Do You Even Lit?

we're just normal men. We're just innocent men!

In parts 3 and 4 of Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1866 Crime and Punishment we get a lot more meat on Raskolnikov's 'extraordinary man' thesis.

How does it overlap with the concept of the Übermensch in Nietzsche and Hegel? Are we too deeply steeped in Christian morality to become 'extraordinary' without destroying ourselves?

We reconsider Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov, and Luzhin through this lens.

Cracking into the first two parts of Dostoevsky's 1866 classic Crime and Punishment.

The first surprising thing is that this is a conservative/reactionary book: it mocks the fancy new ideas of the youth, the spirit of revolution, naive utilitarianism, etc. Jordan Peterson laps this shit up. But did the moral panic over materialism hold up? Does modern society in any way compare with the turmoil of Dostoevsky's Russia, or are we at ...

The beauty of this book is immeasurable, and its kindness is infinite.

We all love Susanna Clarke's 2012 metaphysical thriller, which feels like a mashup of Borges/C.S. Lewis/Gone Girl. 

Venture deeper into the labyrinth with us:

Piranesi as amateur scientist: On indigenous knowledge, the dangers of naïve empiricism, achieving dominion over nature, and whether the Other kind of had a point.

Metaphysics of the House: Are abstraction...

holy shit this was hard. Our first attempt at shakespeare and it was a doozy!

Rich struggled through the original text and only had the vaguest idea what was going on. Cam watched every single movie adaptation and studied for two weeks but still got casually mogged by his girlfriend.

By the time we got done with the discussion we were all actually hyped to read more shakespeare so something must have gone right.

Covering such topic...

This one starts slow but it ends up being one of my favourite book clubs ever.

Camus' last finished novel was The Fall (1956). It has a lot of personal resonance for Rich and the other boys loved it too.

Loss of innocence: how much of our behaviour comes down to signalling? Is there such a thing as genuine altruism? Is it dangerous to learn about this stuff? Was David Foster Wallace's 'new sincerity' idea doomed from the outset?

Es...

Philip K. Dick is a sci-fi legend, but the boys have only ever seen the film adaptations of his work (Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly).

Dick's 1969 classic Ubik has us divided. Benny is mad that major premises are introduced and then abandoned, internal logic is sloppy, and the twist ending is lazy writing. Rich and Cam are charmed by the imperfections and think it heightens the sense of (un)reality. 

Is Ubik a meta...

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect.”

(who amongst us, etc)

This week we're talking Kafka's 1915 novella The Metamorphosis.

Rich swoons over Gregor and is deeply moved by his plight. Cam wonders whether the giant freaky bug might bear some responsibility for events. Benny starts out sorta lukewarm on the whole thing but comes around in the end.

Is thi...

Wrapping up Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which we all loved.

Nature vs nurture: the monster as proto-incel, to what extent do we feel sympathy for him, should Victor have made him a bride, self-loathing and recrimination, and whether hot people are actually more virtuous than ugly people.

Also: why rousseau was a giant piece of shit, the monster as Byronic hero, importance of pariahs and moral entrepreneurs, pitbull discourse, etc

...

Discussing chapters 1-10 of Mary Shelley's 1818 genre mash-up Frankenstein.

On Mary Shelley's stacked genetics, the 'scenius' with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, questions over authorship including a suspiciously accurate depiction of post-nut clarity.

Forbidden knowledge: are infohazards real, taking accountability for new technology, guilt and the disgust instinct, strong parallels with AGI, arguments for and against creating new ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTERS

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

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

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

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

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

The main stories we talk about:

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

Brief Interview #28 ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTERS

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

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

CHAPTERS

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

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

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

CHAPTERS

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