Do You Even Lit?

Some festive chit-chat and navel gazing on the year that was.  CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) big tiddy goth gfs and rival podcast recs (00:10:09) DYEL wrapped stats analysis (00:19:39) Third best book of the year (00:23:41) Second best book of the year (00:29:01) Best book of the year (00:33:11) Biggest stinker of the year (00:40:13) Best non-book club book or blog (00:56:25) Favourite movie or TV show of the year (01:03:53) What we're gonna do differently next year WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our hot takes, add your own, or ask a question.   NEXT ON THE READING LIST: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

We've been making eyes at the postmodernists for a while, but up until this point have lacked the stones to go take a ride on daddy Pynchon's rocket ship. Now that we have a little experience we thought we were ready for a mature and sophisticated lover like Gravity's Rainbow (1973): 800 pages long, and widely considered to be one of the greatest novels of all time. ...we were not ready. It's right back to clumsy virginal fumblings as we attempt to decipher the first 100 pages. A shameful and frankly demoralising experience for the boys. Does it get easier? Please dear god let it get easier. CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) introductory fumblings (00:06:19) Rocket warfare (00:12:40) Pirate, ACHTUNG, and the Firm (00:17:14) Slothrop’s psychic schlong (00:22:58) Roger Mexico the statistician (00:30:12) Reverse causality (00:36:16) I didn't get that reference   WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our hot takes, add your own, or ask a question.   NEXT ON THE READING LIST: ???

In 1987, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami set himself a challenge: to set aside his magical realism schtick and try to write one 'straight' novel in the realist tradition. The result was Norwegian Wood, in which the author-insert protagonist is transported back to his college days, breaking free of ennui and depression just long enough to sleep with a string of hot but crazy chicks (and giving each of them the greatest sexual experience of their life). Naturally it was a smash hit among the youth. Murakami was propelled to fame and had to move to Italy, hounded from his home country by a mob of shrieking Japanese girls intrigued by his magical but sad penis. But is the book actually any good? The boys are divided on this. We talk about Murakami's treatment of suicide, his portrayal of female characters, use of memory and nostalgia as a writing device, in which ways we relate to Toru Watanabe, which demographic this book aimed at, and in general whether this is a work of great art or should be relegated to r/iam14andthisisdeep. If you're a Murakami fan, please write in and tell us what we got wrong, and especially which other book of his you'd most recommend we read. CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) blather (00:05:06) On memory as a writing device (00:11:15) Portrayal of suicide (00:24:15) Toru Watanabe character analysis (00:36:03) Norwegian Wood as a teenage boy fantasy (00:49:20) A profound and deeply moving ending (00:54:30) Final judgments (00:58:25) Next book announcement + One Battle After Another argument   WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our hot takes, add your own, or ask a question.   NEXT ON THE READING LIST: Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein Gravity's Rainbow — Thomas Pynchon

This week we're reading James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916. Moments of adolescent significance: on heated dinner-time conversations, a child's keen sense of injustice,  the fear of burning in Hellfire, contemplating eternity, sexual guilt, and teenage rebellion. Which did we relate to the most?  Theory of aesthetics: why are evo psych explanations distasteful? Do Aquinas' three criteria give us an objective description of art? How about Stephen's 'impelled action' theory? can we tell propaganda, pornography and sermonising apart from the real deal? Does Joyce's novel kinda fail by its own lights? Overall vibes: What did we think of the prose style evolving in line with Stephen's maturation? Is Joyce fully sincere here or kinda making fun of himself? Is Stephen Dedalus a romantic hero or a teenage blowhard? Dare we tackle Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake?   CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) intro (00:05:54) Baby tuckoo and the moocow (00:14:35) Dinner time convos and unjust punishments (00:23:18) Hell and the true nature of eternity (00:33:38) Epiphany (seeing a hot girl at the beach) (00:40:15) Stephen’s theory of beauty and aesthetics (00:56:40) Did we like the book? WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our hot takes, add your own, or ask a question. NEXT ON THE READING LIST: Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein Gravity's Rainbow — Thomas Pynchon

This week we're discussing C.P. Snow's influential 1959 lecture 'The Two Cultures', on the growing division between literary and scientific intellectuals: "So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had." Why do literary types tend to be Luddites? Is it kinda good that hubristic tech bros refuse to read the classics? Has the gap narrowed or widened in recent decades? How closely does The Two Cultures map onto the stemcels vs shape rotators meme? And of course Cam analyses the various status dynamics at play. Trickling out episodes atm while Rich is on paternity leave. Normal service will resume shortly WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our hot takes, add your own, or ask a question. NEXT ON THE READING LIST: James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood