Straight people, Infinite Jest, and Douglas Martin

Straight people, Summer House, more Infinite Jest, and Douglas Martin

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, okay, we're trying intro lists. Again, welcome back. I am experimenting with different times to record this little thing we call a podcast because we are just experimental over here. We are experimental, we are cutting edge, we are downtown, we are New York, we are cultural vanguard. When am I gonna be on a New York magazine list of things we're thankful for or whatever? I don't understand. I don't remember. I don't remember. I would value the press, as I always do, as I cherish the press. Um every day, especially days like today. Today's Wednesday, after work. Let's take a breath, deep breath. Let's take a deep breath. Let's be one of those kinds of situations. I know you can hear that. No, no, no, no, no. Not through our nose. Today is winding down, though I am still in the middle of my miscellaneous tasks, one of those being record a podcast. But that's fine. You don't have to worry about that. You don't have to worry about that. You're just listening. Passive. While I am active and accomplishing things, it's okay. It's all good. Lay there. Lay there, little lazy bones. It's my tea, it's my ashwagandha tea. You know I love it. You know, alright, I'm gonna be honest. I'm gonna be honest with everybody. I have been a little toned down this week in the last episode because I am trying to not drink caffeine, and whoo! I didn't drink that much caffeine before. And I've done this before. I've been off caffeine for long periods before. I feel like I'm just tired every day. I feel like I'm tired every day. Isn't that fascinating? Isn't that fascinating? Isn't that the kind of cultural criticism, insight, and critique that we're looking for from this? Maybe not, but it's it's real. It's real and unvarnished. Oh. Okay, so that's up top. So that's why I'm boring, alright? That's just the caveat. But the other thing is, I think people are listening to this not from the beginning, so maybe I should reiterate not from the beginning of all these podcasts, I mean, from like episode one. Some of you aren't listening from episode one. You know, do what you will with your wild and precious life. But maybe it's important to reiterate for everybody who's who's new here that this is uh it's not a low effort podcast, it's a no effort podcast. Meaning, I don't edit this at all. Record this on my headphones, and there is um no quality control, no breaks, it's just one take. It's one take and one post. I don't prep. I don't prep, though, you know, you know, let's fact check. Hashtag fact check. Um hashtag oh fact check fact check moment. That could be a segment, right? Podcast love podcasts love segments, and maybe that's a segment. Um I don't know what I'm talking about, but I have been really, really thinking a lot about infinite gest to the point where it's distracting. And first of all, that is a I think a point in the book's favor, right? A book that you're thinking about, a work of literature on the dome, on the brain, that is something. That is something to value and respect. Respect. And it also means that I am kind of preparing because I've jotted down, I have so many notes. I've jotted down like what is it? Like a real paragraph's worth of notes. Let's just do a quick, let's do a quick word count. Do do do. Tools, word count. 206 words. It's not a lot of words. It's not a lot of words, but there's different thoughts. You know, it's not complete sentences. It's like Ingmar Bergman Ode to Joy. DFW, neither wise nor weird. Those those kinds of things. Terence Malik, Tree of Life, profundity, with no real consideration of the complexities of life. That's that's that ugh. Just ugh. Um let me dial all that back. That is not to that those were maybe just more of the negative, the negatives, the parts that I don't like in the spirit of this podcast. But as I said last time, I do like things. And the point in its favor that I can't stop thinking about it, you know? Hashtag love to hate me, you know. That's the hashtag that InfiniteGest would be using if it were tweeting, if it came out maybe a, you know, just a decade later, which I feel like might have helped because the internet would have been a little more evolved. It's always interesting, I think, to read books from the 90s that envision a future that has something like the internet. So I guess maybe like early 90s, late 80s, there's a lot of like sci-fi books. Well, I should say, I've read a few sci-fi books that envision the future where there's a universal communication network, you know, and it's very like, oh, and messages travel instantaneously or at the speed of like electronic communications around the universe. It's just funny seeing because they hadn't developed the internet or it wasn't widespread use yet, and but they were envisioning something, and it does, it's one of those, it's one of those interesting things in sci-fi where I guess there's like a pretty simple piece of technology that hasn't been developed, but the sci-fi writers, you know, they can't imagine it. But so after that technology is developed, the sci-fi look so old-fashioned because they lack the specific piece of technology, like cell phones. Like it's you know, what was I just watching? I was watching Forbidden Planet, that 50s sci-fi movie. Is that what I'm thinking of? There's some movie, or was it a book that I was reading? Anyway, where they had mobile phones. Oh, it was a book. What was the name of that book? What was the name of that book? It was a sci-fi book. Anyway, they didn't have mobile phones when the book was written, and so they had something like approximating mobile phones, and there was all this sort of like hand-waving, it was this big like thing that needed to be explained, how they could have these like mobile communication technologies, and it's like they just have phones, they just have phones, they just have phones. Um is there internet in Infinite Just? I don't even know. I don't remember, but I feel like it it was probably just like pre huge internet, and I think it kind of makes its version of the future feel dated. But there's nothing you can do about that. That's fine. That's fine at Noah Boy. I don't know if we're ready to get into Infinite Just real off top. That's that's a lot. I feel like this can't be an Infinite Just podcast because that sounds like a nightmare. Um no, I just almost tripped. Walking around. I'm getting a tissue. And I see my copy of the book. The jest itself, Mr. Jest. There. It's big. It's big and only like 10% of the way through. That's the caveat. That's the caveat. But I don't think I don't think we need to get into that. What could we get into? I'm just glancing. Um this is neither a like nor a dislike, but straight culture. Straight culture is really something that I think has come up in my life or in my brain recently, I think. The show Summerhouse, the show Summerhouse, you're all familiar with the reality TV program on Bravo Summerhouse. It's in the news, it's in the news a lot these days because Scamanda, you know, there's two people on Summer House who have become a couple, a surreptitious couple, and the news has broken out. And they were both friends with the guy's ex-girlfriends, so it's it's breaking girl code, it's breaking girl code. Amanda is breaking girl code with her friendship with Sierra by by now dating her ex-boyfriend, West. West, I keep thinking of his name West. West, West, which must be short for something, I imagine. I don't know. I didn't realize West was a name, was a name that we were using. Weston. Westly? It wouldn't be Westley, it would be Wesley. West. Is it short for something? I don't know. I don't know, and we're never going to know because I'm definitely not looking it up. But but Summerhouse, I you know, you know, obviously reality TV, very much my wheelhouse. I wrote Dream Facades, a book you can read now if you haven't already. And um every time I watch Summer House, it always does feel I think it was Brian Moylan actually who said it, who uh Summerhouse is is an experiment in heterosexuality. It's sort of a sociological window into what straight people are up to, and it does feel that way. You know, it feels sort of like to me, like, you know, real hospitals of Salt Lake City, it's like, oh, what is this unusual place? These people are living and they're Mormon, and oh, what this is this is strange and intriguing, and that's how I feel about Summerhouse. And I gather other people do, if Brian Moylan said it, other, I guess not straight people. You know, you watch Summerhouse and you're like, what is going on? What are these straight people up to? What are they up to? What are straight people up to? Things I have learned that are important to straight people. Fidelity, monogamy. Girl code, I guess, is important to straight people? I don't know. But I feel like that maybe is you know, maybe girl code in the logical schemework of heterosexuality, you know, you know how you know how in like logic or mathematics or geometry there's like the initial, there's like the five axioms that all other truths are derived from, right? You know, like in geometry, it's like what are they? Like a point is infinitely small, line, and the two parallel lines, but then you can do the whole geometry. Anyway, without the two parallel lines, whole other whole other podcast. We don't have to get into that. We don't have to get into that. But but what I'm saying is I feel like like uh fidelity fidelity is maybe one of those axioms that straight culture is derived from, and like girl code is is is is a derivation of fidelity. It's not one of the core axioms, it's too complex. It's too complex as a system, as a statement, to be an axiom. You know, they have to be very simple, simple as possible. They can't, you know, be derived from anything else. And I I I just I'm struck always by how much straight people care about cheating. OMG. OMG. I mean I I get it. I get it as like a betrayal of trust. I get that. That's bad. That is clearly bad. And I also get it as like a breaking of the codes of heterosexuality, of like the the the cultural norms of those people, you know? It's like I can understand like that what the West and Amanda did on Summer House is bad because it breaks their cultural norms, their taboos. You know, they have taboos against what they've done, and that is bad, and they must be shamed. They must be shamed, and we are we will shame them. We will shame them much, but I don't it's just a cultural difference, you know. Among my people, dating your friend's ex-boyfriend, I don't think is anything that anybody would really care about. Or maybe you might remark on it. You might remark on it, yeah, sure. It might be something, it might be something to whisper about when you're like, oh. But generally, I don't think that's uh there's no taboo. There's no taboo, let's say that. It would just be remarkable, maybe, but no taboo. It would not be grounds for you know public stoning, which apparently for straight people it is. And cheating, cheating is one of those things where it is like it is I understand again the the breach of trust. I understand the breach of trust in this agreement that if you are monogamous, you know you're not going to cheat. And I do know gay people who are in monogamous relationships, so I do get that. But I think because the norm among gay people is not monogamy, then it's I don't think that taboo exists also there. I don't think it's the same the same crisis. The same crisis or scandal. And I guess what what I was thinking about earlier today is that there's something kind of it's like charmingly regressive about straight people. You know, it's like it's like I'm trying to think of a way to phrase this, an analogy that isn't like colonial Western-centric or whatever, but I mean, because the analogy, and it's bad, and I know this is a colonial Western-centric bad analogy, but it's like when people would go and observe other cultures and be like, oh, they're still using this antiquated technology or something. Isn't that fascinating? You see that they're still using um bows and arrows to hunt, and they're so sophisticated with bows and arrows, and we can learn about how bows and arrows worked. That's what I feel like watching Summer House with relationships. It's like, oh, they're still using monogamy, you know, they're still using that ancient technology that we have stopped using long ago, and now that we now we have, you know, non-monogamy, I guess. I don't even open, open relationships, I guess. Um, we don't even have a word anymore for what we use because the concept of monogamy is so outdated. And I find that charming. I find that charming, and it's kind of fascinating to observe it in among street people. They're out there living this sort of bygone way, you know. It's like, oh, and you sort of, you know, you sort of have pity. You're like, oh, they they haven't yet figured that out, you know? They haven't made that breakthrough. They haven't discovered writing yet, you know. They have so much potential if only they would discover writing. Um yeah. It's charming. It's charming. It is a little annoying, I'm not gonna lie. It is annoying. I think it annoys me. Okay, here's something I don't like. Here's something I don't like. I don't like this. Well, I don't want to make this a big thing. But it does always kind of there is something when I hear uh straight women and this sort of straight female culture of like men suck, men are dogs, men are pigs, men lie, men cheat, you know, and it and again, this is something that comes up in Summerhouse, so that's where I could do that. This sort of girls rule, boys rule, um, you know, page on Summerhouse is very much of this vibe. This sort of you know, brain dead millennial pseudo-feminism kind of kind of vibe, you know. You know the vibe, you know the vibe. Yeah. Um again, the sort of antiquated thing, and it's always like, okay, if you don't like men so much, just don't date men. You know? Just don't date men. Right? Isn't that and that's why I'm like, okay, so you haven't made that breakthrough that you don't have to do, no one's making you do that. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that if you don't like men, and it's totally understandable that straight men seem, you know, they do some terrible things in the world, they do a lot of terrible things. Um, it seems like there's a lot of reasons not to want to be in relationships with straight men. Totally get that. Totally that you got me. You got me. Understand, I'm on board. What I don't understand is is this investment in heterosexuality, right? Where it's like, I hate straight men, but I still really, really, really wanna be straight. I'm really, really, really into it. I'm really into being a straight person. But I hate dating men. Well, it's like, okay, well then maybe you should hate heterosexuality, right? Let's wig that up. Woo! Let's wig that up. Yes, it's yes, hate men, but but instead of investing that active animosity and making it, you know, putting it on t-shirts, men, men cheat or men lie. I don't know. I just saw one in the most recent episode of Summerhouse, like lurking in the background, like the dead sea scrolls or something. I don't know. Um, and it was like, okay, yeah, you know, we can we can move past that. We can move past that. We don't have to date straight men. Nobody, nobody does, really, you know. Hopefully. Hopefully, no one's being forced to date straight men. No, you know, we don't have to, you know. We're just gonna assume that no one's being forced for the purposes of this podcast. This is yes, we're not, we're not, we're not dabbling into that darkness. But um yeah. Yeah, it's it's sort of it's sort of funny. It's sort of funny. Straight people are funny. Straight people are funny, and I hold space for them. Lots of straight people in my life these days. Lots of straight people in my life who and I cherish each and every one of you. Okay, I'm pointing at you. I cherish each and every one of you and adore you. And I don't understand you always, but but I love you. I love you and I see you. And if you're a woman, munchbox. That's all I got, you know? That's That's what I got. That's what I got. Is that are we putter pattering? We're not- I'm not really puttering. Again, I think maybe because uh I'm not caffeinated. I've just been sitting. You know what I've been doing? You know what I've been doing while I've been yammering on? I won't call that I don't think that was putter patter, I think that was yammer yammer. Yammerammer? Yammer? Yammerjammer? I don't know, a different segment. A different segment name. We'll workshop, we'll workshop it. Uh we'll start a thread. You know, we'll start a thread where we can workshop that. But um I've been sitting here and looking at my seedlings, and I wish, I wish this was a video episode. Mind you, I did not figure out, I didn't really look into how to upload a video episode to I guess YouTube. I don't know. Um, so you know, the whole video experiment is on pause. You will continue to well no, you're gonna get the full story. Just for that episode, that one video episode, you're only gonna get half the story until I can figure out how to upload that. And even I feel like when I do figure that out, I won't upload that one because it'll be so old. So that's gonna be like a lost, lost media. That's gonna be lost media. And that's just the way it is. And you know what? We move on. We move on, and I do kind of wish you could see. I feel like I'm very like energetic actually, kind of like hyped up, even without the caffeine. What's going on? Is this the ashwagandha? Is this the should I be drinking ashwagandha in the morning? Should I not be drinking it before bed? Is this okay, guys? I don't know. I can't tell. We're we're just we're just diving in. I wish you could all see the seedlings arrayed out in front of me, beautiful as can be. Cause I'm obsessed with them. I am obsessed with growing little wildflower seedlings, and I'm gonna take them all upstate next week when I go up. I'm taking you with me, don't worry. Episodes will continue. I'm back and forth. I'm back and forth from upstate and down here. So you know you'll still get that fingers on the pulse cultural cultural criticisms and things, you know, the scene reports, scene reports, scenes of my bedroom. Oh, that sounds kind of sexy. Um auto fiction. Um but yeah, I just can't. Wait, I'm so so so excited. So so so so excited. What else? Um, I have a podcast. I'll be on a podcast that's coming out on Saturday. It's been a minute. It's been a minute, had me on the podcast. Very exciting. That'll come out, I think it's Saturday at 6, it plays. And you can listen to it on the podcast release. I assume they release it in podcast form right away. I don't know. I'll have to check. I'll have to check so you don't have to wait a minute for it's been a minute. Um that's exciting. Keep an ear out. An eye out. Ears and eyes out for that one. Excuse me. And I don't know. I don't know. I'm looking now across through my infinite jest. Do I want to talk about it? Do we gotta talk about it? Do we? Do we gotta talk about it more? We've talked about it a bunch already. You know what? I have Negative feelings. I do have more negative feelings about it. I do like aspects of it. I can see the humor. You know, I think I think part of the reason that I don't really love it is because, you know, it plays with like genre conventions a bit. So there's like the sort of spy, there's like a thriller convention in one of the plots, and I'm not into thrillers at all. Never have been. Don't anticipate that I will be, but never say never. And that just has never been a genre that interests nor intrigues me. So that part has lost me. There's all the part about the tennis. Obviously, there's a lot about tennis. I'm not really into sports. That doesn't interest me. Tennis specifically has always seemed like a very waspy, uptight. You like you can't cheer at the matches, like, well, like there's dress codes, it all seems a little to not me, not me, not my vibe. But you know, love it for all of you who love and adore tennis, and I assume David Foster Wallace. Um, great. Love that for you, but it's not really for me, so I understand that. Um and I don't know. I have all these notes. I have all these notes that really just kind of compare it so negatively to Nobokov and Ada. Uh is it worth really ripping into? Uh, there is the weird, oh, the terrible, like pseudo A-A-V-E chapter that's just really cringe and really bad. And I have noticed that, yeah, he really every time he like notes that a character isn't white, it's and he uses like weird terms, or there's something he there's like in the Tennis Academy, I think there's one black student, and he like dismissed them because he was describing how their skin all burns, and he's like, except for the one uh kid whose skin is like made for the sun. I don't know, it's weird. It wasn't that, it wasn't that, but it was something weird. He describes somebody as yellow, he's like the yellow guy, and it's like, oh, you mean he's Asian? It's just it's like that plus the AAVE chapter that was horrendous and like a uh like woof, like a real train wreck. I think that stuff, you know, you can say, oh, it's dated of its time or whatever, but it's like the 90s is not, you know, I mean, you compare it, just doesn't make uh it seem like a very culturally sophisticated text, if it's so dumb about race, right? It's also like it makes you think that there's like a huge blind spot in this person's cultural analysis of how the US works. You know, Infinite Jest is supposed to be so much about, you know, the postmodern condition, whatever, hyper-capitalist condition of the United States. And it's like, oh, but this person doesn't really understand how like race plays into that at all, and how whiteness and the fact that all these people are white constructs a very specific worldview, and he's not really aware of that at all. Um, so it seems like a huge problem. It seems like a huge problem, and yeah. I mean, again, that's all super obvious. So I've like reluctant to even talk about it. But and I hate, you know, I don't want to dunk on it. I'm not reading it to dunk on it. I'm reading it because I am interested and I can appreciate the ambition. Um and I can hear you. I can hear you saying, so read some other stuff. Read some other stuff. And if you podcast audience had joined me at a different time in my life, we would be reading some other stuff. What else did I read that I actually really did like that's like also from the 90s? Was it Douglas Martin? And who was the French woman? Oh gosh. Who won the Nobel? Okay, I got 'em here. I got 'em here. Two little books that I took with me. Two. Ooh, not that one. Two little books that I took with me on my trip to Portland. Any or no simple passion. I read it. I read it, and you know what? I didn't really like it that much either. I thought it was forgettable, and I thought it was a little bit formulaic in the trope of like this bored French housewife who's going to Oh, I shouldn't do accent work. This bored French housewife who is going to have a sexy affair that's kind of meaningless, and isn't that the point of like, oh, sorry, that just reminded me of something Infinite Jess that was so cringe. Um, we don't gotta make it all about the man, but no, uh, the any or no I thought was fine. I thought it wasn't amazing. What I read before it, I think made it seem worse. So I read these two short novels back to back. One was Simple Passion, so I read that second, and the first one was Outline of My Lover, Douglas A. Martin, who I did not know before. He's a queer writer. New York, I think this was published in the 90s. It's the same thing, basically. A short work of auto fiction, and um, oh, maybe this was published in 2000. Anyway, um, like a small indie press. And in and um bum bum bum. It's also about a love affair, and the guy dates it's about this guy who lives in small town, I think it's Georgia, and he ends up in a relationship with this rock star who comes from the town and has a house there, and he travels around the world in tow with this rock star, which made me wonder who the rock star like what is this based off of? If this is autofiction, I assume that there is a celebrity that he toured around with. A gay celebrity in like the 80s, I think it would have been. It was really good. I love this book. I thought it was really good. I mean, it wasn't like I don't know, it wasn't changing the world, but so like Annie or No. I know, maybe let me whoa whoa whoa. I think it was changing the world, Douglas A. Marian. Let me put some respect on your name. Yes, I think it is a really um, I think it's a really like adventurous book. So yeah, let's dial back the change the world. I think what just what I meant to say was it it does some things that are familiar, like the Annie Orno, it's this fragmented nonlinear narrative, so it's supposed to be, you know, glimpses of the memory of this relationship and how they all tie together in an arc of feeling, I suppose, you know. So you'll as you're reading, you different passages in on on the page are in order and they f jump around in time, basically, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Um, you know, and there'll be short little short little paragraphs here and there that are just sort of impressionistic and and things, um but it felt much more unusual, like it was an unusual story, it didn't seem like a trope that I had encountered before. And I think that emotional arc and the different emotions that like the class difference of seeing this young poor guy who I think had been like kicked out by his family, and like go yeah, right, he'd be kicked out by his family or like left his family, came from not much, no money, and and glomming onto this rich, glamorous um rock star, and then losing it all, and then coming home, and then seeing how his family had warmed up to him when he was dating the rock star, and probably the money had something to do with it, but then also he ended up being more accepted by his family after, and it just was more complex. It was way more complex, and there was more going on there, I think, than than the bored housewife. No offense to Annie or no. But yeah, yeah, I'm really just remembering reading them back to back and being like, oh, outlines of my lover, outline of my lover, Douglas Martin, that really like took me on a journey that I really appreciated. And you know, if I didn't think it was like the perfect book, I really enjoyed enjoyed the ride. And then, yeah, reading something by this Nobel Prize winner right after it, the Nobel Prize winner just felt so formulaic. It really it almost was like a parody of of like what you would think a French woman would be writing. It's like, oh, she's so bored, and she's gonna have this affair, and oh, was it good or was it bad? And oh, the man drove a fast car, and oh, and it's like okay. I don't hate it. I'm not gonna say I don't like it, but the Douglas Martin one was really great, and it seems sad that he didn't write more and probably wasn't more supported just as a queer writer, I guess. I don't know. I don't totally know his story. Um but I would read more from him for sure. I would read more from him for sure. I'm down, I'm down. And Annie Arno, you know, criticizing her is is punching up at this point, obviously. So I think that's fine. I think that's fine. What was the cringe part of Infinite Jess that it reminded me of? Oh okay. Sorry. I just moaned of despair. There's a whole thing in Infinite Jess that really made me think about the brofundity thing, which I've already mentioned on an earlier episode of the podcast, and you know who really is like the worst, worst offender of the brofundity thing. I'm gonna whisper some names, so don't tell anybody because I can't afford to burn bridges in the publishing industry. But there's two people, two guys who are writing now. George Saunders.

unknown 33:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Though I love some of his short stories, really love, but there is a sort of pseudo-profundity. And then, um my goodness, I can't even remember his name. Um Boo Boo, poop, poop, poop, poo, the one who was the poet Topeka Station. What is his name? Ben Lerner. Ben Lerner. I'm just whispering.

unknown 34:04

Don't tell anybody Ben Lerner.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

I think Ben Lerner is really brofunded. You know what? I have a whole thing. This is the whole thing that I'm trying to figure out. Is I keep comparing them to Nabokov. Because these sort of modernist guy writers. I mean, especially Ben Lerner and David Foster Wallace are all into these like wordplay, word games, uh terms from like rhetoric and like Greek poetry that you know you have to look up because nobody uses them. These word flourishes, right? That are sort of these kind of ostentatious displays of erudition or something, or you know, they're writers and they take the crap seriously and they know the rhetoric terms and whatever. And it's a little like uh okay, sure, I don't it does it's it's not that it doesn't add that much, I don't think, really. And I just always compare them to Nabokov, who Nabokov was pardon my French, but stunty cunty twirled on them hoes. Nobokov in Ada. And I think I remember this right. So he's also obviously into word games. He's into word games in English, Russian, and French. And they're in Ada, they're all about Scrabble. The characters keep playing Scrabble, which you know is a little like coin contrivance, and they're playing word games in the novel, but Ada is the most, he really lets it all go. That's his like, you know, big book, self-indulgent, whatever, and they're always playing Scrabble. In Ada, one character has this trick where he does three there's three words, and you remove a letter and it's still a word, you remove another letter and it's still a word. And I think it's crown, crow, cow, and it works in English, and it works in Russian and French. Okay? I think so. I think so. I hope I'm remembering that right. But that is the level of like little twirling that Nabokov is on, where he's like, oh, they're gonna the characters are gonna play these word games and they're gonna work in three different languages. And they're the words are different in the in the different languages. Like the Russian word for you know, whatever. These words are not the same. And I think it's those three words, and I think that's the case. I have to look that up because I read that like 20 years ago. But he's just doing those kinds of tricks. He does, oh, there's oh, oh.

unknown 36:52

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

So you know there's the whole like little lives thing, the infinite gest, there's all these little passages about these little lives that flicker in and flicker out. We talked about that last episode as being one of these big book tropes, that these little lives. So, again, I haven't read Ada in so long. But the one of those beautiful passages that I had mentioned from Ada where the woman in the beginning lies down as she's committing suicide, and she munches on her pills like little berries, and little berries is in Russian. Um, and she remembers or she thinks with her last thought, she's this goofy woman that people don't take seriously and don't pay that much attention to, and she remembers, or she thinks with their her last thought that her disappearance will affect people as much as the sudden disappearance of their favorite comic strip in the Sunday paper they have been taking for a long time. It was her last smile. Some it's something like that. It's better than that, obviously. Um and it's chills and it's amazing. Oh, that's it. That's what I'm forgetting. She has a thought rather Kareninian in tone from Anna Karenina. Because Anna Karenina has two deaths, one in the beginning, one in the end. Ada has two deaths, she has her death, Martina Marina? Is it Marina? I forget. And then, spoiler alert, really good book. Luce Lucette kills herself, she drowns in the water as she begins losing track of herself. She finds it fitting to pass it on and trick crystal regression that what death amounts to is no more than a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude. I forget. It's something like that. It's so good. I have a little book project in here, actually, that I put that in. It's so good. It's so stunty, and the thing that Nabokov does is that thought, that rather Caraninian in tone. I think, and no one's told me this. I think I've just deduced this from reading. I think it's from it's a reference to Tristram Shandy, and I'm gonna have to look this up. Tristram Shandy, someone is like driving in the cart, and they pick up the skull, and it's the Yorick skull, and they have a thought rather, I think it's Cervantayan in tone. Someone has to check. I will check eventually. Anyway, so there's a phrase in Tristram Shandy, the beginning of Tristram Shandy, that's I think it's Tristram Shandy, rather Cervantayan in tone, and I think it's that the big book dialogue you're seeing. But what I'm pointing out basically is Nabokov has that little illusion, that little quotation from the earlier big book that he's working with, that little reference, and it's throwaway and it's pass away, and it you would never know it unless you've read the other one that also alludes to the other earlier big book. It's just, I don't know. It was it I loved it when I was 22. It felt so skillful, and I didn't realize that illusion until like a few years later, because I didn't read Tristram Shandy until I was I don't know when I read it. Late 20s or something. So years later, I was like, wait a minute, this line, which was one of my favorite lines from this other book, I saw it. It's these little treats, these little Easter eggs, these little things. So you know, he's playing those games at a level that is so psychotically high that I think when these other guys play their little games, it seems a little pathetic. It falls a little flat to me in comparison. And the other thing is, like, these guys, these bro authors, are so invested in masculinity. And what is the modern man? What's the modern man, you know? And they reach these bro fundity things of like, well, life is hard, but it's we still gotta live. It's still beautiful, it's still beautiful, and it's like, okay, whereas Nabokov was weird. Nabokov was a weird guy. His characters were weird, they were perverts, they did things that were liminal morally, you know? The the weird like pedophilia of um Lil Lita. I think in Ada that's there's two siblings or two lovers. So there's the weird incest, and like Ada takes place in like a weird mirror world that looks onto our world. It's very strange. It's very strange, it's very good. I should reread it. Um it's uh second half isn't great, but uh or it lags. Um but yeah, I feel like that's where I'm like, that's that was my note that I read earlier that David Foster Wallace is neither weird nor wise. You know, and he might be a talented writer. Yes, there's cute little arcs, and and and you know, he he can construct a scene that registers on a sort of simple, nice level. But um it's neither weird nor wise. I mean it's weird in some ways, I guess. If your standard of weird is like straight white man worlds, then yeah, I guess there's aspects of it that are weird, but not really. I don't think for the wider audience it's it's it's really weird enough. Um and I think that's a problem, I think that's also a problem for um the other for Pynchon, though I haven't really read a lot of Thomas Pynchon, but I think that the Fosterolis falls in that kind of that kind of vein. These guys who are not weird, they're so wrapped up in masculinity, whereas Nabokov was out there, he wasn't doing tennis, he was chasing butterflies, you know? Go chase butterflies. I think that's what you gotta do. That's what you gotta do if you're a male author. You gotta go chase butterflies. Stop talking about tennis. Stop talking about wrestling. I don't wanna I don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna read it, I don't wanna see it. Get it out of here. No more sports. There's enough. I mean, sure, you can you can write about sports and it's all fine, but it's frustrating that you can write about sports and that's like a serious pastime to write about and to take seriously. Just it's given that credit, right? And it's also, I think when people I think a lot of these guys write about sports, they're not really writing about it as though they're appreciating or they're not really breaking down how strange they are. Because I think they're still invested in like tennis being a kind of beautiful thing, you know. There's whatever some passages I read about the stochasticity of a tennis match, and you never know what's gonna happen next, and it unfolds. And uncertainty, and that's part of its beauty, just like life. Just oh, there's the cringe line where it's like there's that passage, and then there's somebody else. Oh, there's the depressed woman, the suicidal woman who's in the hospital on something, and that her passage ends with, Well, you gotta play. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. No, don't use tennis as a metaphor for life, but you gotta play.

unknown 44:33

Don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Don't do that. I say that as though I'm like the most profound writer ever, and I'm sure everyone's listening to this who loves David Foster Wallace's can't wait to take me down. Several pegs, fine. But I don't even know. Does anybody like David Foster Wallace anymore? I don't know. Maybe everyone's just like, yeah, don't stop dunking on this. Stop dunking on this poor man, but I'm trying to figure out exactly why it doesn't work. Or it does work. Or like I'm trying to figure out like what is working, what's not working, for my own sake as I'm trying to read and learn. Because I'm a learner. I'm a Ben learner, okay? I'm a Jack learner. I'm a Jack learner, and I'm trying to learn from these people who clearly have a lot of appeal and a lot of success. But you know I'm reading the other people. I'm reading my Douglas Martin. Douglas Martin deserves love. Who else did I read? Cunt Norton, Dodie Bellamy, which I really enjoyed. Another book. Which we will we won't get into. I don't think we have time. But we will at some point give Dodie Bellamy her flowers? Their flowers? I believe it's her. I believe it's her. It's really good. It's really good. Really appreciate it. There's a lot to say there. Um I don't know. I guess we didn't get into anything that I do like. No, no, no, no. No, no, we did. The Douglas Martin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It just feels negative. I don't know. How many episodes can we talk about David Foster Wallace? It's gonna be a few because I'm we need to get through more of that book. Um I don't know. Should I be drinking this Ashwagandha? It's really gotten me going. Or is it the literature? Or is it the literature? We'll see. We'll see. I think this works as a nice time to do this. Right? I don't know. What do you think? Was this better or worse than Saturday morning? What's the vibe? What's the vibe? Was this fun or was this like stressful? It feels like a little like stressful. I got a little heated. Literature gets me heated, guys. That's true. That's true. When I care about things, I do get worked up. Um I don't know. We'll keep playing around. We'll keep playing around. We play. We gotta play. You gotta play. You gotta play. And we do. And we do. And on that note, I will see you next time.