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Diagnosing the author and judging the printed book based on it was the cherry on top for me in this podcast. I actually had to pause and throw up my foie gras. Then you said anyone could write this novel and I actually considered eating my own vomit so I could live more a moment as crazily as these podcasters think. You guys actually believe in the “my son wrote this book and committed suicide”? The “found novel” is a trope as old as the bible. I have a novel manuscript I found in a desk I bought at a yard sale you would love.

Citing the crying of lot 49 as a high example of satire or critique and complaining that CoD isn’t prescriptive is actually pathetic. Dress like a pirate and live and let live. The world is better with characters not stale photocopies. I’d love to hear your critique of Don Quixote next. I bet you see him as a hypocrite too!

The true satire is this podcast. you guys can’t see the genius of Ignatius because you guys literally are him LOL

everyone’s points are valid BUT you guys are sick. of course you like pynchon more. wannabes!!!

This was the most postmodern critique i’ve ever read. It’s a book you guys don’t be weird.

Binks is on a search. What is he searching for? God. (or something like God, because all throughout the book, not even Binks is sure.) Why don't you get the book? You would be in what Binks would call despair-or everydayness. A part of being in despair is not knowing that you're in despair and not knowing that a search is possible. You need to be awoken up to the wonder. But maybe not so much like Binks was when he was shot and dying in a ditch in Korea. The point of the book is just trying to get readers to know that a search is possible. That there's richness in life beyond the worldly and materialistic. Oh, and Binks has excellent relationships with Kate, his aunt, his half-brother Loni, his landlady, and many others.

Privilege: upper class person using caricature mannerisms of lower classes. Somrthing to reflect on

Sleight of hand in novels - opaque/not clear Movies - cuts, hide from audience Religious thought solidifying who you are and way see the world, as opposed to flux otherwise

Psychological world building Space to think and then the info given later with more new info to consider

These two are vapid. This review is evidence on low reading ability.

Hang song, banned. Should read it. Technology - as a value in the world. Technocratic values compared to American values. Against science is considered a betrayal. Not bad to say politically motivated. Part of the game to get published in china.

Perhaps Walton is being to Pale Fire, what Kinbote was to Shade: she's bending the work to her own purposes. Nabokov may well have regarded her as a botfly.

Clever commoner /worker type trope in china Lesbian scene? To ask

Thank you for this review. I also thought it was a difficult read but the first chapter had me hooked.

I just want to add something about the character of Kinbote..Kinbote is self-obsessed and he is not "making up" his commentary on the Shade poem. What makes Kinbote hilarious and fascinating is that in his annotations and index he "believes" he's writing an interpretation of the poem. Kinbote is "projecting" himself on Shade, the person and the poem. He imagines that Shade is a friend and that Shade cares about Kinbote, his personal history, and that of the Zemblan monarch, Charles. By using the frame of projection, Nabokov is satirizing Freud and critical analysts who used Freudian ideas to explain literature. Nabokov may anticipate that we the reader likewise would use Freudian analysis, as a result of American psychoanalytic culture, which was still influential, when the author was writing the novel. Nabokov famously loathed Sigmund Freud. Additionally, it seems, to me, that Nabokov is ridiculing the value and accuracy of detailed annotations, like the exhaustive expositions on poets like Dante, where the commentary becomes a work of art in itself, so much so that "experts" prefer one exegesis over another and critique an older work by writing a new one. Nabokov was familiar with the process. He wrote a commentary on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Later in life he and Alfred Appel, wrote a detailed exposition on Lolita entitled, The Annotated Lolita. So the form and structure of Pale Fire, with its wildly outrageous content, could also be a form of self-mockery.

If you wish to revisit this subject, I just come to the end of writing something about migration and self-translation.

Some points: Pinker is an idiot. Skiers have more names for snow than the Inuit. "grue" was invented by Nelson Goodmam in hos book "Fact, Fiction, and Forecast." He defines grue as "inspected and found to be green before some fixed future point in time t, or blue otherwise." That means that green things are grue if they were already inspected, but things that always were blue but were never inspected are also grue. Goodman then asks why we would accept the proposition that all grass is green, but hesitate to accept the proposition that all grass is grue? Both have the same empirical evidence, since all inspected green things were also grue. OTOH, grue has nothing to do with the green/blue difference in different languages. Welsh speakers call both, the color of grass and the sky, "glas", usually translated as blue, but also used for greys and darker or more intense greens or even silver. Welsh has also a word for green, "gwyrrd", that's used for more yellowish or brighter greens.

How would you describe the novel? It wouldn't be the narrative of what happened, more the formal elements. Interesting. Much like one wouldn't want to spoil the narrative in a story, I wouldn't want to spoil the form

This was very helpful for my essay on There but for the! Thanks❤

The Funniest,most Intelligent book I have Ever read!

This is excellent. So excited to find thoughtful literary analysis and discussion. Subscribed!

Don't laugh at explaining

Kindred is a common book to be recommended in high school

You feel uncomfortable because you view him as privileged. But privileged with respects to his social standing. That’s a sad way to view a character

I don't know if Le Guin is necessarily arguing that the nuclear family/monogamy is part of human nature or ideal in some way. I think that the point is that in Anarres, people are free - therefore they should have the choice to be monogamous or not. For Shevek, it seemed that honesty about what you want out of a relationship was important - eg his. first relationship while he was planting trees ended amicably because he was clear that he wanted a lifetime commitment and his partner said she didn't. The fact that people looked down on their relationships is perhaps meant to show hypocrisy in their society, as it had become. The point is not to be dogmatic, to allow for change, growth, self-critique, and evolution of ideas - looking back and forward.

Interesting discussion. MRegards that Thatcher line at the end, it is diagetic and I beleive Toby is listening to it on a radio (one he constructed himself, I think). Since the High-Rise is a microcosm of 1970's life (class warfare, the counterculture, etc) it is saying that these are the very preconditions for Thatcherism. It's worth noting that Toby is positioned as a kind of parody of a businessman, puffing on a bubble pipe and listening with interest to Thatcher's speech. In other words, the attitudes, ideas and social conditions of the 70's were the perfect petri dish for growing the rampant free market capitalism that spawned in the 80's. The failures of 1970's UK society gave us bitterness and disillusionment, which in turn gave us Thatcher. I think this is what Wheatley is going for, although its a bit on the nose. Seee also earlier in the film when Toby is asked what he wants to be by Laing, and he responds with something like "Better than you".

Wow this review summarizes so much of what I was thinking as well. There was definitely too much in this book.

I just came across this because I'm visiting New Orleans soon. I had read this book back in the 80's, and I think at the time my impression was that it was a bit of a let down. I remember the novel leading me to learn about Boethius which in turn lead me to Carmina Burana (so I guess I did get something from it). I'm listening to it on audio (it's on CZcams for free), and I have to say it is more enjoyable because the reader does a nice job with the accents. I would just add a couple of things based on your comments. I think the question about how Toole's suicide plays into our reception of ACOD is right on the money. People enjoy the comedy, and what makes it deeper is not the story but the tragedy of the failed artist who took his life and was then recognized posthumously. I feel that the Pulitzer was awarded for that as opposed to the worthiness of the novel alone. I doubt anyone comes to the novel today, or indeed when it was published, without the knowledge of Toole's tragedy, so to read it without that in mind is impossible. Also, there have been comparisons to Don Quixote, a similarly deluded character, but I don't think ACOD rises to that level of world view. I would suggest you spend more time with Charlie Chaplin's movies. He does indeed use his slapstick humor to address issues: poverty in City Lights, the dehumanization of technology in Modern Times, authoritarianism in The Great Dictator, the role of money in romantic relationships in The Gold Rush. This is not to say all his movies had deeper meanings, but whereas Toole's deeper analysis of society eludes me in ACOD, Chaplin (who wrote, directed, scored, played the music and starred in his movies) was a true genius. Thanks for your analysis and discussion. I found it engaging and open-minded.

Nice discussion, I am a current re-reader of this book and I think the authorship question is the key to the novel. The glimpses of something beyond the world of the characters in it are central to the book and to Nabokov himself, who valued these intimations himself in our world, though he was agnostic. The speculation draws out the patterns of coincidence and symbolism which are hidden In the novel. Like you, I agree that the solution is relatively unimportant, but the speculation is what brings out the many layers of meaning and the prismatic beauty of the book.

Plans for the future = SciFi Canonical

I think it’s important that you don’t focus on talking about something you don’t know. Your take on this book being written in English is pointless and has a racial touch. Most Nigerians are bilingual, we speak our local dialects but the unifying language we all understand and speak is English. English is our official language. Ayobami Adebayo is from a Yoruba ethnic, that doesn’t mean she is a ‘Yoruba writer’. If you think writers regardless of their backgrounds can’t write in a language of choice, then you have a myopic viewpoint of literature, and perhaps life in general.

"Since it's in German, we haven't read the essay, but I don't think that we need to..." What are you talking about then? A book you haven't read? Make an effort and get a German speaker to read it. Herta Müller "fought" Communism and became a Wokecommunist. Sad but true. HM does have an original writing style but she lacks substance. The tragedy of Romania resides in the incompatibility between its Roman -Solar heritage with the brutal slavic-turkish-lunar character of a great part of its population. The best can never win. Heimat - read Hölderlin and Stefan George, plus Heidegger about Hölderlin. Everything is there. The Banat Heimat that Herta Müller denies does exist: in the poems of Nikolaus Lenau.

Why can't the characterization BE the point? Lampooning Ignatius (who is, to my mind, a caricature of the useless intellectual and of the uselessness of academia in general) makes the point that such pursuits are, at bottom, pointless - and possibly even counterproductive to the people who actually make the world go 'round.

Ignatius is less of a protagonist and more of a rock in everyone else's shoe.

Can you please, please, please do more science fiction?

More SciFi, please

Scattered does not use the usual structure of a fiction but rather uses scattered narratives to tell us her thoughts on identity and language. This book is different and the characters are ciphers, almost concrete examples of her ideas. Each character tells the tale from his or her perspective, a chapter at a time.

Excellent work! It is refreshing to listen to a review that resonates with what I've been thinking. Keep up the good work, guys! Great content! Impeccable taste.

Notice the parallel between Pham Nuen and Lazarus Long

Thank you !!

This may be my new favourite channel, I'm so looking forward to exploring it! 😀

This was an outstanding conversation, and great to hear strong opposing views. But the immersion in class and privilege overstates the role it played in the book. For me it underscores the decay of beauty and knowledge in college education, preferring a production line approach to feed a growing economy.

Rachel Maddow with a cross of the Daily Show; the Harlem version. Great work.

It stays a bit abstract. Maybe because of the lack of a postmodern Black Female perspective? But thanks anyway.

Really bad takes here, guys.

can you summarize the beginning and the middle of the story

Fair attempt. The emphasis on repetition overlooks the variation with each occurrence of a particular phrase. If you guys needed an easier starter, you should have tried Concrete or Wittgenstein's Nephew.

For me the “reunion” of Ye with the red guards was just a scene/chance to make it known that everybody got screwed over during the Cultural Revolution. Ye was probably expecting/wanting a moment of reckoning where an admission of guilt and wrong doing was going to happen as well as an asking for forgiveness and absolution given. But (real) life is boring and anticlimactic and what really happened was a casual description of the times from the other “small people” from the other side. In our minds we are the “stars of the movie” that is our lives, but when placed in context of the bigger world we are really just extras. The red guards (doing some mind reading here) were probably: “You think you are the only one who saw her parents murdered, tortured, humiliated and going crazy? This happened to everybody; we did so many sessions and either murdered so many or drove so many others to suicide that we lost count and remorse.” (Imagine if beating people and rallying up the mod were your job...How much humanity do you lose at hurting innocent people for no particular reason? Or what happens to you when even if you were a "true believer" of the revolution and actually believe what you are saying' you wake up and figure out the whole charade? What happens to you?) The red guards, although they were the victimizers of Ye (and her parents) were at the end treated no better than Ye herself. They too were sent to labor and they actually had it worse that Ye. Ye, was still a scientists all along, so much so that even her boss wanted to claim credit for her work. Eventually somebody with power decides Ye's name should go on the other side of the line and she can just go back to teaching Physics at a prestigious university. Not so for the guards. The red guards did all the dirty work in the name of party and revolution and at the end were tossed aside and forgotten. They all came back to the city broken to live (still to the time when they met Ye) in poverty (as their uniforms were ill fitting and worn out). So maybe Ye was let down in the sense that she did not get the apology and/or spiritual closure she sough. But she probably got some level of satisfaction to know that she did not lose her spirit/self. On the other hand, she could have not felt any satisfaction as she could have figured out that everybody suffered and that she, as the red guards, had been forgotten by History. Why did we suffered so much and/or inflicted so much pain on others (and lose ourselves in the process), if at the end nobody remembers?

Ver interesting discussion. I think I can subscribe to the idea of a young women wanting to destroy the whole Earth based only on her experience of it. The only thing we know about her is that she saw her father being murdered by a mob and her mom going crazy. We are not told if she had a happy childhood or if she had adventurous teen age years, etc. The only things were know about her are that she saw her parents victimized by mobs for no particular reason and she lived like a prisoner in a lab. Not only that, but she was also betrayed by the book guy, and then even by the lab director when he wanted to claim credit for the "first contact" and side line her; then she only knows how people screwed each other (mainly her). I mean...she murdered her husband as collateral damaged. This woman was commited. The amount of time between the Cultural Revolution and she sending the signal and inviting an invasion was not enough to mellow her out and she did not experience things that would make the value life, say friendships and courtship of love or the love of a child, etc, etc. Had the been older, had the enjoyed the fruits of her work (teaching at a prestigious university) then she might have thought twice before desiring the destruction of Earth. We have to keep in mind the issue of timing. The decisions we take when were are still sore at something, might be very different after a (longer) time or better experiences. Very often when listing to true crime podcasts and they cover a teenager/young criminal and I hear about the harsh and abusive childhood they had, I usually go: "He/she had nobody to love him/her....of course he/she will go crazy and harm people."

14:45 - Anarchism is always anti-capitalist. So-called Anarcho-Capitalism isn't a thing, it's an oxymoron. Anarchists are against any form of authority that cannot justify itself. "I'm gonna tell you what you're gonna do because I'm rich and you're not" is not a justification any Anarchist would accept.