Do You Even Lit?

A man hasn't played in a year. He sits back down at the piano in front of a crowd, fumbles through the first set to polite applause, and then, with a little help from the band, wades out into the deep water without drowning.

  That's the ending of the 1957 short story we read this week. It's also roughly what happened to us. It's been a month since our last episode, the Nabokov we promised is off the table, and this was our first time back at the piano.

 Somewhere between a long argument about respectability politics, a detour through Isaiah 51, and a real investigation into whether scotch and milk is an actual drink, we found the rhythm again.

  "For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."

Raise your glasses of milk punch you filthy heathens. 

Next up: Cam has picked something "on the easier side". It's Dickens.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) synopsis: a Harlem algebra teacher and his heroin-addicted kid brother
(00:03:31) Taking Children Seriously in 1950s Harlem
(00:07:20) which way, African-American man? respectability vs art born of suffering
(00:12:06) the uncle scene: how much is down to white oppression?
(00:18:37) is Sonny's dream childish magical thinking?
(00:23:01) whose side is the reader meant to be on, Sonny's or his brother's?
(00:26:28) society needs extremists, just not in your family
(00:30:11) scotch and milk, the cup of trembling, and the final set
(00:36:02) do great artists need heroin?
(00:40:34) Sinners: a modern take on this story, or corny Oscar bait?
(00:43:59) Creole's blues speech + next book 

Next book 

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 

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Email us at douevenlit@gmail.com

Wrapping up Saul Bellow's Herzog, where the going gets tough and the tough take baths.

First up, the failed murder. Herzog gets his dad's old revolver, works himself into a state of total conviction that killing his ex-wife Madeleine and her lover is not just justified but righteous, and then loses his nerve at the last moment while watching the guy give his daughter a bath. A brothers K rerun?

Up next, potato love: Herzog's own dismissive term for humble, unglamorous sentimentality. The stuff he's spent the whole book mocking while secretly craving it. And Rich's new favorite concept handle. 

Finally, the Nietzsche breakup. A final burst of letters, an uncalled for closing shot at semen reabsorption as the fuel of creativity, and the implication that Herzog doesn't resolve his arguments so much as simply stop needing to win them. Plus the book's real-life backstory. 

Chapters

(00:00:00) intro, and loving Herzog more the second time around
(00:01:44) the custody plot: Herzog gets his dad's gun
(00:08:55) the Brothers Karamazov parallel: two men who couldn't pull the trigger
(00:15:10) potato love: Herzog's word for humble, unglamorous love
(00:22:46) the child-killing trial, and humanity's urge to bite and pity its food
(00:30:35) Madeleine takes June, and an unreliable narrator's sob story
(00:37:18) the final letters: making a clean break with Nietzsche
(00:40:54) Ramona, and giving up the 'great man' act for good
(00:47:15) Saul Bellow's real-life betrayal, and why he wrote a book instead of more letters

 

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Email us at douevenlit@gmail.com

"If I'm out of my mind, that's okay with me." 

Part 1 of our dive into Moses Herzog's breakdown. Like all the best books, Herzog follows a manic academic, freshly dumped by his second wife for his own one-legged best friend, who processes the whole disaster by firing off unsent letters to everyone from his mother to Eisenhower to Spinoza.

We get a peak into the 1964 version of the suffering olympics, which Rich obviously tries to tie back to New Zealand MPs and Nietzschean slave morality. 

Plus: how Christianity's meaning-making project curdled into Romanticism, then Hegelian historicism, then modern secular doomerism. 

Full transcripts are available at doyouevenlit.com, where you can filter and search episodes by key ideas, authors, and themes.

Timestamps
(00:00:00) how would a wizard signal being gay?
(00:04:11) announcing Herzog: Bellow's "bitch wife" genre and Jewish New York neuroticism
(00:09:30) sampling Herzog's letters and the appeal of saying what you really think
(00:14:22) the kaleidoscopic, disorienting structure of the opening chapters
(00:18:09) is Herzog a reliable narrator of his own infidelities?
(00:23:50) is Madeline really the schemer Herzog paints her as?
(00:27:38) the suffering Olympics: how Gersbach out-victims the man he betrayed
(00:36:56) Herzog's genius delusion, from Kanye West to Nietzsche
(00:48:05) tracing modern doomerism back to Christianity, via Romanticism and Hegel
(00:54:49) Bellow's own Marxist phase, and historicism's swing from hope to doom
(01:00:06) misunderstood genius or deluded narcissist? plus predictions for part 2
(01:04:47) outro: Rich's new site and building an AI oracle from your back catalog

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"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts."

— Middlemarch

The DYEL boys finally finished George Eliot's Middlemarch and finally answered the question of what this thing is about. At least we think we did: A 900-page long cope on being mid. 

Updated Website: We unveil the new Do You Even Lit website: doyouevenlit.com. It now has searchable tags by theme, book, and thinker and a breakdown of our most biggest obsessions: Christianity, David Foster Wallace, signalling, death, David Foster Wallace, and the sexual revolution.

Thwarted ambitions: Nobody seems to achieve what they set out to: Dorothea, Lydgate, Casaubon, even Bulstrode. We ask whether Eliot is simply describing reality or arguing against ambition.

Ordinary goodness: Related to the above, we unpack the famous final paragraph. Rich wonders if it's all just cope. And points out how it seems at odds with the real life of George Eliot, aka "Mary K", aka Mary-Ann Evans.

Full transcripts are available at doyouevenlit.com, where you can filter and search episodes by key ideas, authors, and themes.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) shiny new website
(00:14:04) Bulstrode scandal and Lydgate's innocence
(00:24:42) Lydgate, a failure?
(00:28:06) Emphasise on Middle
(00:32:11) Is this book anti-ambition?
(00:40:42) close reading of the final paragraph
(00:59:52) Rosamond's (slight) redemption
(01:14:03) Next book
 

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We love listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our hot takes, add your own, or ask a question.

NEXT UP:

Herzog by Saul Bellow

Rich reflects on his truly deranged reaction to the film, after entering a manic state and staying up all night penning a 2500 word rant.

Meanwhile Cam had a nice time at the cinema and gives it a soft seven. Benny liked it too, until he thought about it, and is now hopelessly hung up on whether you can fairly judge an adaptation of something you know so well.

Just after we recorded, Emily Wilson came out swinging with a review in the London Review of Books, in which she shares many of our disappointments:

Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words.

Oof. anyway, 7/10

Full transcripts are available at doyouevenlit.com, where you can filter and search episodes by key ideas, authors, etc.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) a normal and proportionate reaction
(00:07:25) Homer's Odysseus vs the Matt Damon character
(00:22:59) nostalgia for Nolan blowing our teenage minds
(00:29:30) Making Zeus's law central to the entire plot
(00:39:46) do we like the treatment of the Gods
(00:45:52) woke casting discourse and post-Christian morality
(00:59:52) Half-hearted slaughter of the suitors
(01:05:53) final ratings + has book club ruined our ability to enjoy things

WRITE US:

We love listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our hot takes, add your own, or ask a question.

NEXT UP:

Middlemarch finale

Herzog — Saul Bellow