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Books About HELL · Midnight Movie Theatre

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: All right, we're going to be talking about two books
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: about hell. The Divine Farce. which came out in 2009,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and Stephen Peck's A Short Stay in Hell, which also
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: came out in 2009. I did not know that until
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: just now, actually. I didn't look that up until right
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: when I sat down here. The Divine Farce was written
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: by Michael Graziano, and A Short Stay in Hell was
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: written by Stephen L. Peck. Both of these books are novellas.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: They're each about 100 pages apiece, so really quick reads.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: One of my friends let me borrow them, so I
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: read them back to back. I thought they were both
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: really interesting. It's going to be hard not to compare
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: them because I did read them back to back and
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: they do have a lot of similar themes. Kind of
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: a similar general theme, really. They're both about hell and
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: just kind of like a different idea of what hell
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: could be. So, A Short Stay in Hell. I would
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: say the main difference between the two is A Short
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Stay in Hell has a little bit more humor. wedged
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: in there. This guy, he ends up in the afterlife
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and there's like a big demon or something basically telling
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: him like, sup guys, you're in hell. This big demon's
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: just like, what's up everybody, you're in hell, have a seat.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And there's like all these folding chairs sitting out so
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: they sit down and in the windows of this room
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: they just see people getting tortured and they're just kind
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: of like, oh fuck, what's... Are there people getting fucking
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: tortured over there? He's like, actually, those are just TVs
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: we put on to scare you guys. And he kind
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: of shows them that, like, not really people getting tortured
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: out there. It's just part of the effect, you know,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: because you're in hell. It's kind of what you would
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: expect to see, right? And they're just like, yeah, I guess.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And then he sends each person off to their own,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: almost like, not necessarily like an individual hell, but like
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a hell that... reflects their life or their personality or
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: their hobbies or something to that effect. And basically explains
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: it like, yeah, I know most of you guys were
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: good people, but you were invested in the wrong religion.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: You were supposed to be praising Zoroastrianism, and instead you didn't.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: So most of you guys are going to be going
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: to hell because you did the wrong thing, the wrong religion.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And so this particular character that we follow gets sent
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: to a hell of libraries or like books or whatever,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: just like tons and tons of libraries, you know, almost
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: like an unlimited amount of floors, unlimited amount of rows.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: And the whole thing is he can get out of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: this hell if he finds a book that has his
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: entire life story printed in it. Each book is 410
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: pages with 40 lines of 80 characters on each page,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: each being one of the 95 regular characters on a
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: standard keyboard. So basically, he's like, oh, yeah, you know,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: that sounds like it's going to be hard to do,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: but it'll probably take me what, like, you know, a year,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: five years or something like that. And there's kiosks set
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: up everywhere where they can get any kind of food
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: they want. Basically, when he goes there, he's not the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: only person there. And eventually they start this like group
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: of people start to realize that there's a bunch of
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: people there and there's all these floors and all these
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: different areas. There's like a point in the book where
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: he goes on like a like a week long run
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: just to see how far he can get. And He
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: starts to miss the people back where he came from,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: so he runs back there and reports on what he found.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: And this whole time, you know, they're kind of like, yeah,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: we'll get to the story of our lives search soon enough.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: You know, that seems like something. Let's just check this
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: place out. Maybe kind of get to know each other first.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But then once they start looking in the damn books,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: they realize, oh, there's a version of every kind of
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: book imaginable on these shelves. So there will literally be
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: a book that's just periods for all the pages. And
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: then the next book might have all periods. And then
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the very last character is a comma. And that's its
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: own book. So they start to calculate how many possibilities
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: there could be for how many books there are in
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: this space. And eventually they kind of realize this isn't
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: going to be some task that we can even do
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: in 10 or 20 years. And it just goes on
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: and on. And I thought it was structured in a
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: really interesting way because you're basically like in this initial
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: chunk of time where he first gets sent here. And
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: then you fast forward. I think it's like maybe hundreds
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: of years or something like that. And you see what's
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: going on there and how they've kind of developed more
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of a civilization in this area. And then you jump
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: ahead even further, way, way down. And it kind of
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: wraps the book up from there. So yeah, I really
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: like this book. I thought it was a super easy read,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: really well written. The characters are really interesting. It just,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: it never stops. I feel like right off the bat,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: this book just goes and goes. And I think I
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: read it in like one sitting, which I mean, it's
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: 100 pages, so it's not that hard to do. If
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: you got a little bit of time set aside to
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: knock this one out, I would highly recommend it if
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: it sounds like something you'd be into. And then The
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Divine Farce. So this one I read second. So I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: already had a short stay in Hell in Mind. I
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: start reading this one. And like I said, it's similar
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: in length, like about 100 pages. This one, you pretty
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: much just start off with this guy right away. You
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: follow around him. a main character again, and you're just
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: kind of seeing everything from his perspective. So that's how
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the whole book is. And this version of hell, he
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: just kind of like is in a little, almost like
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a little cylinder, I think is the way they describe it.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: And basically he's crammed into this really confined space with
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: two other people, another guy and a woman, and it's
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: dark in there. They can't really see each other or anything.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And there's just enough room for them to kind of
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: like walk around in circles and And that's it. Basically,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the floor is like this really little grate that just
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: kind of like pushes into their feet and the wall
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: feels like stone. And the way that they're being nourished
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: is by pear juice that leaks in and drips down
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the walls. So they just like sit there and lick
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the walls to get this pear juice. And the pear juice,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I guess, like hydrates them, gives them nutrition and, you know,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: sustenance to live. And so I can't remember if it
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: says how much time they spend in there doing this,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: but eventually they kind of realize that there's like a
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: chip in the concrete. And so they start picking away
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: at it and they're just like taking turns picking away
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: at it. And eventually they break a hole into this
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: little cylinder, this concrete cylinder, big enough for them to
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: crawl out of. And when they do, they fall out
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: into this bigger area, basically like a big living space,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: like it's an indoor setup, I guess. But it's just
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: kind of like, again, almost like an endless hall. where
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: there's like separate stations. There's a bunch of other people
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: running around that I guess busted out of their containers
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: as well. And everybody's fighting for food and water. And
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: there's also like animals and dinosaurs and shit in this one.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't really get into the, uh, details. I
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: feel like as much as a short stay in hell did. Um,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: but you get the general idea. I feel like it
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: does paint a really good picture and I feel like
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: it focuses more on like the, uh, psychological aspect of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: what's going on and how every time this guy makes
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: it to a different area he he gets tired of
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: it and almost like wishes for the the previous space
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: that he was in even though you would kind of
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: assume that would be a worse position to be in
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: like there's a point where he kind of regrets busting
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: out of the initial cylinder even though they were like
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: crammed in there you know having to shit and piss
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: into these grates in front of each other and they're
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: like you know start banging each other and stuff like that.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: There's times that they're trying to kill themselves in there
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: by smashing their heads into the wall and stuff like that.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I think at least the other guy does that. It's
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: kind of an interesting idea how he breaks out of
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: one shitty situation and finds himself in what you would
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: consider a slightly better situation, but then always seems to
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: just kind of regret it. At least a little bit
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: or at least like question like whether or not his
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: other way of living was maybe better, maybe a better
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: way to be spending his time or something like that.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: or a less complicated situation, because he does kind of
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: keep finding himself wanting to progress into a different area
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  Speaker 1: that he hasn't already explored. One thing that I thought
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: was pretty interesting with both of the books is that
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: no one really references the devil or anything like that,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: even though they're in hell. I feel like in Short
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Stay in Hell, there's a demon or almost a henchman
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: that sends them to their particular hells. But there's really
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: not a lot of questioning like, is there like a
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: main guy? You know what I mean? Like a main
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: guy that's in charge of hell right now. At least
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: from what I remember. I might be wrong about a
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: short stay in hell. But there's not like a lead
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: devil guy in either one of them. I feel like
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: that whole idea was kind of like completely thrown out,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty interesting. There's also no references
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: to the hell from the movie Little Nicky, which I
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: thought was kind of unfortunate. And I honestly knocked both
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of these books down a star for me. If we
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: don't get to see that guy with the titties on
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: his head, then it's an instant thing. thumbs down, in
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: my opinion. If I don't get to see Adam Sandler
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: dunk a basketball with half of his face paralyzed, then
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. It's not as good as it could have been.