Episodes
All episodes of Do You Even Lit.
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26. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms: War and love
The boys debate Hemingway's laconic characters and terse writing style, what to make of the 'iceberg method', and why he went with the most depressing possible ending.
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25. Crime and Punishment finale: is Dostoevsky...overrated??
Svidrigailov sneaks up on us as the most underrated character in the book. We talk about the three incredible scenes that bring his journey to an end: kidnapping Dunya, the feverish hotel dream, and the dramatic exit. Plus: is the critique of utilitarianism actually any good?
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24. Crime and Punishment, part 2: Three extraordinary men
Parts 3 and 4 give us a lot more meat on Raskolnikov's 'extraordinary man' thesis. How does it overlap with the Übermensch in Nietzsche and Hegel? Are we too deeply steeped in Christian morality to become 'extraordinary' without destroying ourselves?
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23. Crime and Punishment, part 1: Mister Schizo and the First Trad
A conservative/reactionary book that mocks revolutionary ideas and naive utilitarianism — did the moral panic over materialism hold up, or are we at the end of history? Plus: what causes Rodya's mind to fracture so spectacularly, and why does Rich kinda relate to him?
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22. Susanna Clarke's Piranesi: Gaslight gatekeep girlboss
Piranesi as amateur scientist: On indigenous knowledge, the dangers of naïve empiricism, achieving dominion over nature, and whether the Other kind of had a point. Metaphysics of the House: Are abstractions real, revisiting Plato's world of perfect forms, and whether the world is fundamentally Good.
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21. The Tragedy of Hamlet: The O.G. annoying theatre kid
Rich struggled through the original text and only had the vaguest idea what was going on. Cam watched every single movie adaptation and studied for two weeks but still got casually mogged by his girlfriend. By the time we got done with the discussion we were all actually hyped to read more so something must have gone right.
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20. Albert Camus' The Fall: Signalling, scrupulosity, and pathological self-awareness
On performative castigation: Is Jean-Baptiste's judge-penitent stance actually coherent? The pitfalls of woke ideology, recursive traps of judging people, and why virtue signalling is good, actually.
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19. Philip K. Dick's paranoid classic Ubik: Fluttering at the windowpane of reality
Is Ubik a metaphor for God? What are the parallels to Gnosticism, and who is the demiurge behind the false reality of half-life? Do people who experience psychotic breaks even know that it's happening? What does Plato have to do with all of this?
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18. Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis: A Bug's Life
Is this story meant to be a depiction of depression? An autobiographical work about an artist becoming alienated from his philistine family? A Marxist commentary on capitalism? A subconscious Freudian incest thriller?
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17. Frankenstein, part 2: Nature vs nurture
Nature vs nurture: the monster as proto-incel, to what extent do we feel sympathy for him, should Victor have made him a bride, self-loathing and recrimination, and whether hot people are actually more virtuous than ugly people.
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16. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, part 1: Post-nut clarity and forbidden knowledge
Forbidden knowledge: are infohazards real, taking accountability for new technology, guilt and the disgust instinct, strong parallels with AGI, arguments for and against creating new species. Can we defend a parochial concern for our own family/friends/species?
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15. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: The One TRUE Interpretation
How well does the humour hold up over time? Where does Beckett rank in the canon of absurdist and existentialist writers? What proportion of reported suicides are actually autoerotic asphyxiation accidents? etc
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14. The Razor's Edge, part 3: Climbing off the wheel of suffering
Elliot Templeton as the last relic of a dying age. Sophie MacDonald attempts to climb off the wheel of suffering via more prosaic means. On the transmigration of souls, God as a deadbeat dad, and whether it's bad for society to encourage serenity-maxxing.
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13. The Razor's Edge, part 2: Lay your hands on me Larry
Larry becomes aloof and reserved. Is he really bringing anything to the table besides his sexy forearms? Has he gone full woo-woo granola cruncher? Why can Kosti only talk about spirituality when he's drunk? Why aren't muses a thing these days?
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12. W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, part 1: Nobody loafs like Larry
Why do we love Larry so much? Is his decision to step off the beaten path less admirable given his 'trifling' $54,000 inflation-adjusted stipend? And is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake a noble activity, or should we be building stuff in the world?
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11. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, part 3: Was David Foster Wallace a hideous man?
Starts with light and breezy over-sharing of our masturbatory habits, ends with a downer discussion about how to re-contextualise Wallace's work through the lens of the abuse allegations against him.
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10. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, part 2: If you can fake sincerity you've got it made
How much metafiction is too much metafiction, does DFW stray into self-indulgence, the leap of faith he asks from his readers, is it possible to tactically and deliberately try to be sincere (or is this another double bind), and whether Brief Interviews is really about toxic masculinity.
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9. David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, part 1: Weaponised therapy-speak
Wallace's 1999 collection of short stories takes us to some uncomfortable places. On nostalgia, the blurred lines between narcissism and depression, therapy culture, and why metafiction is played out.
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8. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, part 3: We finally get to the fucking lighthouse
An anticlimactic final discussion to an anticlimactic book. We are confused and afraid. Cam is on the brink of quitting reading altogether.
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7. Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, part 2: Portrait of the autist as an old man
Rich waxes lyrical about the dinner party scene. Do men have impaired theory of mind, or are they just assholes? On the invisible mastery of social reality, and capturing subjective experience in literature. It goes well enough that the boys decide to actually read the rest of the book.
