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?

Escaping the double bind: Choosing which status games to play, finding solace in sports and other explicit games, why hedonism doesn't work, moving awareness away from the self and towards others, dissolving the problem of a meaningless universe.

Performative castigation: Is Jean-Baptiste's judge-penitent stance actually coherent? The pitfalls of woke ideology, recursive traps of judging people, and why virtue signalling is good, actually.

Religious interpretations: The biblical fall, Jean-Baptiste as antichrist, the death of God, and organised religion as laundering scheme.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) worst opening segue competition
• (00:03:25) Is the pre-fall Jean-Baptiste a virtuous person?
• (00:07:22) Some personal reflections
• 00:17:10) Signalling theory and loss of innocence
• (00:30:19) How to cope with a bottomless pit of suffering
• (00:37:17) David Foster Wallace and the curse of pathological self-awareness
• (00:51:41) Judging the judge-penitent: has Jean-Baptiste really solved his problem?
• (01:02:48) Pro and anti-religious interpretations
• (01:14:24) Free will and (dis)continuity of personal identity
• (01:26:50) Strategies for escaping from the spiral of self-awareness
• (01:32:20) Is the idea of a meaningless universe a reductionist mistake?

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NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

Hamlet - Shakespeare

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky

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 metaphor for God? What are the parallels to Gnosticism, and who is the demiurge behind the false reality of half-life? Do people who experience psychotic breaks even know that it's happening? What does Plato have to do with all of this?

“He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside.”

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) intro to the world of Ubik
• (00:08:35) critique of PKD’s worldbuilding
• (00:20:10) Cold storage and half-life suspended animation
• 00:25:00) Why is everything decaying? entropy and platonic essences
• (00:34:43) Joe Chip’s search for Ubik + the battle between Jory and Ella
• (00:43:10) Christian parallels and PKD’s gnostic epiphany
• (00:58:35) Arguing whether the twist ending is lazy writing
• (01:06:28) Is PKD under or overrated?
• (01:09:54) Psychosis, psychedelics, and paranoia

SEND US MAIL:

douevenlit@gmail.com

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

The Fall - Camus

Hamlet - Shakespeare

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

“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 this story meant to be a depiction of depression? An autobiographical work about an artist becoming alienated from his philistine family? A Marxist commentary on capitalism? A subconscious Freudian incest thriller?

We fearlessly explore all of these interpretations... and if you can believe it, even more

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) reinterpreting kafka thru the lens of richard dawkins tweets
• (00:01:50) what kinda filthy vermin are we dealing with here??
• (00:06:57) arguing about what Gregor’s initial reaction means
• 00:15:44) part two synopsis: I didn't choose the bug life
• (00:19:17) Cam’s incest theory: who is the real parasite?
• (00:25:15) Metamorphosis as kafka's autobiographical self-therapy
• (00:36:30) Alienation and depression
• (00:44:12) genuinely upset about Gregor’s plight
• (00:50:48) Is kafka meant to be funny?
• (00:54:23) Refreshing subversion of realism
• (01:01:29) closing thoughts

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NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

Ubik - Philip K Dick The Fall - Camus Hamlet - Shakespeare