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The Odyssey, part 2: Failsons and deadbeat dads
This week we finally shut up about translations and get into some juicy themes and character analysis. Telemachus: why is he such a dweeb compared to his dad? Rich argues that he's doing the best he can growing up with an absent father. The others are less sympathetic. Odysseus: is his paranoid murderous rampage justified? what are his singular heroic attributes? Is he portrayed more as admirable or a hubristic figure? Why won't his men obey him? On homecoming: Why was Odysseus away for so long? Was he kinda dragging his heels on the return voyage? How much strange was he getting? What motivated him to finally come home? The Ancient Greek marshmallow test: exploring the recurring themes of self-denial, time preference, binding mechanisms, and whether playing the long game could arguably be the central theme of the whole poem. CHAPTERS (00:00:00) Telemachus the failson (00:19:39) why the poem spends so much time on household politics (00:29:31) Bronze Age morality redux: what have we learned? (00:36:28) The Ancient Greek Marshmallow Test (00:45:12) Odysseus’ slow homecoming (00:57:04) Godhood and rat bastard cunning (01:13:07) Suitor slaughtering time (01:17:25) Final thoughts on Odysseus and bronze age heroism (01:32:48) Listener mailbag and next book announcement WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi. NEXT ON THE READING LIST: White Noise - Don DeLillo
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1:37:51
Emily Wilson's The Odyssey, part 1: Bronze age perversion
WOKE classics professor DESTROYED by three random guys who've never read homer before!!! just kidding we love it. Wilson translation discourse: is she really importing her feminist beliefs into the text? has she stripped the grandeur out to take 'complicated' Odysseus down a peg? what are the connotations of sluts and slaves? is the fancy language of other translators really just stylistic anachronism? who would win in a fight between the yass queens and the greek statue avatars? Odysseus the hero: what's with all the false modesty? where is the line between seeking glory and outright hubris? did he do the Cyclops dirty or did the rude savage get what was coming to him? a comparison of the Greek heroic obsession with honour and social status vs Byronic heroes and modern superheroes. Bronze age morality: which ethical framework does it correspond to? is the hospitality stuff a useful cultural adaptation? same for the tit-for-tat honour culture? do the greek gods enforce morality, or they more like regular capricious people who happen to have super powers? what are the other big differences to judeo-christian morality? This episode is pretty light on actual plot and character stuff but I promise we will get into it much more next week: especially the ousting of the suitors, cunning Penelope, Telemachus arc, etc. CHAPTERS (00:00:00) intro and initial reactions (00:04:52) does Wilson strip the majesty out of the poem? (00:19:50) wading into the woke and anti-woke accusations (00:36:32) Civilisation vs barbarism: sympathy for the Cyclops (00:47:57) Walking the line between fame and hubris (00:54:00) Bronze age morality: you gotta give respect to get respect WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi. NEXT ON THE READING LIST: White Noise - Don DeLillo
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1:10:36
Nikolai Gogol: Cutting your nose to spite the faceless bureaucracy
"For how could the nose, which had been on his face but yesterday, and able then neither to drive nor to walk independently, now be going about in uniform?" We take a break from reading novels and take a quick nose dive into Gogol's famous 1830s short story, talking absurdity, bureaucracy, and Russian wives. Status and bureaucracies: The most straight forward reading is a satire 19th century Russian bureaucracies and status seeking. Benny outlines outlines the table of ranks and the boys consider the pros and cons. Inconsistencies and the absurd: Rich is frustrated with the lack of internal inconsistency and doesn't buy George Saunders defence of the story as self-aware of its limitations. Gogol's nose: Perhaps the story can be understood via a more personal lens. Benny points out Gogol's insecurities about his own noise which may be reflected in Major Kovalyov’s obsession with his appearance. CHAPTERS (00:00:00) Chitter chatter (00:07:14) Quick summary of The Nose (00:11:05) Is this story even good? (00:16:00) Absurdism and surrealism (00:21:20) George Saunders defends The Nose (00:24:32) The Table of Ranks (00:29:18) Gogol's nose (00:36:15) Listener feedback WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi. NEXT ON THE READING LIST: The Odyssey - Homer (Emily Wilson translation) White Noise - Don DeLillo
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38:40
Blood Meridian, part 2: It's time for some game theory
"He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die." Wrapping up the second half of our discussion on Cormac McCarthy's 1985 classic, in which various chickens come home to roost. The Glanton gang's downfall: on the run from the Sonoran cavalry, mercy killings, greed and symbolism of coins, the takeover of the ferry, the Yuma strike back, the judge's apocalypse-chic fashion, the Idiot plays his part (??). On violence and human nature: Rich makes the base case that humans don't have a 'true' nature but respond to local incentives, Benny finds some logic in the conservative tradition for avoiding a major upset to the fragile equilibrium of modern civilisation, and Cam adds game theoretic reasons for having a government or third party that can make credible threats of violence. What makes the Kid different: Rich thinks he isn't any more moral than the rest of the gang, but we end up coming up with a pretty good explanation for why the judge singles him out for opprobrium and considers him such a disappointment. On the sunset of the Wild West: the kid becomes the man, the cycle of violence perpetuates itself, mass slaughter of the buffalo, McCarthy's satirical skewering of manifest destiny, interpreting of the epilogue and the last dance. Also: some general thoughts on tackling our first McCarthy, his idiosyncratic writing style, and the ambiguity around his antagonist's true identity. CHAPTERS (00:00:00) chitter chatter (00:09:08) The Glanton gang’s downfall (00:25:00) The Idiot (00:32:33) Cultural technologies for reducing violence (00:45:33) What makes the Kid different? (01:03:06) Greed, exploitation, and the end of the Wild West (01:13:13) The Bonepickers: the cycle of violence repeats (01:22:12) The last dance: Is the judge a supernatural being? (01:49:40) Summing up and last-minute token criticism WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi. NEXT ON THE READING LIST: The Nose - Gogol (short story) The Odyssey - Homer (Emily Wilson translation) White Noise - Don DeLillo
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1:54:16
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, part 1: A legion of horribles
Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Yell wake more than the dogs. Rich is a big McCarthy head. For Benny and Cam, it's their first taste, and we're going straight to the top shelf: the 1985 epic historical novel Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West. In this discussion we cover the first half of the book (chapters 1-12) as a meditation on violence, manifest destiny, self-mythology, and McCarthy's own cunning plot to positioning himself within the literary canon. At the centre of it all there is the judge: a towering, hairless enigma who might be a false god, or a devil... or something even worse. CHAPTERS (00:00:00) quick background (00:06:07) introducing the Kid and the judge 00:12:46) why did Captain White’s expedition fail so badly? (00:24:54) Comanche war party run-on sentence fever dream (00:34:12) Sometime come the mother, sometime come the wolf (00:42:00) the strangely egalitarian Glanton Gang (00:56:13) Judge Holden piss-infused gunpowder volcano massacre (01:15:19) Decoding the story of the harness-maker and the traveller (01:28:01) Goodhart’s law in scalp-hunting bounties (01:34:48) First impressions of McCarthy (01:37:32) Listener mail: Knausgaard and autofiction rant revisited WRITE US: We love listener feedback. Send us a note at [email protected] to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi. NEXT ON THE READING LIST: The Odyssey - Homer (Emily Wilson translation)
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1:42:39