: makes it interesting.
1:32:39
SPEAKER_02: But it's not just that by any means.
1:32:42
SPEAKER_02: He talks about how, you know, at certain points, nuclear...
1:32:47
plants around the world would start to break down without
1:32:49
humans to manage them.
1:32:50
SPEAKER_02: And so it would start creating these very dramatic hotspots.
1:32:53
SPEAKER_02: And so there's a lot of that, like the big stuff happening.
1:32:55
But I think what appeals to me also is there's another side of
1:33:00
it that's all about,
1:33:02
SPEAKER_02: to me,
1:33:02
SPEAKER_02: what draws me to it as being a big nature writer
1:33:07
SPEAKER_02: or major reader.
1:33:08
SPEAKER_02: And I love the books about,
1:33:11
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:33:11
getting off and rediscovering these places that are still wild
1:33:15
in the world and
1:33:15
SPEAKER_02: things like that.
1:33:16
SPEAKER_02: And I think to me,
1:33:17
SPEAKER_02: there's something very peaceful about this book,
1:33:19
SPEAKER_02: which is kind of strange given the description,
1:33:21
SPEAKER_02: but knowing like,
1:33:22
SPEAKER_02: yes,
1:33:23
SPEAKER_02: we are screwing things up,
1:33:24
SPEAKER_02: but like eventually when we're gone,
1:33:27
SPEAKER_02: things will start to settle back down.
1:33:28
SPEAKER_02: It could take a long time in many cases, like plastics.
1:33:31
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, he doesn't shy away from the realities.
1:33:33
SPEAKER_02: Like he talks about how over at Rocky flats again,
1:33:37
SPEAKER_02: Lisa,
1:33:37
SPEAKER_02: you'll know here in near Denver,
1:33:39
there's this place where a bunch of nuclear waste was buried
1:33:42
and they actually had
1:33:43
graphic novelists or graphic designers come in and they were
1:33:47
basically trying to
1:33:48
SPEAKER_02: figure out like if somebody stumbles onto this site in 10,000 years,
1:33:54
SPEAKER_02: they put basically concrete blocks above,
1:33:57
SPEAKER_02: like as somebody's digging down through the earth,
1:33:59
they would come across these signs and they wrote the words in
1:34:02
different languages,
1:34:03
SPEAKER_02: but they also did like graphical depictions of like,
1:34:05
SPEAKER_02: do not dig further,
1:34:06
SPEAKER_02: stop.
1:34:07
SPEAKER_02: And so stuff like that is really fascinating.
1:34:08
SPEAKER_02: But anyways, he just talks about how,
1:34:12
SPEAKER_02: the world over time will return.
1:34:14
And obviously one of the examples he uses is the Chernobyl site
1:34:18
of how even where
1:34:20
SPEAKER_02: this horrible man-made disaster happened,
1:34:22
SPEAKER_02: nature has started to rewild that area.
1:34:26
And so there's a part in the New York Times review that I was
1:34:28
going to read about
1:34:29
SPEAKER_02: that section that really sums up,
1:34:31
SPEAKER_02: I think,
1:34:32
SPEAKER_02: what I love about this.
1:34:33
SPEAKER_02: It says,
1:34:34
SPEAKER_02: in the 30 kilometer radius around the Chernobyl nuclear plant,
1:34:37
where some bridges remain too hot to cross 20 years after the
1:34:40
1986 meltdown,
1:34:42
The author finds eerie peace in the forests full of moose,
1:34:46
lynx,
1:34:46
and radioactive deer.
1:34:48
Watching from inside his protective suit as a barn swallows
1:34:51
buzz around the reactor,
1:34:52
SPEAKER_02: Wiseman writes,
1:34:53
SPEAKER_02: you want them to fly away,
1:34:55
SPEAKER_02: fast and far.
1:34:56
SPEAKER_02: At the same time, it's mesmerizing that they're here.
1:34:59
It seems so normal,
1:35:00
as if apocalypse has turned out to be not so bad after all.
1:35:04
SPEAKER_02: The worst happens, and life still goes on.
1:35:08
SPEAKER_02: And I was just like, oh, I love it so much, it's...
1:35:11
SPEAKER_02: like a lot of the books I'm talking about,
1:35:12
SPEAKER_02: it's,
1:35:13
SPEAKER_02: there's a darkness there,
1:35:14
SPEAKER_02: but there's also,
1:35:15
I think the worst happens and life still goes on is maybe what
1:35:19
my unifying theme of
1:35:20
SPEAKER_02: some of these books that I didn't necessarily plan it that way,
1:35:22
SPEAKER_02: but I think it's just nice to know.
1:35:24
SPEAKER_02: And so,
1:35:24
SPEAKER_02: like I said,
1:35:24
it's weird to talk about a book about these huge topics of like
1:35:29
skyscrapers falling
1:35:30
SPEAKER_02: and like,
1:35:31
SPEAKER_02: it could have gone a very,
1:35:31
SPEAKER_02: like I said,
1:35:32
SPEAKER_02: Hollywood blockbuster way.
1:35:33
SPEAKER_02: But to me,
1:35:34
SPEAKER_02: what I remember about it is more of the idea of like,
1:35:37
SPEAKER_02: even in these bad times or when big things are happening,
1:35:40
SPEAKER_02: like there is some,
1:35:41
some piece to taking a bigger long view to the world so yeah
1:35:46
that book it's just
1:35:47
like i said it's one of those i picked up on a whim but i'm so
1:35:49
glad i did and i
1:35:50
would highly recommend if that sounds appealing to anybody to
1:35:53
pick it up we have
1:35:54
that book i haven't read it but i like i've seen it i've seen
1:35:57
it on our shelves i
1:35:58
think i don't know if john read the whole thing but he
1:36:00
definitely read parts of it
1:36:01
SPEAKER_01: but this is what i thought i remembered about it is this true that like
1:36:06
SPEAKER_01: pet dogs would die quite quickly because they're so dependent on humans,
1:36:11
but that pet cats would like thrive because they're all like
1:36:14
right on the edge of
1:36:15
SPEAKER_01: being feral.
1:36:16
SPEAKER_02: I don't remember that.
1:36:18
SPEAKER_02: That sounds right.
1:36:19
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that is the kind of stuff that he digs into.
1:36:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think you're right.
1:36:23
SPEAKER_02: And it makes total sense.
1:36:24
They would just forage and like,
1:36:26
you know,
1:36:26
buildings would just be full of cats.
1:36:28
SPEAKER_01: They'd be having a grand old time.
1:36:29
SPEAKER_00: New York city with all of its skyscrapers run by cats.
1:36:33
SPEAKER_00: No, for sure.
1:36:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:36:36
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, it's, it's amazing.
1:36:37
So yeah,
1:36:38
if,
1:36:39
if that appeals to you,
1:36:39
at least that you should grab it off.
1:36:40
SPEAKER_01: It does.
1:36:41
SPEAKER_01: It does.
1:36:41
SPEAKER_01: It sounds good.
1:36:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:36:44
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:36:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:36:46
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:36:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll give my last one.
1:36:48
SPEAKER_00: I did, you know, it wasn't necessarily intentional.
1:36:51
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder what,
1:36:52
if I would have tried to do something intentional with
1:36:55
switching up the genres,
1:36:56
SPEAKER_00: what would have come out?
1:36:56
SPEAKER_00: But I got three novels on my list and four,
1:37:01
SPEAKER_00: if you count Middlemarch too,
1:37:03
SPEAKER_00: just a little bit of a cheat.
1:37:05
But the last one that I'll bring up is William Maxwell's So Long,
1:37:10
See You Tomorrow.
1:37:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:37:11
SPEAKER_00: which I do think about this one all the time.
1:37:15
SPEAKER_00: And it's one of these books that I'll recommend to people.
1:37:18
SPEAKER_00: And I love asking them afterwards, you know, did you like it?
1:37:21
SPEAKER_00: Because...
1:37:22
they almost always step back and go,
1:37:25
you know,
1:37:26
there's a moment of like reverence.
1:37:28
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I loved that book.
1:37:30
SPEAKER_00: And I just I love so much about it.
1:37:33
SPEAKER_00: I love the story.
1:37:34
SPEAKER_00: I love what's going on in it.
1:37:37
SPEAKER_00: But I love the the inspiration for the story.
1:37:40
And this is where this is what I think about the most often is
1:37:44
you have someone who has grown up
1:37:48
SPEAKER_00: and has a regret in their past.
1:37:51
SPEAKER_00: It seems like a minor one.
1:37:53
SPEAKER_00: Maybe most people would get over it.
1:37:54
SPEAKER_00: We've probably all done something like this,
1:37:56
but he had a friend when he was young and they would play
1:37:59
together and they would say,
1:38:00
SPEAKER_00: so long,
1:38:01
SPEAKER_00: see you tomorrow.
1:38:03
SPEAKER_00: And then something happens in that friend's family.
1:38:05
SPEAKER_00: I won't spoil it.
1:38:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember how soon it's disclosed in the novel,
1:38:10
SPEAKER_00: but something happens in that friend's family and
1:38:12
SPEAKER_00: And they don't play together anymore.
1:38:15
SPEAKER_00: And it's several years later,
1:38:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:38:17
SPEAKER_00: when they're older,
1:38:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:38:18
SPEAKER_00: thinking,
1:38:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:38:19
SPEAKER_00: late teens,
1:38:21
SPEAKER_00: that they run into each other again,
1:38:23
SPEAKER_00: like in the school hallway or something like that.
1:38:27
SPEAKER_00: And this author doesn't say anything.
1:38:31
SPEAKER_00: just goes on.
1:38:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's the moment that he thinks about often in his life.
1:38:39
SPEAKER_00: And it's too late to make any amends.
1:38:42
SPEAKER_00: And how could you do it anyway?
1:38:43
SPEAKER_00: But it's too late.
1:38:45
He doesn't have the ability to even find this person or
1:38:48
anything like that.
1:38:49
SPEAKER_00: And so the best thing he can think of is...
1:38:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to write this.
1:38:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to write this book.
1:38:55
I'm going to tell this story from my own imagination as to what
1:39:00
my friend must have
1:39:01
SPEAKER_00: gone through as my one way to try to connect and empathize potentially.
1:39:06
SPEAKER_00: But there's just so much in this that I love.
1:39:10
SPEAKER_00: Like there's this quote says, it seemed like a mistake that
1:39:14
SPEAKER_00: And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't be.
1:39:18
Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was
1:39:21
a void that couldn't be crossed.
1:39:24
SPEAKER_00: And I love that as he's going through this act of trying to atone.
1:39:32
SPEAKER_00: By the way,
1:39:32
this is the book I read that made me think atonement is not
1:39:36
really that unique or
1:39:38
SPEAKER_00: even that profound.
1:39:39
SPEAKER_00: Ian McEwan's Atonement.
1:39:41
because I just think it does it so well,
1:39:42
because he's actually analyzing...
1:39:45
SPEAKER_00: what this means to try to, to try to connect through the stories.
1:39:50
SPEAKER_00: It feels a little Proustian too,
1:39:52
SPEAKER_00: now that I'm reading Proust,
1:39:53
SPEAKER_00: but it says what we,
1:39:55
SPEAKER_00: or at any rate,
1:39:56
SPEAKER_00: what I refer to confidently as memory,
1:39:59
SPEAKER_00: meaning a moment,
1:40:00
SPEAKER_00: a scene,
1:40:01
a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and therefore
1:40:04
thereby rescued from
1:40:06
oblivion is really a form of storytelling that goes on
1:40:10
continually in the mind and
1:40:12
SPEAKER_00: and often changes with the telling.
1:40:14
Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life
1:40:18
ever to be wholly acceptable,
1:40:20
and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange
1:40:24
things so that they
1:40:25
SPEAKER_00: conform to this end.
1:40:28
SPEAKER_00: In any case, in talking about the past, we lie with every breath we draw.
1:40:32
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a futile.
1:40:34
SPEAKER_00: He knows that this project is futile.
1:40:38
But there's also something powerful about storytelling and
1:40:41
about writing and about
1:40:42
SPEAKER_00: getting this out there.
1:40:44
SPEAKER_00: And so this book just goes in so many different directions.
1:40:47
SPEAKER_00: I think about it when I'm thinking about regret.
1:40:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about it when I think about memory.
1:40:50
I think about it when I think about writing and why we write
1:40:53
and trying to trying
1:40:55
SPEAKER_00: to explore something there.
1:40:57
This one is just one that I and I need to reread it because I'm
1:41:02
sure there's so
1:41:03
SPEAKER_00: much more in here.
1:41:03
SPEAKER_00: But it's sad.
1:41:05
SPEAKER_00: It's emotional.
1:41:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a great story.
1:41:08
SPEAKER_00: but there's all of these other angles that,
1:41:10
SPEAKER_00: that just continue,
1:41:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:41:12
SPEAKER_00: I continue to think about it as I,
1:41:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:41:14
SPEAKER_00: go throughout my own days and,
1:41:16
SPEAKER_00: and try to try to work through things,
1:41:19
SPEAKER_00: reinventing what I've been through.
1:41:23
SPEAKER_01: I think about that book a lot too.
1:41:25
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
1:41:26
SPEAKER_01: It's so beautiful.
1:41:27
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I think about it in terms of like,
1:41:32
books that are kind of two books that have like a breaking
1:41:34
point where they completely change.
1:41:36
SPEAKER_01: It's similar to like Mahalo drive.
1:41:39
SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
1:41:40
SPEAKER_01: And I think about the,
1:41:43
SPEAKER_01: the sculpture in that novel and I can picture it,
1:41:48
SPEAKER_01: but I'm also forgetting who the artist is.
1:41:50
You know,
1:41:51
it's like a skeletal structure of a house that he talks about
1:41:53
at one point.
1:41:54
SPEAKER_00: I do remember this.
1:41:55
SPEAKER_01: I saw it recently.
1:41:57
SPEAKER_01: It's at MoMA.
1:41:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:42:01
SPEAKER_01: It's called like,
1:42:03
SPEAKER_01: the castle at 3 a.m.
1:42:04
SPEAKER_01: or something like that.
1:42:05
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of like just like a hollow frame.
1:42:07
SPEAKER_01: Why can I not remember the artist?
1:42:10
SPEAKER_01: In any case, that's a yeah, I loved listening to you talk about that.
1:42:13
SPEAKER_01: That's such a beautiful book.
1:42:15
SPEAKER_00: The Palace at 4 a.m.
1:42:17
SPEAKER_00: by Alberto Giacometti.
1:42:19
SPEAKER_01: Giacometti.
1:42:20
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's right.
1:42:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:42:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he normally does the little skinny, the little skinny people.
1:42:28
SPEAKER_01: So
1:42:29
SPEAKER_01: It's like an unusual example.
1:42:32
SPEAKER_00: So interesting.
1:42:33
Until you brought that up,
1:42:34
I'd forgotten about the sculpture as part of this book.
1:42:37
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I remember that now.
1:42:39
SPEAKER_00: It makes me want to reread it.
1:42:41
SPEAKER_00: Again,
1:42:42
SPEAKER_00: it's interesting because some of these books I think about all the time,
1:42:44
SPEAKER_00: I kind of wonder...
1:42:47
SPEAKER_00: is that really what this book is?
1:42:49
SPEAKER_00: Or has it just become that for me?
1:42:52
That's what I was going to say when you're talking about the
1:42:54
fallibility of memory
1:42:54
SPEAKER_02: and how we retell these stories like that.
1:42:56
SPEAKER_02: I think about that all the time with these books too.
1:42:58
And when I do reread,
1:42:59
often I'm like,
1:43:00
geez,
1:43:00
this book is so different than I thought.
1:43:02
SPEAKER_02: And often that's in a good way.
1:43:04
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I'm like, oh, I don't see it the same way anymore.
1:43:06
SPEAKER_02: But it is so interesting.
1:43:08
You think about these books and you start to probably create a
1:43:10
narrative within
1:43:11
SPEAKER_02: your head of what it's about.
1:43:12
SPEAKER_02: And often that is true.
1:43:13
SPEAKER_02: But there are some edges where maybe it isn't.
1:43:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
1:43:16
I feel like often there's like one paragraph that you think
1:43:19
about so much that you
1:43:20
SPEAKER_01: imagine it's a really big part of the book.
1:43:22
SPEAKER_01: And then you go back and you're like, that's it?
1:43:24
SPEAKER_01: That was the whole... That was it?
1:43:26
SPEAKER_00: That was my experience when I reread The Invention of Morel.
1:43:29
SPEAKER_00: That's what I was going to say.
1:43:31
SPEAKER_00: I...
1:43:32
SPEAKER_00: I had all of these things and I loved that book.
1:43:34
SPEAKER_00: It's one of my favorite books because of how well it does X,
1:43:37
SPEAKER_00: Y,
1:43:37
SPEAKER_00: and Z.
1:43:38
SPEAKER_00: And I reread it to my oldest kids and was like,
1:43:43
SPEAKER_00: that's such a minor part of this book.
1:43:46
SPEAKER_00: It might even be like just a line or two,
1:43:49
SPEAKER_00: but it was what stuck out and what I thought about all the time.
1:43:51
SPEAKER_00: But it had grown,
1:43:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:43:53
SPEAKER_00: it had grown to be all that that book was about and how brilliant it was.
1:43:56
SPEAKER_00: I still loved it, but yeah, very different in my mind.
1:43:58
SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
1:44:00
I do wonder that sometimes as we think about these things and
1:44:05
it becomes part of us,
1:44:08
SPEAKER_00: how far do we move away from what it
1:44:10
SPEAKER_00: you know, quote unquote really is.
1:44:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, any final thoughts from anybody?
1:44:19
I have very much enjoyed our conversation and Elisa has been
1:44:21
very nice to have you.
1:44:22
I'd love to have you back for any topic whatsoever that you
1:44:25
want to go over at any
1:44:27
SPEAKER_00: time that you're like,
1:44:27
SPEAKER_00: Hey,
1:44:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm,
1:44:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm,
1:44:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm good to go.
1:44:29
SPEAKER_00: Yay.
1:44:30
SPEAKER_01: But next time I think of something that's like perfectly ambiguous.
1:44:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:44:37
that all right anything paul any any final thoughts no just
1:44:43
echoing what you said
1:44:43
thank you so much elisa it's been delightful to talk to you and
1:44:46
um yeah thank you
1:44:47
SPEAKER_01: yeah so fun we want to have you back very very soon
1:44:52
And we will be back listeners in a couple of weeks with our
1:44:56
celebration episode.
1:44:58
SPEAKER_00: It's episode 100 for whatever that's worth.
1:45:03
SPEAKER_00: And we've got questions from,
1:45:05
from a lot of you and Paul and I have decided we want to do a
1:45:08
giveaway and we'll,
1:45:09
SPEAKER_00: we'll,
1:45:11
Some of you hopefully will have heard about this even before
1:45:13
this episode goes out.
1:45:15
SPEAKER_00: But we want to give away five books,
1:45:18
SPEAKER_00: five of some of our favorite books to some of our listeners.
1:45:23
SPEAKER_00: So we will be doing a drawing.
1:45:26
Those who have already put together some send us questions,
1:45:31
you're just automatically in.
1:45:32
Of course,
1:45:33
if you win and you're like,
1:45:34
I don't want it,
1:45:35
we will respect you.
1:45:37
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, we'll put you in.
1:45:41
SPEAKER_00: But for anybody else who wants to enter,
1:45:42
SPEAKER_00: including if you've sent us questions,
1:45:46
SPEAKER_00: let us know some books or topics that you have enjoyed from our show.
1:45:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, give us that sense of satisfaction that we're out there.
1:45:56
SPEAKER_00: If it weren't for us,
1:45:58
SPEAKER_00: how much lesser would...
1:46:02
I'd love to hear if there's any books that you have discovered
1:46:05
through the podcast
1:46:06
SPEAKER_00: or any particular shows that you're like,
1:46:08
SPEAKER_00: that topic was fun for me.
1:46:10
SPEAKER_00: We'd love to hear about it.
1:46:11
SPEAKER_00: Again, I say that mockingly in a gloating way.
1:46:15
A lot of our ideas and books have,
1:46:17
of course,
1:46:18
come from our listeners and other people.
1:46:21
uh we just take take take all the time so you know we but we'd
1:46:24
love to hear what
1:46:25
you've taken away as well and that'll be an entry into the
1:46:29
podcast whether you send
1:46:30
it to us you know through a dm through instagram through blue
1:46:33
scry i will not see
1:46:35
it if you do it on twitter because i just don't go over there
1:46:37
anymore um so you
1:46:39
SPEAKER_00: know email or uh however however you want to reach out to us um
1:46:45
we will be happy to hear what your favorites are and we'll
1:46:48
enter you into the drawing.
1:46:49
SPEAKER_00: Does that encompass what we said, Paul?
1:46:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sounds perfect.
1:46:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
1:46:53
SPEAKER_02: It's going to be fun.
1:46:54
SPEAKER_02: We just figured it would be a nice little celebration and a recap,
1:46:57
SPEAKER_02: but like an excuse to hear from everybody,
1:47:00
SPEAKER_02: which we always love.
1:47:00
SPEAKER_02: It's one of our favorite things about doing this is just hearing,
1:47:03
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:47:03
SPEAKER_02: favorite books,
1:47:04
SPEAKER_02: favorite episodes,
1:47:05
SPEAKER_02: favorite guests.
1:47:05
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure Elisa will make some lists.
1:47:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, it's going to be fun.
1:47:09
SPEAKER_02: We're looking forward to it.
1:47:12
SPEAKER_00: But until then, thanks, everybody, and we'll see you soon.
1:47:14
SPEAKER_02: Bye, everybody.
1:47:16
SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
1:47:16
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
1:47:18
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Mooks and the
1:47:20
Gripes podcast.
1:47:22
You can follow the Mooks and the Gripes and get show notes and
1:47:24
book and film
1:47:25
SPEAKER_02: reviews at mooksandgripes.com.
1:47:28
SPEAKER_02: On Twitter, you can find Trevor at Mooks and Paul at BiblioPaul.
1:47:32
SPEAKER_02: You can also get information about future shows on our Patreon.
1:47:36
SPEAKER_02: If you'd like to donate to the show,
1:47:38
SPEAKER_02: anything and everything,
1:47:39
SPEAKER_02: even a dollar a month,
1:47:40
SPEAKER_02: helps and is deeply appreciated.
1:47:42
SPEAKER_02: You can become a patron at patreon.com slash mooks.
1:47:47
SPEAKER_02: Until next time.