Reading and Writing

Camus, the Myth of Sisyphus, and The Plague, part 1

Porter, Nathan and I talk first about Camus's parable "The Myth of Sisyphus." We describe why life can rightly be called "absurd," and ask how it's possible to be happy even in pointless or futile struggle. We then touch briefly on the first half of Camus's The Plague, asking how this novel might display Sisyphean attitudes, why it opens with a suicide attempt, how the emotional struggles of these characters map our to our own during the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it makes sense to blame an omnipotent deity for such catastrophes, why it might be a bad idea to wear pajamas during Zoom calls, and much more. 

Robert Frost 2

Remy and Kelly and I swoon over a few more Frost masterpieces, and talk about how poems offer temporary stays against confusion. We examine metrical variation, the relationship between the specific and the universal, the importance of getting lost, how poetry can turn the mundane into the sacred, how to rhyme well, how life imitates art, and much more. 

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

I chat with Calli and Brenna about Woolf's A Room of One's Own. We ask why it's hard to create literary masterpieces and what particular obstacles women have faced through the centuries. We consider Woolf's claim that "it would have been impossible...for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare." Then we react to her admonition to give voice to Shakespeare's sister, and ask what excuses we (men included) really have not to try, what progress has been made in the past hundred years, what are the dangers of hate and resentment, why it might be a mistake for anyone who writes to think of their gender, and much more. 
 

Charlie Chaplin, The Kid

Taylor and Conner and I chat about Chaplin's masterpiece The Kid. We discuss a few things films can do that books can't, what aspects of film Chaplin perfected that are still around, the balance of comedy and tragedy, what makes this film "Modern," what it has to say about urban life in America, why we love the character of the Tramp even in his vices, where evil comes from, why we should distrust utopias, and how much power we actually have, despite suffering and poverty, to make the world better. 

Robert Frost 1

Esther, Alexander and I chat about three of our favorite Frost poems. We examine what specifically makes them so beautiful, including: rhythm and meter, sonic texture, the power of monosyllables, universality in poetry, aphoristic wisdom, the tension between form and content, Frost's darker side, dialectical tensions in poetry, tone, and much more. 

Kafka, The Metamorphosis

#WeAreAllRatLickers

Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Melissa, Sydney, and I talk about death. What does it mean to think well about death? How much can we or should we think about our eventual demise? Should we live every day as if we were dying? Even if we could, would this be desirable? Why might it be healthy to be close to death, and how should we react to deaths of those around us? To help us answer these questions, and many others, we consider Tolstoy's brilliant novella, and highlight many of its most beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking moments. 

Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, 2

I chat with Baylie and Makayla about why life is worth living. We explore Father Zosima's life as an embodied refutation to Ivan Karamazov's rational arguments about the nature of suffering. We consider how each person is indeed responsible for the sins of all people everywhere, why this attitude will lead to salvation, why Christ is such a potent model for how to live in the world, how to react to suffering, why birds, leaves, and trees make life worth living, why the earth deserves to be kissed, how heaven is within us, and the salvific power of love. To borrow from Whitman: "Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour."

Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, 1

I chat with Liam and Elizabeth about Ivan Karamazov's objections to life and the world. We consider the ubiquity of human suffering, and agree with Ivan that if we had to found a universal harmony on the tears of one child, we would not do it. After this we chat about Ivan's "poem" and explore the relationship between freedom and suffering, the ways in which this text predicts the totalitarian mindset, and the mysterious significance of Christ's kiss.   

Sylvia Plath, Ariel

Kailey, Lydia and I talk about Sylvia Plath's Ariel. We consider only a few of the ways this "autobiography of a fever" achieves its most daring effects: metaphor, pronouns, vivid imagery, provocative plainness, and repetitions combined with variation. We consider her bee poems as a series of ars poetica, and explore the possibility that her most famous poems might actually be overshadowing her best poems.