Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

A recommendation letter shouldn’t cost half your life—unless your advisor died, went to hell, and your future depends on dragging him back. We dive into R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis with a frank look at ambition, institutional harm, and the uneasy bargains that fuel elite academia. Two scholars descend through a Dante-coded underworld where each level doubles as a metaphor for pressure, plagiarism, coercion, and the cult of genius. The result is a sharp, unsettling exploration of what happens when knowledge outruns empathy.

We unpack Alice Law’s razor-edged drive and the tattoo that locks every memory in place, turning trauma into an always-on loop. Opposite her stands Peter Murdoch, brilliant yet sheltered, until betrayal, illness, and guilt force him to confront the machinery that made him. Together they meet monsters, mind-bending traps, the haunted River Lethe, and legends like the Krypkeys—spectacle artists who promise to return from hell and prove how performance culture devours truth. Threaded through it all is Jacob Grimes, a magnetic mentor who personifies institutional narcissism: he extracts labor, steals ideas, and leaves students competing for scraps of approval.

We challenge the myth of meritocracy and ask whether ruthless people rise because the system amplifies them, not because they’re better. We wrestle with the book’s most divisive choices, the ache of betrayal among peers, and the power of a simple apology to start repairing what prestige politics fractures. If you care about dark academia, literary mythmaking, power dynamics, or how memory and ethics shape scholarship, this conversation goes deep and comes back with heat.

If the episode hits a nerve, share it with a friend, subscribe for more fearless book talk, and leave a quick review—what did Katabasis make you question most?

Transcript

Welcome To Lit On Fire

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Lit on Fire, the podcast where literature meets controversy, where banned books, silenced voices, and dangerous ideas refuse to stay quiet. From classrooms to courtrooms, novels to news cycles, we explore how stories challenge power, expose injustice, and ignite social change.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Our logo, a woman bound to top a burning stack of boat, isn't just an image, it's a warning and a promise. A warning about what happens when voices are raised, and a promise that stories once lit are impossible to without.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

So if you're ready to question, to argue, to feel uncomfortable, and to think deeper, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

I'm Peter Wetzel.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

And I'm Elizabeth Hahn.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

And this is Lit on Fire.

First Impressions And Reread Value

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Welcome back. Today we're descending into the underworld with R. F. Quang's Katabasis, a novel that mixes dark academia, theology, ambition, and the terrifying cost of intellectual power. At its core, katabasis is about a literal descent into hell. But like any good underworld journey, the real question is what kind of person comes back up? Kuang has built a reputation for forcing readers to confront uncomfortable questions about power, academia, colonialism, and moral compromise. And katabasis may be her most philosophical work yet. So tonight we're asking, is knowledge worth moral corruption? Does academia reward brilliance or sociopathy? And if hell exists, what kind of system built it? Let's descend. So, Peter, what did you think about this book?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

The first time I read it, I was absolutely enchanted by it. It just seemed like a fairy tale story to me, albeit a dark one, about two people going into hell for very strange reasons, but I absolutely loved it and it seemed like it was a perfect story overall. But the more I've thought about it, the more issues I have with some parts of the book. So it kind of fell from a five-star perfect book to maybe a four-star book to me. R Th Long has a very academic writing style. Her books are always part story, part textbook. If you're not careful, you can get lost in some of the information dumping. But I find that it just enhances the beautiful stories that she writes, and I take it all in stride and I can enjoy her books even if I don't quite understand all the information that she's giving me. What about you?

Synopsis Of The Descent

SPEAKER_00 2:24

I think the book's growing on me. Listening to it is exercise. It is mind exercise. So I agree with you. It's almost like consuming a textbook with a fiction story. So it's a little difficult for me to say I liked it the first time. It was an effort to push through it. So I want to be realistic with our listeners about what it is to actually push through an RF Quang book. I think it's worth it in the end, but it does take some intellectual effort on your part, which I like it when an author makes me work just a little bit to think. So I do appreciate that. There are definitely things I enjoyed, and I enjoyed certain parts definitely, but I had to push through others. Now that I've let it marinate a little bit afterwards and thought more about it and considered parts of it more, I want to read it again, and I think I will enjoy it more the second time because I've gone through the exercise of getting through it the first time. I think I can go back and I can read it a second time and really understand it and absorb it in total. I felt like I was having to break it down in small portions the first time I read it. So it is a book that I think has to sit with you for a while, and then you come back and you understand it more and you maybe explore it more as you go on.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

And I think it helped that this was my second R of Quang book. I had already read her other very popular book, Babel. She's written five fantasies so so far, and this is her sixth book overall. But I started with Babbel, and so I kind of knew what to expect out of the writing style, and get I kind of gotten used to her.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

And this was my very first book, and I definitely did not know what to expect. So for me, it was ponderous.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

And I love Babel, but I felt like this was less academic than Babbel and easier to understand. So prepare yourself if you read that one.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Right. Well, I consider myself somewhat prepared, I guess. I think.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

I think as a language person, you will be fascinated by Babel. Okay. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about katabases today.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

So we need a quick synopsis so everyone knows the basics of the story.

Characters Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Okay, first of all, so katabases is a Greek word for a descent. So this book is about two people descending into hell. Our main character, Alice Law, and her sort of academic rival, once upon a time friend, Peter Murdoch. They're descending into hell in order to reclaim the soul of their former academic advisor who was killed in a tragic accident. And they need him to come back from hell because they need him to write them their recommendation letter so that they can go on with their career. And they do not believe, because of his reputation, that anyone else can possibly substitute because they have spent their entire academic careers working with Professor Grimes, Jacob Grimes. They feel like their future is ruined unless they get them back. But they also have other ulterior motives for going to get him that we discover over the course of time. Anyway, they go down to hell and they experience the different levels of hell, the different sins and the various different challenges and symbolism that they find there. And it's a journey.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah, and it's very Dante-esque for those that may be familiar with Dante's Inferno.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So Orpheus.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Right. And so we have a lot of references that will remind you of that. All right, so we're gonna break this down like we did last time. This first portion is going to be spoiler-free, us just kind of going through our review.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

So, once again, using the copile method, the C being characters. What did you think as far as characters go?

Atmosphere And Worldbuilding In Hell

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Well, this was funny. I went through this book with my husband, so I had the hard copy, but we also listened to the audio. My husband hated the main character, Alice Law. I really liked her. My husband loved Murdoch. I did too. I thought both characters were really well developed. I think you have to really work to understand Alice. I think it helps if you're a type A personality female on some level. She is very academic. She's very driven. And I think Quang does a really good job of interpreting that, interpreting a young woman who has shut herself off from everything but academic rigor and academic drive and this need to achieve and the knowledge that she's always pushing from the bottom because it is still a male-centric world, and it's kind of dog eat dog in your effort to get to the top. So she leaves herself very little room for any emotion or anything outside of academia. She's just a driven person. I think it makes her hard to like on some level, but I understood her on some level as well. So I think Kwang does a great job of showing this world of academia through these characters. Professor Grimes being this very inflated personality, and then Murdoch being also really driven by academics, but also a little more human, maybe in some ways. So we get these contrasting personalities, and I think she does a good job of giving us that. And I did identify with it. Maybe that's because I'm a teacher and I'm in academia, but I did identify with what was going on, and I thought the character development was sound. And she gives us a lot of it through that flashback stuff, too.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

I agree. I think Alice is a product of her academic culture, also the academic culture as a woman growing up in that culture. Right. Which puts a lot more stress on her and her performance than, say, Peter endures. So, in a way, that has made her distrustful, that has made her overambitious, a loner, and many other things that are abrasive at first. And I'm with you. I've talked to a lot of people that say they do not like her, but I think she's a good exercise in compassion and understanding that these personality attributes come from a very deep well of emotions and experiences. And as I learned more about Alice and what she has gone through, I found her very understandable and very empathetic.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

I agree. And I think even Kwong gives us some revelation in her name. And I'm particularly thinking of her last name, Law, in that she is really dictated by the laws that have been laid out for her. I really see that on some level for her. So I do think as she develops, we learn so much about her and the laws that she has lived by that I think it's really revelatory as far as her character is concerned.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

As far as the atmosphere of this book, I was into it. I mean, that was one of the first things that I absolutely loved about it. I love the imagery. I love the different things that they encounter, like the Escher traps and the description of their experience going down the River Leithy and the different monsters and the different areas of hell and cities that they go to. So I was here for that whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah, I love a good dive into hell. I mean, I read Dante's Inferno. I have read more than one book that really explores that idea about descending into hell. There's a great Gloria Naylor book called Linden Hill that descends into hell as well in a metaphorical way. So I think those descents are fun. The one thing about the atmosphere in this is you have to really work hard to visualize it and realize what they're experiencing as they go to these different places. Some of them are really easy to visualize, but you get into the Esher moments and some different moments in there. And I feel like there were times where I had to stop and go, okay, wait, what's going on? Okay, back up. Okay, I think I see that. Okay, now move forward. You know, so the atmosphere you have to take a while to absorb it because there's so much going on in different moments. But yes, she does a great job of creating this hellish environment.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yes. And I feel like we left somebody out of our character discussion. We have to remember the cat, Archimedes.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Oh, yes, the cat.

Style, Structure, And Plot Friction

SPEAKER_01 9:51

The college cat that seems to be able to exist in two places at once, the real world and hell, because they've got one foot in the spirit realm and one foot in the hell.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

And you gotta love that about cats. Cats are always the best characters.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

And so he kind of guides them at times through hell, and I love that. Now, the writing style we've already talked about, it's very academic. She does put a lot of footnotes in there and interruptions to the narrative, which can take you out of the moment if you aren't ready for them or used to that style. So some people critique that. Like I said, I think I've learned to appreciate that with R.F. Kuang, but I had a whole book before this to appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Right. And as a literature teacher, I definitely appreciate the diction, the syntax, the elevation and tone. It is very beautifully written as far as that's concerned. So the writing style is it's excellent. I can't fault her on her intellect. So I enjoy that, but it is a much different reading experience.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Plot-wise, it was not perfect for me. And I don't want to get into uh specifically why that was just yet, but there was a part in the book that I the whole character of the book that I really didn't think served the purpose of the narrative and kind of confused me about the overall character of Peter, one of the main characters. It kind of felt contradictory. And we'll get into that when we get to spoilers. But yeah, that was an issue that I had. It would have been wonderful if it hadn't been for that one plot point that I didn't like.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Yeah, there were just moments in the book because it is so long and because it is so academic and has so many of those tangents that she goes off on that if there are these rough moments plot-wise, you really feel them. As you said, when there is the moment where there's the awkward character or the awkward plot moment, it stands out in a major way as kind of this unfinished edge or this rough edge in an otherwise polished surface.

Intrigue, Rivalry, And The Krypkeys

SPEAKER_01 11:40

There was a surprising amount of intrigue, I felt like in the book. I mean, for us it's very simple. They're going down there to get Jacob Grimes and they're and they're wondering where he is. But then building onto that, there's this whole secret past that Peter has that's affected his relationship with Alice, and a past that Alice has had that she's been hiding that's been affecting her relationship with Peter, because they were friends at one point at lab partners, and then there was a series of miscommunications, misunderstandings that have kind of drawn them apart and made them rivals. And so we want to know what that was all about, right? And then, of course, there's this other couple called the Cripkeys, which apparently at one point were these magicians that, as one of their stunts, they killed themselves and their son on stage and promised to come back from hell. And they've been down there for decades and they've gone crazy and they're trying to kill people. Yeah, and then just the whole search for Jacob Grimes and the kind of person that he was.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Right. And I think just like there are layers and layers to hell, there are layers and layers to the people that you meet along the way and to these life stories that you become more and more acquainted with along the way. So the more you get into this book, the more layers you begin to peel back about the storylines of its characters.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Logic, I don't even know how to get into that. I I know I know that the different places in hell that they visit represent different academic pressures.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

And there is logic there.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Yes. But we would spend all evening breaking all of that down as we talked about this book. But that is a big intellectual exercise.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

There is a line of reasoning in this book. There is logic, but it would be difficult to really explain. And then last but not least, enjoyment. Where would you rank this as far as enjoyment is concerned?

SPEAKER_01 13:19

I wasn't sure I was enjoying this book until the very last chapter. Because I was like, if it does not end, it was it it goes down and down and down and gets worse and worse and worse. And it's very depressing until the bitter end of the very end. Until the very bittersweet end. And so overall, yes, I enjoyed it. Was it an enjoyable ride all the way through of an enjoyable journey? Not uh not always.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

My drive to finish the book was that I was praying it was going to end well. Like I literally pushed to the last page because I'm like, it's gotta get better, it's gotta get better, it's gotta get better.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Well, you literally text me, I think, that you tell me this gets better.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Tell me this gets better. And you're like, you're gonna have to go to the last page. And I'm like, yeah, darned if he wasn't right. So I really had to push till the end. And maybe she does that deliberately. So you plow through all of the tangents and all of the intellectual stuff that's going on. And we're not trying to say it's not worth it, because I think it is worth it. I think the journey is worth it.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Absolutely.

Enjoyment Versus Endurance

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Because I think this book does push you. So if you are willing to be challenged, if you want to get away from just reading the typical fluff that we sometimes read, this is one that really asks you to reach a little deeper into yourself, to dig a little deeper and make that gray matter work a little harder than sometimes we make it work. And I think it's worth it in the end. It gives you more to chew on for a while.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Yeah, this is definitely one that begs you to interpret it on a interpret it on a deeper level.

Spoiler Break And Debate Setup

Does Academia Reward Ruthlessness

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Thus ends the portion of the show that is going to be spoiler-free. If you do not want spoilers, you need to turn this off now. Go read the book and then come back later because we are going to now dive into points in the book and really talk about what happens. So we are going to run the last half of our podcast with a series of debate statements. And we're going to start with Elite Academia rewards ruthlessness more than intelligence. Recognizing that our two main characters and their professor are at Cambridge University. Both Alice and Peter are doctoral candidates at Cambridge in Magic. So, what do you think? Ruthlessness more than intelligence?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

I think that's the lesson Alice has learned, which makes her difficult to like in a way, because that's her whole attitude going into this, that she can trust and rely upon only herself and herself alone to succeed because she is a woman in a man's world. Her attitude towards Peter for a large portion of the book is I know he is going to try to take me out, so I need to look for his betrayal and make sure to take him out first before he takes me out. And she makes some very ruthless decisions, one of which I definitely did not like her for. And I think I'll get into that now. The part of this book that I did not like is at one point Peter and Alice meet a former advisee of Jacob Grimes, whom he drove to commit suicide several years before. And she now kind of navigates the river Lethe and she rescues Peter and Alice from these bone monsters that the Kryptees sent after them. And Alice decides, because Elspeth says that she has a thing called the dialethea, which can get a person out. It's a get out of hell free card, right? Right. It's the one true contradiction in hell, which is to find something beautiful in hell. And she says she knows where it is. So Alice decides to get Peter to help her betray Elspeth to get the dialethea. And of course, they fail and get kicked off of Elspeth's boat. But what I did not like is that Peter, whose character is not ruthless at all, just goes along with it. It felt contradictory, and that really bothered me.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah, and that was the plot point that bothered both Steve and I, my husband and I, is that Peter goes along with Alice there and it's contrary to his character, and it seems odd when he does it. Like I don't know if he knew that was going to fail and it wasn't really going to work, but why would he do it in the first place doesn't really make sense. But it makes perfect sense that Alice would do it. I do agree that it is part and parcel of her needing to scrape and claw her way to the top. And we see exemplified in Professor Grimes that ruthlessness. Perhaps there were moments of brilliance on his part, but we constantly see in the text that he has stolen from students. He is constantly taking things from other people. He does whatever he needs to do in order to maintain his brilliance and his status as the most famous professor of magic in this field, which is why everyone wants him as an advisor and he's notoriously hard on his students. And Alice knows the only way to stay in his good graces is to continually cut other people out. Now, Peter is naturally brilliant. And one of the reasons he's not ruthless is he's so brilliant. He doesn't have the downside of being a woman. So he's got the privilege of that maleness that kind of puts him on more of an equal footing with Grimes. Peter later runs into the downside of having physical weakness in the form of an illness that he has to disclose later, but he has physical weakness. And when Grimes realizes that he's not a perfect specimen. A perfect specimen, then Grimes takes advantage of him. But until that point, Peter never has to fight like Alice does. So you're right, Peter doesn't develop that ruthless dog-eat-dog mentality, but Alice has to. So that ruthlessness is what's rewarded because Alice is also intellectually brilliant, but Grimes would not give her the time of day unless she was showing she wanted it so badly she was willing to do anything.

The Betrayal On The River Lethe

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Right. He definitely fosters a culture of ruthlessness in his students. And it's made very clear early on that it is very hard to get into his good graces and incredibly easy to fall out of them, including driving one student to suicide.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Right. It's very social Darwinism. It's like you have to evolve to fit my environment in my lab, and you've got to be willing to evolve past these other people and do whatever is necessary in order to survive.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

And I personally was not privileged to go to this elite academic environment kind of situation, but I can imagine that it's a pretty realistic portrayal of the kinds of pressures and the attitudes and the corruption that lead to the pressures to be elite and continue to keep up the appearance at least of being elite. And R.F. Quang certainly feels like that's a prevailing academic environment with her experiences with these schools, Cambridge and Oxford, which she writes about because in her other book, Babel, it's the same way. It's just very cutthroat.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Well, and I believe she got her doctorate from Yale. One of at least one of her degrees is from Yale. So she's certainly had experiences with that upper academic world. But I think if we just translate this into normal climbing of the ladder, you do see that kind of dog eat dog knock knock the other person down. I mean, how often is it that someone becomes really successful by helping someone else?

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

That's just not how our world typically operates.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

And Ara Kwang also brings to discussion because of who she is. She brings uh her experiences with sexism and also racism, because most of her main characters are of mixed Asian descent as she is. And so she has that to consider as well, as far as the the ruthlessness and prejudices that she has gone through.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

In this novel, we also, of course, get a certain amount of threat to women as far as sexual violence and the expectations of men and the possibility of using sex as a weapon for women to experience achievement, also. So it leads into that idea about meritocracy being a myth because systems of power are what really predetermine who succeeds. So when we talk about the sexism embedded in the system, is meritocracy even a thing? Or is everything about who has the power and then who is chosen to be successful? And I think that's what Alice begins to feel as she realizes she's a pawn in the hands of people like Grimes.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Right. I think you can rise through your merit within a system as long as you're a white male. But I think it's it's very few and far between. The people who succeed are already somehow privileged because they come from the right stock, the right family, the right race, the right sex, everything. So yeah. In that way, the system is definitely not an equal opportunity meritocracy system.

Grimes And The Culture Of Harm

SPEAKER_00 22:04

In that way, Alice has been pushed into many things. And I think this is where I would recognize some of the backstory on Alice we find out about is of course we have had sexual assault on the part of Grimes when it comes to Alice. And she's certainly not the only female that has experienced that from him. And the irony of the fact that she has gone down to hell to quote unquote reclaim him to help rescue him. Now we know there are various motivations there after he has subjected her to this. The other thing he subjected her to, which is almost worse in my mind, well, not really worse, but is the tattoo she bears.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yeah, he uses her basically as a lab rat for one of his experiments, showing how willing he is to discard anyone in order to further his own career. Because he tattoos her with this arcane symbol that allows her to have perfect recall and gives her the ability to basically just learn exponentially faster because she can't forget anything.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Anything. Which makes the sexual assault so much worse because when it happens, it is literally ingrained and re-experienced over and over and over again without the ability for it to diminish or dissipate in any way. And the same thing is true every time she reads something. Every time she reads something or sees something, it becomes so dominant in her brain that she's actually developed this ritual of reciting who she is over and over again so she doesn't forget who she is as she attains all this other knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

And so she's actually at risk of going insane.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Not only from the memory of what happened to her, but the fact that she is getting information overload and the human mind wasn't meant to constantly be experiencing everything all at once. That's one of the reasons our brain compartmentalizes information and brings it back up when we need it. But she's not in that situation. So when you understand that she's going through that, again, we have another thing that explains her irritation, her abrasive character.

Meritocracy, Sexism, And Power

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Right. To me, that spoke volumes, because then I'm actually surprised she's being as human as she is with everything that's running through her brain. And there are a couple key moments that become really eye-opening with her character. One is when she tries to walk into the Lethe, which is the river in hell that kind of dissipates all memory. And she actually tries to walk in, and Peter stops her thinking she's basically going to kill herself. But you understand in that moment that she's trying to finally free herself of this burden of this tattoo. And then there's another moment where they're in one of the levels of hell. And every time she comes to a door, she sees people obsessing over and over doing the things they are were obsessed with in real life. And she sees this horrible scene of the sexual intensity and kind of this sexual violence going on in this one room. And she sees it and she knows she'll never be able to get that out of her head. And she pushes past Peter and runs out of that level and she vomits on the ground. And it is all because she knows that that is going to continually plague her. And so we really get this sense of trauma, really, that as a symbol of trauma and what that does to the human psyche. And I think that is an image of again her own sexual assault and how now that is fixed in her memory and that just doubles down when she sees that image in hell. Okay, next statement. Brilliant people are often the most dangerous thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Well, knowledge is power, and power can be used corruptly. Absolute power corrupts. Yeah, absolutely, right. And I do think also a certain level of elitism leads to a lack of empathy. And that is often the case that some of the most evil people have been some of the most intelligent as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

I agree. I think that the more you know, the more power you either have to do good or evil. That's because we're either motivated to help others or to help ourselves. And I think it's easy to be motivated just to help yourself and for your own agenda. And so we see that displayed very vividly in the book. Professor Grimes is someone who helps himself. He is definitely brilliant and he's definitely dangerous, and he's dangerous to everyone around him. That is why he's such a toxic personality. He draws people in with his brilliance and then he destroys them systematically. He takes out one advisee after the other. He steals, he corrupts, he abuses, he throws away. And when he dies, he even has such a toxic hold on people. He actually draws them into hell. And the process of going to hell to rescue someone involves giving up half of the rest of your lifespan. And so Alice and Peter are both willing to give up half of the rest of their lifespan to go rescue this man who has been an absolute ass to both of them. He has literally a chokehold on these people that have been subjected to him. So that brilliance has become so dangerous to everyone. For Alice, her brilliance has been a tool to demean herself. So while she is not a danger like Grimes, she has become a danger to her own well-being. She is committing self-harm the more she strives. And I think that's the lesson she learns as she journeys through hell, because it's not until the end that she really realizes that she needs to focus her brilliance outside of herself for good. She doesn't get there until really late in the novel.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Yeah, I think the real answer to this question depends upon how much of a narcissist you are.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Right.

Trauma, Memory, And The Tattoo

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Because intelligence in the hands of a narcissist is the most dangerous kind of intelligence there is. And that is what Jacob Grimes is. And so he is dangerous because of his narcissism, but also his influence on others to corrupt them, to ruin them, to victimize them. And Alice is a victim of this narcissist, which does create a kind of corruption in her spirit that she sort of has to exercise herself of through this journey. And that's what this is. This is sort of a catharsis for her.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

It is.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

It's a journey of catharsis and healing.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Right. And it is for Peter too. And Peter was never dangerous. He wasn't dangerous to anyone around him. He definitely has a heart of compassion. He has a desire to be good. The problem with Peter for me is that Peter is brilliant, but Peter was ineffective. Peter had not reached outside of himself to do anything good. So Peter was stuck. I think his journey, his catharsis is getting unstuck and realizing what he can do. He was never going to do harm to anyone other than himself.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

I think everything came easy to Peter. It made him a little bit naive. And so when Grimes does betray him and still this research, I think he becomes a very disillusioned soul.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

And then of course he's riddled with guilt because he believes that his lack of care as a research assistant for Grime led to the accident that killed him. So he believes now that he's responsible for killing him. And so he's going to hell out of sheer and utter guilt in order to sacrifice himself and exchange himself for this evil man.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Right, because he feels guilty. And ironically, Alice feels like it's her lack of care that caused Grimes to die because she followed Peter's research and feels like she must have missed something that caused the accident to happen. So both of them are partially driven by guilt, even though Alice is also driven to a certain point by both desperation and rage.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah, she's actually on a revenge mission in a way. In a way. Because she doesn't have closure over his death. It's not just about the academic recommendation, it's the fact that she didn't get the justice that she deserves from his death.

Intelligence, Narcissism, And Danger

SPEAKER_00 30:08

I have a quote if I can, and this is such a great book that we could talk about this for an hour, two hours, three hours. It is a book that you are going to have to read and digest and really absorb. It is so full of things to discuss, and we've only touched on a small fraction of them in the grand scheme of things. But as we talk about this last part about brilliant people often are the most dangerous, and we talk about the things that both Peter and Alice learn. During the course of the end, Peter sacrifices himself for Alice. And then Alice eventually faces down Grimes, and she is able to make a sacrifice. She is able to conquer Grimes and she is able to bring Peter back so that the two of them can return. And they come face to face again. The first thing they do is they apologize to each other because they had such a failure to communicate. And they say they're sorry. And then Quang writes this language failed them here. It did not come close to capturing the depth of feeling of guilt and relief and shame and love. The abyss was still there. They had not bridged it. They had only waved at each other from across the Gulf. Maybe parallel lines could meet at infinity. Maybe. There was so much else to say, and miraculously, now an entire lifetime to figure out how to say it. But she felt that the apologies offered and accepted were not a bad place to start. And it just shows this moment where they both become really human for the first time and they truly communicate for the first time. As they've been in this world of academia, just fighting back and forth and trying to get further and not really seeing each other. And after she has brought him back, she looks at him and he looks at her. And maybe there's still that gap between them, but they're really seeing each other for the first time, acknowledging each other, and now they have time to build a bridge. And I think it's just such a human moment that she gives us that she reminds us of the need to do that, to apologize, to speak, to make the initial connection, and then move forward.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

And that contrary to their nature, it's not something that they can quantify academically.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

No.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

You can't boil down another human being to a matter of some kind of formula. Which is what their environment had done, and they finally found each other's humanity again.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Absolutely. So what will we be talking about this next time?

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Oh, we're going to talk about my best friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix, which I'm super excited to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

I'm so excited too, because I absolutely loved it. So excited. If you are enjoying our podcast and feel moved to support us in some small way, you can find a support link on our bus sprout account and in the link tree on our social media.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Your support will go towards covering our production costs and improvements in our production quality. We appreciate you. And as always, keep reading.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Keep thinking, and we'll see you next time.