This week we tackle another short story by Ted Chiang: From his 2019 Exhalation collection Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling.

Ludditism and cognitive tool breakthroughs: we go through the pros and cons. Rich wants to go to the moon. We're not sure how much of a luddite, or dare we say relativist, we should make Chiang out to be.

Fallible memories: just how bad are our memories? Benny and Rich have opposing intuitions,

Special guest episode coming soon!

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) Summary
• (00:00:00) Chiang, a luddite?
• (00:00:00) Founding myths
• (00:00:00) Cognitive tools
• (00:00:00) Fallible memories
• (00:00:00) Final thoughts

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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 ON THE READING LIST:

• Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
• One Hundred Days of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This week we wrap up our discussion of Ursula LeGuin's 1974 classic The Dispossessed.

Simultaneity physics: just a mcguffin, or deeper thematic significance? How is it different to a block universe? Does this count as hard sci-fi?

on the [redacted] scene: why would LeGuin include this? how are we supposed to feel about our hero Shevek? why would capitalism make me do this??

Final thoughts on the book: was Shevek's arc satisfying? who would we recommend it to? are we gonna read more LeGuin?

Ted Chiang story coming soon. plus special guest episode!

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) shevek’s arc or lack thereof
• (00:11:20) talking about THAT scene
• (00:16:40) Simultaneity theory unpacked
• (00:25:45) Final thoughts on the book
• (00:35:10) special guest announcement

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 ON THE READING LIST:

• Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling - Ted Chiang
• Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
• One Hundred Days of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A brilliant physicist grows disenchanted with the stifling anarchist society of his home planet, defecting to a capitalist world in the hopes of finding true freedom...but what he finds only horrifies him.

Cam says Ursula K. Le Guin's 1974 award-winning piece of sociological fiction is a leftist pamphlet. Benny and Rich call bs.

who's right? let us examine the textual evidence.

On incentives: Are social sanctions powerful enough to get everyone to work voluntarily? Can an economy function without price signals and division of labour? How does crime and justice work with no police or courts? Do we have any existence proofs of flourishing anarchist societies?

On family life: Is having your children raised by other people as grotesque as it sounds? How about mere copulation without monogamy? Or living in communal dorms? The boys are much more sympathetic to the idea of ditching compulsory education, but wonder if unschooling etc is a luxury belief.

And the million-dollar question: from behind the veil of ignorance, would we rather be born on Anarres or Urras?

A fun wonky discussion of the central ideological clash. In part 2 we'll try to talk more about the characters and the story.

Also: a humiliating question in the reader mailbag! bold of you to assume we actually read books outside of the podcast.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) an ambiguous anarchist utopia
• (00:09:33) communal parenting, unschooling, and luxury beliefs
• (00:19:10) soft coercion through social norms
• (00:33:18) the free-rider problem and central planning
• (00:42:52) capitalism as the root cause of all antisocial behaviour
• (00:48:02) crime rate is zero if you don't have any laws hehe
• (00:59:42) has real syndicalist anarchism ever been tried?
• (01:04:37) how good is le guin’s worldbuilding
• (01:15:21) reader mailbag: which new releases from living authors do we read immediately?

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 ON THE READING LIST:

• Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling - Ted Chiang
• Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
• One Hundred Days of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots.”

After a break, the boys jump into the 1980s po-mo White Noise by Don DeLillo. We talk about the denial of death, toxic airborne events, and Baudrillardian copies of copies of copies (of copies...)

Simulacra: The boys shake off their reddit I Love Science teenage years and start to embrace all things post-modernism. Namely, Baudrilliard's idea of the Simulacra where some "signs" no longer point to any underlying reality.

Denial of Death: A fairly straight-forward retelling of Ernest Becker's Denial of Death: We're all terrified of death, so we build our entire lives to avoid confronting it. Cam and Benny try denying Becker's denial thesis.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) Chitter chatter
• (00:03:13) Quick summary
• (00:09:16) The most photographed barn in America
• (00:13:51) Post-modernism
• (00:16:35) Baudrillard's Simulacra
• (00:24:26) How po-mo is DeLillo himself
• (00:32:18) Fake preferences & signalling
• (00:36:36) Airborne Toxic Event
• (00:55:17) Fear of Death
• (01:17:50) Ending and Jack's arc
• (01:31:26) Final thoughts

WRITE US:

We love listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

• Ursula Le Guin - The Dispossessed
• Ted Chiang - Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling
• Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything is Illuminated

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 douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

• White Noise - Don DeLillo

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 douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

• White Noise - Don DeLillo

"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 douevenlit@gmail.com 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

"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 douevenlit@gmail.com 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