Our final session with W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge (chapters 5-7).
Elliot Templeton as the last relic of a dying age. Was he really happy? We consider his self-worship and clout-chasing Catholicism as a counterpoint to Larry’s spirituality. Rest in power queen.
Sophie MacDonald attempts to climb off the wheel of suffering via more prosaic means. Did she get what she wanted? An argument over whether Isabel is a total psycho or only a minor-league bitch.
Larry’s spiritual journey as a synthesis of the best parts of the Eastern tradition. Was this whole book just a delivery mechanism for Vedic philosophy? On the transmigration of souls, God as a deadbeat dad, and whether it’s bad for society to encourage serenity-maxxing.
tattoo discourse
Cam: I do worry about my brothers. When I think about them, they’re probably watching porn every other day.
Rich: Every other day they’re on the Monday-Wednesday-Friday beat-off schedule.
Cam: Probably every day, yeah. Sunday’s the day off.
Rich: Yeah, Sunday’s God’s day. Are you allowed to jerk off on the Sabbath?
Cam: The day of rest. Holy shit, my fucking brothers, bro. You ain’t allowed to jerk off at all.
Benny: Probably not.
Cam: I remember playing soccer with this Christian guy I went away with at the soccer camp. He never did it.
Benny: Don’t, but if you do, just not on the Sabbath, for God’s sake.
Cam: My brother’s got fucking tattoos. Speaking of the junior at fucking zoomers, man.
Rich: At what age?
Cam: They’re so young, bro. I’m embarrassed to say. One’s sixteen and one’s fourteen years old. Quite a big one.
Rich: And he’s got a tattoo? Hell yeah, that’s awesome.
Benny: Isn’t it gonna stretch when he grows, though?
Rich: He won’t regret it, for sure.
Benny: Presumably he’s — I’m taking issue with the aesthetics here.
Cam: Another big fucking tattoo on his — I can’t believe my parents look nuts. Anyway, Derek and Larry’s got a tattoo.
Rich: He should have a little sailor tattoo or something, right?
Cam: He’s just got, like, one of those namaste or something. Some Sanskrit. What’s the Tau symbol?
Rich: Oh yeah, definitely, or he’s just gone full noise. He’s got big swastikas and stuff, yeah.
Cam: He’s got the Tibetan ones, right.
Benny: And then World War II rolled around. Whoops.
Rich: How many dudes had to get rid of their swastika tattoos? These proto-mystics, pre-World War II mystics.
Benny: Fill it in. Just black square, black square.
The sad (?) saga of Elliott Templeton
Rich: Alright, so for this one I’m not going to do the whole synopsis. We should talk about Elliot’s death, and then we should do the whole Sophie MacDonald saga, and then we can do Larry’s spiritual journey, and then maybe the conclusion and any miscellaneous bits and pieces.
Cam: Yeah, that sounds good. So I think we’re doing part five, six, and seven.
Rich: Yep, that’s right.
Cam: So roughly the last third of the book.
Rich: So yeah, the quick summary of Elliot is his health is in decline. He keeps insisting on going to parties even though he’s very ill, but he gets fewer and fewer invitations as his fake friends abandon him. Then he dies with only Maugham at his side, and the funeral takes place in Italy in the church that he himself built. So yeah, anyone want to say some words for our dear beloved Elliot?
Cam: Rest in paradise.
Rich: He was a snob until the very end.
Cam: Yeah, you gotta love it. He stays true to himself.
Rich: His last words were about that old bitch — talking about that lady who stiffed him on the invite.
Cam: I wrote that down with an LOL.
Rich: So good.
Cam: Totally sums him up. I think he’s an interesting character. He’s obviously there to contrast somewhat with Larry. Larry is involved in self-discovery and meaning, and Elliot is just totally captured by status-seeking — that classic sort of class status-seeking, who’s who, what sort of title and name you have. And I think we’ve talked about this previously, but the author doesn’t totally chastise Elliot as a character. He’s also very generous, smart, insightful sometimes. It almost feels hyperbolic, but I’m sure these people exist. It’s such an extreme case of just how much of a status figure he is. And he seems aware of it as well, right? And he just owns it.
Rich: Yeah, but he is from a dying world. I think he’s meant to represent the old class-based system, and he’s mad about egalitarianism. He’s happy that there’s a class structure in heaven — he’s like, “wow, there’s the cherubim and the seraphim.”
Cam: Yeah, there’s a bit of a Great Gatsby style.
Benny: Surely I’ll be at the top.
Rich: None of this equality nonsense. So yeah, he’s totally unrepentant towards the end.
Cam: I thought what was really funny was the poem. This is a poem by Landor, some random poet, that I think Maugham reads out to him. It’s just four lines. The first line is, “I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.” It was quite a controversial poem at the time — this total arrogance of like, no one was good enough to strive with me. And it’s gone down as a bit of a classic. But then Elliot thinks it applies to him — not only does he think it applies to him, he says, “I think I hung out with better people than Landor was talking about.” So they’re still not good enough to be honest with. And Maugham just kind of laughs at him. This sums him up. He’s obviously total bullshit. He’s got these fake friends, and people look down on him and are aware of him, who aren’t involved in the status game. But yeah, it’s pretty funny.
Benny: I felt quite sad during his death. I felt bad for him after. It felt like this guy who had quite an upright character in some sense, who was a nice guy. His deeply held values were quite laudable, and then his surface-level values for some reason were misaligned, such that by the time he got to the end of his life, he realized that a lot of the stuff he’d been paying attention to — it’s not as if he regretted it, but he did realize that everyone, as soon as he got sick and couldn’t attend the parties, had moved on from inviting him and had probably forgotten him. It’s not like he regretted it, but it just did feel like this guy who obviously had this huge heart — he gave away lots of his wealth and really looked after family and friends as much as he could. He just sort of chose the wrong lifestyle in some sense. It felt like a bit of a tragedy.
Cam: I think he’d reject that he chose the wrong lifestyle.
Benny: He would, for sure. But that’s —
Cam: I agree he contains multitudes and has a lot of laudable attributes. Yeah, you could just reorientate. Everyone seeks status in some sense — even Larry’s path. He’s trying to gain wisdom, and the Maharishis — is it Maji or Margie? — they have status as well. So you could align it. I know he didn’t say he regretted it, but right to the end he was living the wrong life. I know, but I think he still couldn’t see it.
Benny: Maji, I think.
Benny: Yeah, no, I agree. What I meant is, it felt clear for the reader that he had chosen the wrong life for the kind of person he was, right? You kind of feel sad.
Cam: He doesn’t get invited, and you realize — to this party, and then finally Maugham swindles a way for him to get in, as long as he’s there. And then he’s fucking getting dressed. You know, he’s almost dying. You’re just talking about how much you hate this woman, and he’s like, “you know, come as part of the season.”
Rich: And he’s like, “Dear Madam, I regret I will not be able to attend.”
Cam: You’re so close.
Rich: “Due to another appointment with the Grim Reaper, bitch.”
Rich: In my head, he’s canonically gay. I don’t know what the truth of the matter is, but he’s a sassy gay man in my head.
Cam: Oh no, yeah, he’s definitely like camp, like the old gay guys, like bachelor. The way he’s catty and stuff as well.
Rich: He loves dressing up. He gets buried in this costume that’s too big for him. He gets described as looking like a chorus boy in an opera, just lying there. There’s something childlike about him at the end. I think they actually hammer it home a lot harder that we’re meant to pity him, and he has chosen a poor pathway through life. Maugham is more judgmental of him too. Even though he’s fond of him, he calls him pathetic. When he’s lying in the coffin with his silly costume on, he calls him a Don Quixote of a worthless purpose, or something like that. So it’s not subtle.
Rich: Another thing I thought might have been deliberate is to contrast Elliot’s spiritual journey versus Larry’s, where Elliot quite literally erects a church and befriends the clergy and so on. But it’s basically like a church to himself, where he wants to be buried there, and he pays money so that people will say prayers to him after he’s gone. He has no real relationship with God. His interactions with the bishop and so on are all completely about self-aggrandizement.
Cam: Yeah, I agree that contrast is intentional. Later Maugham, or someone, even says around Larry — Larry’s a deeply religious man who doesn’t believe in God. Well, Larry also doesn’t believe in God, but I definitely think the contrast with Eastern traditions and Catholicism in Elliot’s case is intentional. And Maugham comes across as perhaps out of sorts with traditional Western religion. Not so much the character, but partly the character — the book seems to be rejecting religion. And then you’ve got Elliot, who’s the one person still very into the Catholic Church, and he even got his finance advice from them.
Rich: I mean, you’ve got the Benedictines as an example of the church done right, sort of thing, and then you’ve got Elliot’s Catholic cronies who are sort of all the things that are wrong with organized religion. So it’s not exactly condemning. We can talk about that more maybe when Larry goes to the monastery.
Cam: But yeah, that’s pretty much Elliot. I think he’s a very memorable character. It’s funny — he had these negative aspects but he had this slightly endearing aspect to him as well.
Benny: Okay, let me offer one perhaps controversial take on Elliot, which is that, you know, contrasting him and Larry, it’s unclear who actually does more for other people in their lives. So Elliot, like I’ve said a few times, helps friends, family, does a bunch of donations, and yeah, lives large for himself as well, but pays all his staff and servants super well, and seems to be in some sense an upstanding member of the community. People respect him, he gives money to things, and during his life he clearly enjoyed himself, and didn’t even regret anything, it seemed, near the end. That was sort of his way of pursuing happiness.
Benny: Larry, on the other hand, has a very different way of pursuing happiness that involves basically living on ends meet, giving away all his money — he is this trust fund kid, but then we find out near the end of the book he has given away all his money. He’s gonna go back to the US and live basically as a taxicab driver there. Materially, it seems like Elliot benefits way more people throughout the book than Larry does. And there’s some hint, perhaps, that Larry is going to go back to the US and sort of be a guru for people and try to show people the path to enlightenment, or illumination, I guess, as they call it in this book. But it’s left an open question whether he’s actually going to succeed at that project. So someone could come along and say, insofar as both were striving for happiness, it’s unclear that Elliot did that worse than Larry. And insofar as you’re trying to have a positive benefit on other people’s lives, it’s also unclear that Elliot did that worse than Larry. He’s his polar opposite, for sure, in his approach to life, but his impact is not obviously much more.
Cam: The first claim is less unclear. The sort of happiness — I mean, happiness is kind of this confusing thing to define, and happiness research has all these different ways. One’s kind of meaning-focused and one’s experience-focused. Maybe he doesn’t see it, but certainly as a reader you kind of see it — a lot of Elliot’s preoccupations were all facade. These people didn’t like him, and that doesn’t add meaning. One response is, well, if you’re so caught up in it, it’s fine. I remember sometimes I watch these reality shows that they’re just on — someone must have put them on. I remember one was in Dubai, and it’s just these rich, not always Westerners — usually immigrants but living there now — that kind of fake Kardashian look, with these rich husbands. It’s like the Desperate Housewives reality shows as well. You could kind of say they’re all so captured by it, and like, this is what’s important to them. There’s moments where they know it, and they lie to themselves. It’s like, yeah, all these people hate me, but I have to keep it up. I kind of felt that with Elliot a bit as well. At the end, Elliot knows all these people don’t like him — he didn’t get invited at the end because he’s suddenly not worth anything. You have to be so deluded to ignore that, and he kind of does. As soon as he gets invited it’s easily forgotten, but there’s a kind of sadness there.
Benny: Yeah, I think that’s sort of the open question I was driving at. I agree that we’re supposed to lean towards Larry having chosen the wiser life path, but there is maybe a reading in which you can argue that they were both self-obsessed or self-involved to the same extent. Elliot had these things he was pursuing, he pursued them regardless of everything else going on in his life, and Larry had the same thing, just with very different goals. But Larry was also willing to basically sacrifice everything in his life that he didn’t view as important for this ultimate end that he was looking for, which was basically to resolve the problem of evil or something like that.
Cam: I mean, Larry is curing motherfucking headaches, and mumps, and measles. He’s curing everything — everything that got better in Larry’s presence, he cured.
Rich: I think there’s more of an element here of, it’s somewhat less morally judgmental and more about the changing world. That’s the real thing they’re trying to hit home — that you have this sort of cursive knowledge thing, where if you live in Elliot’s world, that can be a satisfying life so long as you never realize how hollow and fake it is, and so long as everyone else around you is doing that and it’s the default. Even Elliot himself is complaining that there’s no such thing as good society anymore, so he has to keep moving around to find the good society. He’s mourning the end of this era. I think the point is less to call him a bad guy and more to say, that way of being just doesn’t work anymore. You have to sort of get woke to a new way of being in the world. You’re going to have to find other ways to live a happy, satisfying life. I don’t deny that he led a pretty good life and had some good outcomes, it’s just that even by his own admission, it’s the end of an era. He’s from the old class-based aristocracy era and that doesn’t really exist anymore.
Benny: Yeah, I think that’s great. That’s a great read.
Rich: Yeah, there feels like a big air of change throughout this novel, because it’s such an important time in modern history as well.
Cam: Yeah, boom in the twenties and depression and post-war. I’d go maybe a bit further — I think you can make the argument that to the extent that Elliot lived his life always kind of in excess, it’s always going to feel hollow at the end of the day. If you’re constantly deluding yourself from it and not seeing it, you’re still going to feel unnourished.
Rich: Should we move on, boys? We got some good philosophical stuff to cover.
Benny: Yeah, you got more to cover. Let’s do it.
Rich: So let’s go to —
The sad saga of Sophie MacDonald
Cam: Sophie?
Rich: Yeah, let’s do Sophie next. So she’s a childhood friend of Larry’s from Chicago. The gang encounter her in a Paris nightclub, where she’s partying and hoeing it up after having lost her husband and child in a car wreck. Larry gets her clean and sober and proposes marriage to her. But three days before the wedding, a jealous Isabel deliberately sabotages her by leaving out some tasty liqueur, and it causes her to relapse and run away. Then Sophie gets back into drinking and opium and degeneracy, and ultimately gets fished out of a river naked with her throat slit. So that’s the sad story of Sophie MacDonald.
Cam: And we assume it wasn’t more and more Larry, right?
Rich: Yeah, for a moment I was like, oh my god, third act murder mystery.
Benny: I couldn’t believe it. That was too funny.
Rich: So my open questions are: did Isabel kill Sophie, and is it sort of surprising that Maugham was less upset with Isabel? And also, why did Larry — what was Larry motivated by in wanting to marry her? Has he got some kind of self-sacrificial kink or something like that?
Cam: Well, first of all, at the start of the session we’re doing, it was just like sort of meeting Sophie, and Isabel hates her. She’s like the one person who hates Sophie and she’s got no time for her. She admits, yeah sure, it’s sad that Sophie lost her husband and child in this car crash, but there’s only so far sympathy can go. She’s totally wrecking her life and it’s been like a decade — I don’t know how long — but she’s like thirty now, she’s acting like a kid. She just has no sympathy with her, and I was wondering what she was motivated by. Obviously Isabel was left by Larry, potentially still has feelings for Larry. It might just be this kind of intrasexual competition that’s motivating it. Or she might be —
Rich: No, it’s a hundred percent that, isn’t it? She’s straight up jealous of her and straight up has feelings for Larry.
Cam: Yeah, no, I think there’s some subtext here.
Rich: It’s text. It’s not subtext. She confesses to it all.
Cam: Oh, does she?
Benny: I think we’re not sure what kind of love it is, though, to be fair, right? It’s unclear if it’s the deep love of friends, it’s unclear if it’s purely sexual. There’s no doubt she’s had sexual feelings for him in the past — the wrist on the seat that was in chapter parts three or four or whatever.
Rich: Oh, she’s not gonna leave Gray for him, she just — she’s like, he’s mine. Like, don’t —
Benny: No, exactly.
Cam: Yeah, that’s like everyone —
Benny: I think that’s what Cam meant by subtext. She has a super high opinion of Larry.
Cam: You don’t want anyone else to be with this person, but I don’t want to be with them either. It’s funny — Gray’s the opposite. Her husband. He’s mates with Larry. Gray and Larry — Gray’s like, “yeah, whatever,” and Larry’s all G, and then Gray probably is fine as well. He loves Larry. Like, “you can have Isabel if you want.” So yeah, she’s obviously somewhat jealous and envious of her. But then there’s the other question — is Isabel right at the start? Like, is Sophie just totally responsible for her shitty life, shitty behaviours, and needs to sort it out? And is Isabel potentially just talking a harsh truth that no one else wants to?
Rich: Isabel’s the Bryan Caplan stand-in of the book — by revealed preference, I mean. Actually, that’s what they kind of conclude, right? Maugham’s like, hey, everyone in the story got what they wanted. Sophie wanted to be — there’s a bit early on where it foreshadows it, right? He says, “you like it rough, you’re gonna end up dead,” and she’s like, “yeah, good.” That’s pretty much it, and then it just comes to pass and no one is surprised.
Cam: She definitely liked the rough.
Benny: Oh, that’s true. I had forgotten about that.
Rich: In Maugham’s point of view, she got what she wanted, which seems like a little bit of an exaggeration. I don’t know — what did she want? Obliteration, I guess.
Cam: Well, there’s — I mean, free will considerations aside — this interesting question of, it’s horrible to lose someone, and then you spiral for a decade and totally drink and do drugs and sleep around. Not everyone does that.
Rich: Yeah, it sounds awful.
Cam: Yeah, that’s ten drinks a week.
Rich: Hitting the opium pipe. You guys ever done opium before?
Benny: No, I haven’t.
Rich: No, that would be cool.
Cam: No. My first flat was an old Chinese opium den.
Benny: I would, though.
Rich: It sounds pretty much like my kind of drug. We just sort of lay on a couch and look at the wall for a couple hours.
Cam: Be pretty chill. Put on some slippers. My first flat was, like, no windows, this old Chinese opium den from like two hundred years ago. My girlfriend at the time developed asthma breathing issues. It was a whole — nah, not from opium, I think just from no windows and dust and stuff. Anyway.
Benny: And then could she — she could only croak. And then she went to a tennis academy interview. No one could understand her.
Cam: She did some psychedelics and then, uh, yeah.
Benny: She ate the mould.
Rich: That’s a deep cut. But actually opium — it’s a revealing drug because it just donks you out. It’s not an upper. You just lie there in a stupor for a couple of hours or something. So I think that sort of speaks to what she wants out of life. She’s not on meth or speed or coke or whatever — she’s on downers.
Benny: The interesting analogy, I think, is that she wants release from her suffering, and Larry comes to that view as well, right? The whole Eastern tradition is based around “life is suffering,” and to achieve enlightenment is to sort of realize that and finally be able to escape it — and escape this cycle of birth and death that we’re all sort of caught in. She does that in some way, right? By dying, she kind of escapes life.
Cam: Dies before she dies, just being zonked out on drugs and alcohol.
Rich: Yeah, but she doesn’t realize her soul was just on that fucking Ferris wheel and she’s about to get attached into a new body and pop straight back up again.
Cam: Yeah, she’s going to be like a snail or some shit now.
Rich: That’s a good catch, Benny. She’s trying to escape the circle of suffering in the more sort of prosaic way that most people do.
Cam: Speaking of deep cuts, I did think of Brief Interviews and the relationship between narcissism and depression. A lot of Sophie’s behaviour seemed a little bit narcissistic, and that seemed to be what Isabel was complaining about as well — making it all about her. It is this tragic thing that happens, and maybe you just have to have sympathy for that no matter where it goes. But you can ramp up the badness, you know. If hoeing around is not bad enough, just ramp it up and say you have a kid and you’re neglecting them, etc.
Rich: But she’s not hurting anyone except herself, right? So there’s not really considerations like that, which makes it a little more sympathetic.
Cam: Yeah, well, that’s the second point — can you do anything as long as you’re not hurting anyone else? And it’s totally ruining your life. Should we all just be okay with that? I think on some level there’s some responsibility there, and Isabel has a point. It’s like, sort yourself out, Sophie. Even though she is fueled by —
Rich: Make your bed, bucko.
Cam: Yeah. So I think there’s a bit of it there.
Rich: Do you guys think it’s weird how Maugham wasn’t even mad at Isabel when she admitted to coming up with this grand conspiracy that ultimately drove Sophie apart from Larry and led directly or indirectly to her death? In the end he was like, “oh, you are a card, let’s have a drink” kind of thing. You know, that’s crazy. She’s a fucking psycho. That’s some crazy machinations.
Cam: I thought he was kind of mad. He was getting mad at her, and that’s why she told him. As long as you’re honest with me as well. Well, I think we’re going a bit far — that she wanted her to die, right? She just wanted them not to get married.
Rich: No, but you know, you meet an alcoholic, an addict, and you deliberately ruin their new sobriety that’s turning them around. That’s fucking — it’s not murder, but it’s on that end of the spectrum, more than a harmless joke or prank or whatever.
Cam: Well, okay, here’s a question. One of Isabel’s concerns was that Sophie was still corrupted, like, even with Larry, and it’s gonna ruin shit eventually.
Rich: Yeah, well, that’s what she hides it behind, right? She doesn’t want Sophie to make Larry unhappy. That’s her pretext.
Cam: Yeah, I think that’s partly true, and it’s not entirely her.
Benny: It’s totally infantilizing towards Larry as well, right? Just assuming that he can’t see what’s actually going on and doesn’t understand what sort of woman he’s marrying.
Cam: Yeah, but Larry is a bit infantile.
Rich: Yeah, she’s always been infantilizing towards Larry, and Larry is a bit simple.
Cam: Larry doesn’t know what’s up, man.
Benny: And Larry is an infant. What’s interesting about her behaviour, I thought, is that her entire reason for disliking Sophie is that she claims that when Sophie’s husband died, the stress induced on Sophie actually just let her real character emerge. So she has this view of bad situations where it’s not that bad situations can make you do bad things, it’s that they reveal your true inner character, who you were the whole time.
Cam: But in some sense they’re true — if you don’t have to say it’s what they were the whole time. It’s just that people react to that sort of thing differently, and in some sense that reveals people’s characters, right?
Benny: Yeah, sure. Like, reveals something fundamental about her nature that was there the whole time. But she says that this was there the whole time. She was this kind of person all along, and this trauma just allowed it to be released.
Cam: Sure.
Benny: What’s interesting is that now Isabel, in a stressful situation, basically resorts to ruining someone’s life. Possibly going a long way to murdering someone. This reveals a lot about her inner character, too. She won’t acknowledge this about herself.
Cam: I think that’s a nice catch and a good parallel.
Benny: And Maugham won’t acknowledge this about her either.
Cam: I think we shouldn’t call it murdering, by the way — like, leaving a bottle of vodka —
Benny: No, but I mean, I agree with Rich, though. This is a totally sadistic intent to have towards someone. If you imagine a true addict, an addict in recovery, having that kind of person —
Cam: Yeah, no, okay, it’s gonna destabilize their life. But I think the average person intentionally leaving out alcohol to an alcoholic —
Rich: Don’t forget that Isabel is not sad that she died. She’s happy. She’s like, “yes.”
Cam: Yeah, well, that’s just everything.
Rich: I mean, she didn’t set out to murder her, but she’s stoked with how it turned out. She’s a psycho.
Cam: Well, that fits with Isabel’s worldview as well. It’s more like responsibility on yourself. She’s living a degenerate lifestyle. So it’s kind of this — how much responsibility do we view of someone like Sophie? Or is it totally — there’s no agency there, and it’s totally Isabel’s fault, who’s in control of her life? It’s kind of what I was talking about before — this patronizing view of all these other people who have no agency. Maybe that’s true — a drug addict has less agency, and we should patronize them a bit. But I think that’s a good catch — Isabel is kind of —
Benny: Actually, it’s just occurring to me that near the beginning of the book, when she’s trying to get Larry to sleep with her so that she’ll pretend that she’s pregnant so that she can marry him, she in some sense has a similar thing where she tempts him with something — but then in that case, sex — but then realizes that he’s too innocent a person. He’s looking at her with these bambi-flies, and she realizes she can’t do this to him. He’s just too innocent. He’s too naive. He’s too nice. So she doesn’t do it. So clearly in that case, she thinks that him just being offered sex is not super reflective of the kind of person he is. There, she feels some responsibility to control the options in front of him in some sense. But with Sophie, she takes the opposite attitude. She says, whatever choice you make in this scenario is truly indicative of who you are.
Cam: Yeah, and I suppose that’s fueled by the intrasexual competition and jealousy, and that she doesn’t have any sympathy.
Rich: Hey, should we move on again, boys? We’ve got half an hour to do the philosophy and then just wrap up. I think there’s some quite good stuff to talk about. Let’s philosophize a little.
Cam: Philosophy. There’s this Schoolboy Q lyric that’s part of Kendrick’s posse cut. He’s got — “is that philosophy?” — like, it’s just the fucking — I can’t remember what he rhymes it with.
Is this whole book just a delivery vehicle for Vedic philosophy?
Rich: Alright, so Maugham runs into Larry at a play in —
Benny: This is after a few years of not seeing him, right, I think.
Rich: Yeah, and then they stay up all night listening to Larry’s story of how he first encountered death, then had to grapple with the problem of evil, then his experience meeting a Benedictine monk and going to stay at the monastery and sort of having a little taste of the Christian faith, then going to India, learning Vedic philosophy, learning about transmigration of souls, grappling with the problem of evil again in that form, and ultimately becoming enlightened — or at least hinting at becoming enlightened. So I guess we should start with the Benedictine monks.
Cam: Well, before we get into the philosophy, just one quick thing. I quite like the writing technique that Maugham did. In this section, he kind of starts it off with, by the way, if anyone wants to skip any of these chapters, this is probably the best chapter to skip — like, just go ahead. But this is just gonna be my conversation with Larry, and it’s kind of not related to everything else, but this is the whole reason I wrote this entire book.
Benny: Yeah, that was funny.
Cam: It was a good hook. It was kind of like, yeah, just feel free to skip it.
Rich: But what did he mean by that? Isn’t it a non sequitur? I thought it was baffling.
Cam: I think I liked it with the plot. It didn’t fit with Elliot, but of course it fits with Larry’s life and everything else he’s saying. It seems kind of wrong.
Rich: So, jumping straight to my meta point, I guess — is this whole book just a freaking delivery vehicle to do a gigantic info dump on Vedic philosophy for Maugham’s readers? Hey, here’s these interesting ideas from the East. And then just literally explain it in a giant monologue.
Cam: I think a little bit. I’m gonna realize you dislike putting philosophy into characters —
Benny: Stuff that’s too on the nose.
Rich: No, I love it, because we’re cheating here. Our project is to get away from non-fiction and try to become cultured, right? But info dumps are totally cheating, where they just deposit a giant lump of non-fiction into the mouths of a character and then it magically becomes fiction. Which is great from my point of view, but it’s not very literary. This is the kind of shit you get in Ayn Rand or Neal Stephenson or whatever, right? The story is like a frame device to do a big info dump. I mean, do you guys like that kind of thing? I don’t mind it.
Benny: Ayn Rand or Neal Stephenson.
Cam: I think if you’re going to read philosophical fiction, there just needs to be a little bit of that. And then you see in the sort of allegory or the example of a life or metaphor that —
Rich: I disagree that there doesn’t need to be info dumps. In a philosophical book, you reveal it through plot and character. You make the reader do the work to join it up.
Cam: Well, I think all great books do it. But I just think, empirically, if you listed all the philosophical fiction, there will be sections of it where it’s either in the voice of a character who’s just arguing for a certain point of view — and in some sense I think that’s fine — and then you also have the plot points and the allegories and the metaphors and Larry’s lifestyle of going into a room and reading all day and then leaving. You also have to have that. You can’t be just totally didactic. I think it pops up in most fiction books — whether it’s the greats, you know, like Dostoevsky.
Rich: Like a Wikipedia excerpt of the page on Vedic — on Hinduism or something.
Cam: I think Houellebecq literally did a Wikipedia —
Rich: Well, yeah, but he does it in a different kind of a way.
Benny: That was for ants or something. Or the fly. The house fly, yeah.
Cam: I just — yeah. You don’t want too much of that, right?
Rich: It’s not literature. I mean, it’s fine, though. It’s interesting.
Benny: Okay, here’s a question. Did you guys actually find it that necessary for the book? I felt like a lot of it could be inferred. We knew Larry went to the East, we knew he studied under various Indian teachers, we knew he was studying Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. I guess we didn’t know the specifics about transmigration of souls and his spiritual walks down to the river, etc. But I honestly didn’t find it that illuminating for the plot of the book.
Rich: You were not illuminated.
Benny: It didn’t change my perception that much of Larry or what the book was about or what he was after. We knew he was interested in the problem of evil, the problem of meaning, and filling in the details of his trip to India actually wasn’t that interesting to me.
Cam: Well, I suppose that goes to Maugham’s point, right? He’s just like, “skip this stuff.”
Rich: But surely it also has something to do with us being modern readers who know the rough outlines of Buddhism and Hinduism.
Cam: Yeah, I was gonna say that.
Benny: Yeah, that’s true.
Rich: And so I’m honestly wondering if this whole story is kind of just a framing device to be like, hey, here’s some cool new ideas — at the time that were not exactly contemporaneous with Hesse, remember? Cool new ideas that haven’t permeated to the West, and I’m going to tell you about them. So it works, and I think it could have been fascinating. It wasn’t fascinating to me, really. A couple of interesting little bits, but —
Cam: Yeah. I think it was quite ahead of its time. It started becoming pretty big in the fifties and sixties.
Rich: And the post-Depression, post-war critique of consumerist materialist culture, right? Is it early versions of that? Before you go full granola cruncher.
Benny: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. We’re probably under-appreciating how many people wanted to live the life of Elliot Templeton, and how much this book would have made people question that automatic belief of theirs.
Larry’s struggle with the problem of evil
Rich: Should we jump to the Benedictine monastery and see if there’s anything interesting there?
Cam: To put my cards on the table, I didn’t read this part super closely. I kind of took Maugham’s advice a little bit. Partly because I felt like we kind of know Buddhism.
Rich: Yeah, there’s some problem-of-evil stuff that we’ve sort of covered before. It wasn’t surprising to me, but I liked the way that he put it. It was kind of clever. He would say, “the way that the Lord expects to be praised all the time, for one thing” — he’s like, you’ve had a great deal of success, do you want to be praised to your face? And Maugham says, “it only embarrasses me.” And Larry says, “that’s what I should have thought. I couldn’t believe that God wanted it either.” Which is a nice way of putting it, I think. And he’s kind of calling God like a deadbeat dad. He’s like, you had all these children, you created these children, and then you left them to fend for themselves and make their own way in the world. You weren’t willing to freely give them their daily bread — you make them beseech you for their daily bread. He’s like, God’s not paying child support, kind of thing. You fucking brought them into this world, you look after them. So you know, not new, but a funny kind of way of putting it.
Benny: Yeah, a novel spin on some old arguments that I’ll definitely use in my — whenever the God argument comes up.
Rich: Yeah, I mean, God is definitely a petty little bitch, right? Like the Old Testament God in particular.
Cam: There’s a great Dawkins quote listing out, like, twenty different adjectives, like capricious and petty.
Rich: I actually felt my long-very-new-atheist self come out when I was reading this passage. I was like, “yes, stick it to him, Larry.”
Cam: But I suppose it is this rejection of Western or Christianity, and then seeking Eastern traditions for your God-shaped hole to be part of it — you’re looking at all these issues specifically with Christianity. That’s kind of what we’re talking about — with Christianity’s God, who’s petty, etc., all these flaws. And then that doesn’t seem to be in Hinduism or in Buddhism. They might have their own —
Rich: I think it is.
Cam: They might have their own issues and stuff. And some people are a little bit inconsistent — you know, do the sort of Sinéad O’Connor thing of, like, have this career where they reject Christianity or her Catholicism background, and she’s a feminist, and then she goes and becomes a Muslim, and you’re kind of looking — well, you can sort of see some contradictions there. But people seem to be able to do that.
Rich: But Larry has a very consistent problem. It’s not about Christianity. It’s about the problem of evil. So he explores that in Christianity, finds it wanting, explores it in Hinduism, finds it wanting, but in a different way.
Cam: I think I was more just trying to think of, like — Maugham obviously is sympathetic to this, but this general feeling of being dissatisfied with Christianity and religion and then replacing it with Eastern traditions, which I think potentially could be the right move, but people sometimes have this isolated demand of rigor on Christianity. And then they go in and it’s like, taking all the reincarnation stuff, which is obviously just as kind of unbelievable, if that’s your issue with religion — and just kind of ignoring that. And yeah, I think you’re right. Larry himself is probably more consistent. But he is finding much more meaning in Hinduism.
Rich: Yeah, well, first of all, he sort of rejects transmigration of the soul stuff, which is interesting. That’s why this is quite a good nuanced telling of it, because it’s not the thing that you’re saying of being like, this vague sense that the East will solve problems that the West doesn’t. It’s very critical of parts of the Eastern tradition. The transmigration of souls thing, which I had not thought of before, is another example of a problem of evil where you can — you’re like, oh, well, anyone who has a shit life, it’s their own fault in some sense. It’s karma. They did something wrong in their last life, and it’s within their power to climb off the wheel of suffering or whatever. So it always levels responsibility for bad things in the world on people bringing it upon themselves, or at least can make people callous towards the fates of other people. And then he goes down the path of, once you become one with the world and sort of sacrifice your individual ego and become part of the Brahmin, that’s when you climb off the wheel of suffering and you don’t get reincarnated. And then he’s also like, fuck that, I want to be reincarnated. I want to live again and again and again. I don’t want to climb off the wheel. So he also rejects that, which is the central tenet of Buddhism, right? That’s interesting. And then I guess I wasn’t entirely clear on where he landed, but I think it was sort of taking elements of those traditions but not swallowing them hook, line, and sinker.
Benny: I missed that last part, actually — that he wanted to keep living and didn’t want to experience enlightenment and get off the wheel of suffering. That’s interesting.
Rich: He said, “if in those moments of ecstasy I had indeed been one with the absolute, then if what they said was true, nothing could touch me, and when I’d worked out the karma of my present life I should return no more. The thought filled me with dismay. I wanted to live again and again.”
Cam: Just to bring it back to revealed preferences — Richard, always saying how much you don’t like these info dumps, and then you can see your notes preparing for all the info dumps. Totally engaging with it.
Rich: No, no, I didn’t say I don’t like it. It’s just it’s not very literary. Yeah, it’s cheating.
Cam: Loving it. Yeah, it’s cheating, sure.
Rich: I mean, yeah, I’m getting ahead of myself. I won’t say my overall opinion of the book yet, but —
Benny: I mean, we’re almost there, I think.
Cam: Let’s go there now.
Oneness and universality of transcendent experience
Cam: I mean, one quick thing — alluded to it or even touched on it last time, but the central piece of insight that Larry and Maugham are grappling with and finding in the Eastern tradition seems to be this oneness or universalness of consciousness and of all beings. And apparently it was in this Meister Eckhart Christianity that Schopenhauer was keen on, and apparently it’s in Plotinus. So it’s kind of there in the Western tradition as well, but it’s much more core to the Eastern traditions. I suppose it’s just an interesting time in history where, that’s when a lot of Western intellectuals were for the first time coming across these ideas and finding them very profound. It would have been a viewquake, man.
Rich: He does stress how universal the experience is, though, right? He goes up on the hill on his birthday and he has that moment, that transcendent experience, which I think maybe is meant to be enlightenment. You wouldn’t have read that scene, Cam, because it was set in nature and it had descriptions of lakes and bushes and stuff. Too many bushes for you. So it was a nice little scene, but then he explicitly says something like, “oh, I think this is the same type of experience that the Catholics have had during fasting, and that the Protestants have, and the Brahmins have, and the Sufi have.”
Cam: Yeah, well, I always liked that about Sam Harris. He used to say that, you know, he goes back and thinks of, like, Jesus — he would have been a very wise person, even if you reject that he’s the son of God, and super mindful, and had these real experiences of epiphany. Or even someone else who just has this conversion because they’re walking through a valley and see a waterfall in the sunlight, and totally feel one with God. And he believes in that as this true universal experience that people can access.
Rich: That’s what I thought we could talk about — what is the thing that Larry is saving from the Eastern tradition? What is the synthesis here? What’s the thing that’s worth having? And it’s something to do with that, right? Those kind of transcendent moments of oneness, which you often get when you’re in nature. Or not having a personal god, but having a spirituality that comes from within, or something like that. That seems similar to what modern meditation practitioners and people are into.
Cam: I think that’s the message of the book, and it aligns with the Harrises and the likes. Personally, I kind of endorse that wholeheartedly. I’m more sympathetic to like a belief-in-belief sort of thing, and with the other aspects of religion — moral guidance and norms and community — as being very important, not just this transcendence-oneness that you can get without this other stuff. Yeah, I think there’s sort of more tradition to religion than just that, that’s potentially good for society. But then you get into this contradiction yourself when you’re like someone who can’t get over the logic and the epistemology of it, even if you think it would be good for society.
Benny: One thing I find interesting about Larry is that at the beginning of the book, and for most of the book actually, he’s sort of searching for intellectual fulfillment. He’s searching for intellectual answers to various metaphysical questions that he has. But in the end, it seems like most of his experiences are experiential, right? He’s talking about sitting on the edge of the riverbank, being flooded with emotion. It’s based on observation, feeling, et cetera. Which, I’m not sure if I personally agree with, but it did seem to be a message of the book — where Larry feels more contented by the end because he’s had certain experiences. Even though he’s unable to explain away perfectly the problem of evil, he doesn’t feel as bothered somehow by it anymore, because he’s had these illuminating slash enlightened experiences on the riverbank and on his track. So he has this transformation over the book from — he’s sitting there reading William James, which now in retrospect is sort of the antithesis of just feeling an emotion, right? William James’s psychology is all about trying to make legible emotions and our psychology and understand it scientifically.
Cam: Why do we have these emotions?
Benny: He’s trying to bring to bear the scientific method, objective facts, et cetera, onto the world. And that’s what he’s reading at the beginning. And then by the end of the book, he’s sitting there trying to just absorb the experience of these Brahmin teachers and whatnot. It seems like a total transformation in that way. And it’s not one I think I’m fully on board with, perhaps.
Buddhism as a mind-killing philosophy
Rich: I almost have the opposite intuition — that Buddhism and so on is sort of like a mind-killing type of religion in some sense, where it causes you to become very passive, and it sort of reduces your motivation to work on actual problems in the world. Maybe that’s like an ignorant take and that’s not actually how it plays out in practice, but I don’t necessarily think it’s good to become, like, serenity-maxed or tranquility-maxed or whatever. I think you should probably have the correct amount of anxiety and status drive and so on, because it leads to good outcomes in the world. You know, it’s probably good for you on an individual level, but it would be really bad on a societal level if everyone just wanted to sit on the top of a mountain and meditate. I think he was on the right track with William James right at the start.
Benny: Yeah, no, that’s what I was saying — I don’t think I agree.
Rich: He needed to meet David Deutsch on the road.
Cam: I think maybe you just need a bit of both, is the thing. And there are probably Buddhist or Buddhist-curious people that heard what you just said and said, no, you can build stuff. But insofar as that’s true, you’re not really getting it from your Buddhism. It’s potentially compatible, maybe it’s even at odds, but you can potentially work it. But you’re not getting it from your Buddhism — you’re getting it from —
Rich: The central tenet being climbing off the wheel of suffering, whereas a progress-Deutsch-focused person would say, resolve the causes of suffering in the world. It’s like an escapism kind of a philosophy, which even takes it a step further than Stoicism, which is similar but just says, you know, don’t focus on the things outside of your power, but do focus on the things within your control — actually try and solve problems in the world. Which to me is a nicer synthesis of the central idea. I think it probably is heavily influenced by Buddhism, but doesn’t abandon the actual call to action to try and accomplish things in the world.
Cam: Do you mean Stoicism is influenced by it?
Rich: Yeah, Stoicism, because Stoicism is like —
Cam: I think potentially they got there independently, but I don’t know the intellectual lineage of it.
Rich: I’m not a hundred percent, but I’m pretty sure that Seneca was influenced by Buddhism. I believe it’s Buddhism-flavoured. Maybe I’m wrong about that.
Cam: I know it’s Buddhism-flavoured. I think the question is, was it influenced by it?
Rich: Yeah, I think it was. But either way, anyway, for me it’s a nicer model of how to be in the world — try really hard to be calm and serene about things which are outside of your power, and practice that, and there are techniques that you can actually use to practice that which would include things like meditation. But don’t actually stop striving. Don’t tear out your status instincts altogether. I’ve seen it happen to some people that I know in real life, and it seems like a shame on some level.
Benny: Yeah, no, I think I agree with you. I’ve heard even prominent meditators allude to this tension, and I’m not sure they fully know how to resolve it. I have heard Sam Harris mention this before — you don’t want a world full of monks because nothing’s going to get done. I think the dangerous step is, once you acknowledge that all of life is suffering but then you don’t draw any distinctions between the kinds of suffering, then it’s easy to just say, well, you know, if I’m going to be suffering all the time, I’m just going to retreat into myself and try and achieve some state where I’m not worried about it at all. A nicer synthesis in my view is something like the modern notion of flow, or what I was mentioning last time around Montessori and the “all too human” capacity to lose yourself in work, which is this glorious thing. Once you do that, you’re working on something but it’s for its own sake, and so in that way you’re both producing but also somehow achieving — it’s like you’re reaching your full capabilities as a human somehow. You’re doing what humans were supposed to do.
Rich: And you’re not thinking about yourself, right?
Benny: Yeah, exactly.
Cam: Sometimes I wonder if meditation and mindfulness and stuff is a little bit overrated. There’s just a lot of people — I mean, we sound like Harris bros at this point, but I remember Harris talking to Dawkins, and he’s trying to get him into meditation, and Dawkins is kind of like, “yeah, probably not for me.” And Dawkins has, like, amazing output in life, and it’s not for him, and that’s fine. And good, even. There can be that because it’s kind of vague and mystic and something — it can feel important when actually, you know, the person doing the more conventional building or knowledge work actually is more soulful even. That said, there’s also a big reason why people don’t want to get into meditation and mindfulness, which is a kind of fear as well. And then you can rationalize that fear, saying, “yeah, it’s not for me.” It’s hard for me personally now — it’s hard to know, am I speaking from fear of not wanting to go full hog into that, or how much is it actually, well, it’s fine not going full hog into that as well?
Benny: Just distract yourself with this other stuff, yeah.
The boys’ experience with meditating
Rich: Have you guys meditated much or done anything in this tradition?
Cam: Uh, yeah, I’ve done a little bit, but I find it difficult. I don’t have a meditation habit.
Benny: Yeah, I had one for a year and a half or something, and it’s been broken for the last year or so. I haven’t figured out how to do it with my current schedule in grad school.
Cam: Since you’ve been chasing gills again.
Benny: Yeah, exactly. It’s gone. But that part’s been working, so I don’t want to change up the calculus too much. I don’t want to introduce more variables that might make me a little more aloof.
Cam: God, give me power of what I can control.
Benny: The biggest issue I find with it is that it’s easiest for me to do it in the morning, but I think I need it later on in the day, because that’s when you lose self-discipline. But if I do it too late, I just get sleepy, man. I’ll just start falling asleep. Do you do it?
Rich: I’ve done it for a couple of years in the past and got into a good groove with it, but I didn’t really sort of get all that much out of it in the end. And I know that’s in some sense the wrong mindset, but also, because I’m a materialist, I’m like, what else is there? A part of me feels like it might be somewhat overstated or fake or something. It’s probably a good exercise to do to improve your conscientiousness or self-discipline or something, but I think you could equally well get that from training yourself to enter flow states in work, or similar. Or just practicing emotional regulation whenever you’re having a discussion or a fight or something. I actually really wanted to do a Vipassana retreat for ten days — do the full whole-hog thing — because there’s probably a big element of front-loading and getting over the hump before you can sort of see what people are talking about. And then it’s the kind of thing that, you know, doesn’t exactly easily slot into your calendar, and now I would say it’s vanishingly unlikely that I’ll ever do it. Plus I’ve kind of soured on the idea of meditation a little bit.
Cam: Now with a family. I’m surprised you didn’t do it.
Rich: I totally should have done it. Yeah, it was a missed opportunity, maybe.
Cam: I got a buddy that did it. He did this week-long silent retreat. And he’s not really into this sort of stuff. He said his favourite part of it was — he was with his roommate at one point, there was a hat in the middle of the room, and they both had a form. One of them scrunches up a little bit of it and throws it into the hat. Just misses. And he’s on the other bed on the other side of the room. He does it — you’re not even really allowed to communicate as well, and that was breaking the rules. But he just said he probably did that for two hours, like playing this game of basketball, essentially. He said, this was a sanctuary, and I was probably defeating the point.
Rich: Yeah, yeah, his highlight of the whole thing was the thing he did which was completely not in keeping with the spirit of the thing.
Benny: That’s hysterical.
Cam: Yeah, just this acknowledgement of how much is, like, good for this other guy as well — like, you just knew, you both like seeking it.
Benny: I think the habit is worth cultivating for even just a few months, just for the realization that your mind is totally out of control most of the time, and to be able to step back and just —
Cam: That’s good. I don’t want to know that. Yeah, I’m legitimately crazy. I’m schizophrenic.
Benny: It is good. It’s honestly extremely helpful, and I still walk around with — honestly, I think it’s a huge one. I feel like I can still step back into that space sometimes, and my sense of self doesn’t vanish or whatever, but just that recognition where, okay, I’m just overthinking about this thing. All that’s happening right now is, I just have thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts, and they just keep talking to my head unbidden. That’s a huge source of anxiety for the majority of people, and to be able to step back into that space where you just kind of notice that they’re thoughts, and you can either do something about this problem right now, or there’s nothing you can do and you’re just being tormented by your thoughts — you’re just going to suffer twice about it. That’s a huge insight which has pretty direct implications for how you live your life and the kind of things you focus on. So yeah, that’s my one big takeaway.
Rich: But can you make your arm lift up like that? Oh, shit.
Cam: You know the sort of guys that get real into this stuff, and they’re like the kind of — full-on Reach alignment, you kind of see it in their eyes sometimes. It’s like no one’s fucking home, almost. They’re just content. That’s how I was imagining Larry. Just this guy, you know, sitting around with these people on the couch, and then he’s just like — I’m gonna see — it’s almost like Space Cadet, but not quite. It’s more like contentment. It’s in the eyes.
Rich: Oh yeah, have you guys seen those videos of two enlightened people on a video call or something, and there’s a natural gap in the conversation which would make all of us feel really uncomfortable and sort of scramble to fill the silence, and they just sit there for like fifteen seconds, which is a long time — just slightly smiling and looking at each other? It’s fucking eerie. I don’t like it.
Benny: So this was real? This wasn’t a skit, this is an actual video?
Rich: No, it’s not a skit. It’s just like — there’s this guy on Twitter who’s a cute evangelist for meditation. I think he’s an OpenAI guy. I can’t remember what his name is. He’s always talking about jhanas and stuff.
Benny: Oh yeah, Nick Cammarata.
Rich: Yeah, that’s the guy. I think he posted it up. It was his observation that people who are heavily into this kind of thing can just quite happily just let large amounts of time lapse on something like a video call, just smiling at each other and doing nothing. Which is crazy.
Cam: Yeah, and that’s definitely Larry, right? You can imagine that. So maybe to wrap up just what I thought of the book — in some sense, I can imagine, if I was one of those guys, you’d really kind of relate to Larry’s path and it’d be really great. Sorry, I’m stuttering a bit. But I certainly see myself in Larry, and as we’ve talked about in the previous sessions, now I kind of see some of the trade-offs of their life and I don’t want to live their life. The thing that’s stuck with me most actually out of this book is just that image of him reading as a twenty-year-old for ten hours each day, and how cool that is, and how difficult, and how privileged it is to be able to just do that — to spend three years of your life just reading. And kind of wistful of university times. That’s kind of what you could do.
Rich: Boys, should we go join the freaking Benedictine monastery? Because that sounded pretty tight. You just study all day, just read, and you go to mass, and you chant some resonant, beautiful hymns or something. Sounds awesome.
Cam: It’s kind of funny, that realization that you can just do something like that if you want to.
Benny: It would have to be an early-twenties me, I think. I honestly think I could have been talked into something like that when I was younger. I think I had the personality where I could have been talked into, just a year just leaving and being like, I’m gonna live at this monastery.
Cam: Now that you’re mid-twenties, far too mature for that stuff.
Rich: I went to a monastery in San Francisco for one day, and then I quit. They were trying to convince me to sign up, though.
Benny: Just full of tech bros. Sam Altman greeted you at the door — “welcome, Richard, come build the future.”
Rich: No, it was a Buddhist one. It was kind of creepy and had low-key cult vibes to it.
Cam: I kind of got swindled by some — what are they called — Hare Krishnas. I mean, “swindled” is a bit strong, but, you know, they had that fucking look. I was walking down — you just kind of see them on the street, and they catch your eye and they talk to you, and they’re trying to get me to donate or sell me a book or something. And I was just dating this girl who was into meditation big time. She was pulling the Larry — going to India and coming back. And I thought, oh, I should probably get into this for her. I tell them, I don’t want to get into any woo, like I just don’t want — and they were like, “yeah, no, it’s none of that.” I was like, “I want to see the meditation stuff and not the woo stuff,” and they’re like, “you know, this is not the woo stuff, it’s just purely mindfulness and stuff.” And then I get it and I show her, and she’s like, “this is Hare Krishna, man, what are you smoking?” And I paid like thirty bucks for the main book.
Benny: Okay, so, yeah, my takeaway: it’s a good book. I was slightly disappointed only because that book started so excellently.
Cam: It’s the best.
Cam: First third, isn’t it?
Benny: I mean, I think I would have been absolutely blown away had I been alive and read it in 1944 when it came out. Because, as you guys said earlier, these ideas were new. It wasn’t in the culture. And I think I’m only failing to appreciate it precisely to the extent that these ideas have now been circulated so extensively by so many people that, even if you haven’t touched that world yourself at all, you’re probably aware of those ideas. You can’t help but read this now and be slightly underwhelmed by points that would have been perceived as new and novel and insightful had you read it fifty years ago. So yeah, excellent start, slight disappointment, but only because it’s just an older book, and some of those ideas — probably because of people like Hermann Hesse, etc. — those ideas are sort of more in the water now.
Rich: A hundred percent cosine. I think I’ll probably find this book very forgettable in the fullness of time. I don’t think I’m gonna return to it or think about it ever again, probably. But it doesn’t mean it’s a bad book, it’s just a time-and-place kind of a book. I’m glad we read it. There were some cool elements and cool characters.
Cam: Yeah, the Larry archetype, I think, is a useful concept handle as well.
Benny: I would honestly recommend it to late teenagers, people in their twenties, etc. It’s the kind of book I would recommend to those kind of folks, I think.
Cam: Alright, man, well —
Rich: Cool, that’s a wrap. Nice one.
Benny: Alright, boys. That’s a wrap. What’s next?
Rich: Are we doing Beckett?
Cam: Okay, yep. Maybe we want to mention at the start for the listeners —
Rich: No, why don’t we say it at the end?
Cam: People haven’t listened to them.
Rich: Bro, people ain’t listening, period. Don’t worry about it.
Benny: Wait, what? Yeah, exactly. We got nine downloads and they’re all Rich’s, so —
Rich: Yeah, legitimately.
Cam: Oh yeah. So do Beckett.
Rich: Sweet, catch you later, fellas. Have a good day.
Benny: Alright, see you, boys.
