Wrapping up our discussion of Philip Roth's American Pastoral, in which the Swede is finally reunited with his missing daughter. it's bleak.

On losing your daughter: Can you save people from themselves? Should the Swede have dragged Merry out by the hair? Did he do anything wrong, or is he torturing himself for nothing?

The American berserk: Was '60s counterculture violence a freak aberration, or just a manifestation of the undercurrent that lies beneath the pastoral dream? Is Roth an old man shaking his fist at clouds? Or is he making a clever point about the obliviousness of those who live behind white picket fences?

Plus: Roth vs Dostoevsky, in praise of blue-haired activist types, and the problem of assimilation.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) Roth vs Dostoevsky (00:10:00) Merry's motivations and lack of interiority (00:16:52) Coercing loved ones to save them from themselves (00:23:53) Champagne socialists are good akshully (00:26:20) Violence in america always has been meme (00:40:25) Roth's pessimism about assimilation (00:45:20) Roth's pessimism about knowing your fellow man (00:55:10) next book(s) announcement

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NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

• The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Cathedral — Raymond Carver

The Swede was the poster boy for the American dream.

Football star. Marine. Marries a beauty queen. Inherits dad's glove factory and treats the workers like family. Buys the stone farmhouse in Old Rimrock, New Jersey. Loves his daughter unconditionally. Protests the Vietnam War in his own measured way, just to show her he's on her side.

Then his precious little girl blows up the local post office and kills a man.

"This says a lot about Society."—Philip Roth

In this episode, covering the first five chapters of Roth's Pullitzer prize-winning novel, we find ourselves a book club divided.

Rich hated the opening frame story. Nathan's over-interpretation of the Swede's every fart is written that way on purpose but that doesn't make it any less of a suffocating 80 pages to wade through. File under 'writers wanking themselves off about writing'.

meanwhile Ben is deeply moved. He defends the frame story and mounts a convincing case that it's doing real work on memory, regret, and mortality.

Cam is kind of on the fence but overall he likes the book. "I like the book."—Cam

Opinions will no doubt change as we move into the second half but there's one thing we can say for sure: Basketball was never like this, Skip.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) hot takes: mid-wit or masterpiece? (00:03:35) synopsis and the Zuckerman frame story (00:07:48) the Swede as WASP-adjacent golden boy (00:13:59) is the American Dream ever not a fantasy (00:17:21) Merry gets radicalised: a parent's worst nightmare (00:25:2) Rich rant on Zuckerman/Roth's cloying line-by-line exegesis (00:31:50) Benny's defence of the frame story (00:36:18) would you go to your 50-year high school reunion? (00:44:37) Woolf did it better tho

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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:

• The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin

Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde really gets the juices flowing. Rich tells on himself big time, we find out we're all faking our authentic selves, and Benny is forced to bite some weird philosophical bullets.

The Ring of Gyges: Are all men secretly depraved? How much bad stuff would you actually do if you had total anonymity? Rich says a lot; Benny is suspiciously optimistic.

A typology of evil: Teasing out the banality of evil vs sociopathic indifference vs pure sadism. Where does Hyde fit? How does someone develop a taste for cruelty? On the opponent process model, why serial killers escalate, and our porn viewing habits.

Virtue ethics vs utilitarian brain: Rich is losing faith in galaxy-brained consequentialist reasoning. Can you corrupt yourself by consuming bad things even if no one is harmed? On the Westworld problem, violent video games, and other gnarly thought experiments.

Incongruous f*ggots: do we feel like a unified self or a coalition of competing entities? Why does Cam hide his books when his uncle comes to visit? On code-switching and the different masks we wear.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) Listener mail: Nicole and Stefan (00:06:48) synopsis and the big twist (00:16:25) The perfect crime (00:21:53) Hyde's sordid pleasures (00:24:16) the Ring of Gyges: are people good when no one's watching? (00:29:43) A typology of evil (00:38:49) Developing a taste for sin (00:51:14) utilitarian brain vs virtue ethics (01:05:34) Is there anything beneath the mask

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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:

• American Pastoral — Philip Roth

IMMORTAL ASEXUAL CLONES: YES NO? Did aella's birthday gangbang generate positive externalities? Why is Cam's fridge full of dead chickens?

These are the big questions of our age and we are the only ones brave enough to tackle them.

Join us as we wrap up our discussion of Houellebecq's Atomised (also known as The Elementary Particles).

The sexual marketplace has no safety net: Houellebecq says individualism devours the rational structures meant to protect us. Rich argues we've already mostly solved this problem in the economic realm. Sex is harder tho. Are there any positive-sum status games to play here?Why do we tolerate redistributive policy for wealth but not for sex? Is Freddie deBoer a hypocrite for clowning on incels?

Bruno visits the Lieu de Changement: A sex commune with much kindly compassion for the outcasts masturbating on the fringes. Could this scale beyond extremely rule-following Germans? Is enforced monogamy the real solution, or has that ship long since sailed?

Houellebecq's rhetorical sleight of hand: is paternal love purely instrumental? Do hippies really have a direct lineage to sadists and serial killers? Is the hedonic treadmill of transgression a real thing? probably not but we love our cheeky boy.

One trillion identical Cams: Michel's solution is to eliminate sexual reproduction, individuality, and desire entirely. Would this even work? Is H being serious or just proving the problem is insoluble? What happens to science and progress in a world with no genetic or ideological diversity?

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) penis size chat (00:05:41) Brave New World and other failed utopias (00:15:30) The intractable problem of inceldom (00:25:58) Sexual social democracy and compassion for the lone masturbator (00:37:22) Houellebecq's rhetorical sleight of hand (00:41:30) the hedonic treadmill of transgression: hippies to serial killers (00:47:25) positive externalities of aella's birthday gangbang and other status games (00:54:01) Rich rants about positivism and quantum physics woo (01:00:22) the third metaphysical mutation: asexual immortal clones (01:11:12) Next book announcement

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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:

• Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson
• American Pastoral — Philip Roth

Houellebecq's 1998 novel Atomised (also known as The Elementary Particles) is prophetic, provocative and absolutely filthy.

This chat covers the first ~200 pages, with plenty to get the juices flowing:

On the sexual revolution: Are inceldom and looksmaxxing the inevitable consequences of the intrusion of market forces into every facet of human society? Houellebecq was really ahead of the game here. If Clavicular did not exist, would it be necessary to invent him?

Fertility crisis: Can we rely on new technologies to save us from population crash? Rich argues that this time might really be different; Benny is more optimistic. Do any of us really want to RETVRN to forced monogamy? Is liberalism at risk of extincting itself? Which cultures will win the memetic battle?

...and more

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) Metaphysical mutations and historical determinism (00:08:00) Bruno the proto-incel and Michel the proto-asexual (00:15:30) Mother nature is bad, actually (00:21:50) Clavicular and the sexual marketplace (00:32:36) Enforced monogamy and slut shaming (00:42:30) The fertility crisis and population crash

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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:

• Atomised — Michel Houellebecq (part 2)

This week's between-novel quick read is Stefan Zweig's The Royal Game: A Chess Story, written in 1941, immediately before Zweig obliterated his map.

We argue over the perfect answer to the 'desert island book' question, whether it's possible to fracture your own mind into pieces, why Cam sucks at chess, and whether we should pressure our kids to become pro athletes/chess prodigies/concert pianists.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) plot summary (00:05:43) What’s the perfect desert island book? (00:17:00) Tulpas and fractured psyches (00:26:10) Our own chess performance (00:34:56) On monomania and pressuring kids into sports/music/chess

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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:

• Atomised — Michel Houellebecq

Tell me if you've heard this one: A mentally unstable old man abuses his position of power to pursue his own personal agenda. He alternates between smooth talking—tremendous moxie, the best speeches—and threatening the LOSERS and HATERS who stand in his way. He runs roughshod over checks and balances, ignores the norms of civil society, and whips his followers into a fervour against an imagined enemy. In his egotistical mania, he takes down everyone else with him.

We are talking of course about Herman Melville's MOBY DICK (chapters 81-135).

Rich gets political: On Melville's egalitarian dream, the milk and sperm of human kindness, Ahab as demagogue, why the crew don't mutiny, parallels to the current political moment, and Latin America as a cautionary tale. Does Rich have a point here, or has he fallen victim to Ahab Derangement Syndrome?

Benny is all symbolism-ed out: Bad omen after bad omen, we get it. We can see the ending coming a mile away. Has Melville created too rich of a feast for us? Does the explicit fatalism make Ahab a more or less interesting character? Did any of us feel any narrative tension in this last third of the book? What is with the pacing?

What's it all about: Cam proposes the 'interpretation interpretation'. We talk about the limitations of Ahab's approach to meaning-making, vs Ishmael's more pluralistic approach.

And our final thoughts on tackling this behemoth of a book.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) don’t cry for me argentina (00:07:30) what did we think of the final section? (00:16:02) What does it all mean? (00:20:30) Ahab vs Ishmael meaning-making project (00:28:23) overdosing on omens and symbolism (00:37:40) Pip the cabin boy (00:44:07) The milk and sperm of human kindness (00:47:48) Ahab the demagogue (00:59:18) Next book 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:

• The Royal Game — Stefan Zweig
• Atomised — Michel Houellebecq

Quick film review before we get back to the final part of Moby Dick.

Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited Frankenstein adaptation is absolutely cleaning up in the Oscar nominations, including a nod for Best Picture.

Benny and Rich make the comparison with Mary Shelley's source material and find it to be sadly wanting (altho we do have some nice things to say).

On the dumbing-down of nuanced morality stories, and the ubiquity of daddy issues/therapy speak in modern media. Can't a guy just be a crazy hubristic scientist anymore??

Plus: a brief detour through the horror of quantum immortality.

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:

• The final third of Moby Dick
• The Royal Game — Stefan Zweig
• Atomised — Michel Houellebecq