Phi Fic means Philosophical Fiction. Each episode, we have a candid dicussion on a heady work of of fiction, full of SPOILERS. Join host Nathan Hanks and readers Cezary Baraniecki, Daniel St. Pierre, Laura Davis, and Mary Claire, plus the occasional guest.
If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. –Ulysses As Nathan notes, Ulysses is “the Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #23 “To The Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf
It was a house full of unrelated passions. –To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf In the incredible novel To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf takes us to Hebrides on the Isle of Skye off the coast of Scotland, where the Ramsey family retreats during the summer. The novel is not driven by plot but rather through the consciousnesses of many of the characters. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #22 “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf
She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxicabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #21 “Foe” by J.M. Coetzee
The true story of Friday will not be heard till by art we have found a means of giving voice to Friday. We discuss J.M. Coetzee's novel Foe, which presents an origin story of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Coetzee writes about Susan Barton, a woman castaway at sea who discovers an island inhabited by two men, Robinson Crusoe and Friday. Once rescued, Crusoe dies and Barton Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #20 “Lord Jim” by Joseph Conrad
It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #19 “Death in Venice” by Thomas Mann
In 1911, the great writer Thomas Mann (1875–1955) went on vacation with his family to a seaside resort in Venice, Italy. There, he came across a beautiful 14-year-old boy and it inspired his great novella Death in Venice. This experience sets up the central struggle in the story: where eros—or erotic love as seen in Plato’s dialogue Symposium—can lead one to recognize beauty in Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #18 “The Trouble with Being Born” by E.M. Cioran
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late. –The Trouble with Being Born (1973) In this volume of aphorisms, Emil Cioran (1911–1995) strips the human condition down to its nub to defend his proposition that the true disaster in life is not death, but birth. Cioran was considered a brilliant mind, heralded by many as belonging to Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #17 “Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #16 Stories by Clarice Lispector
This time we discuss two works by the remarkable Clarice Lispector—born to a Jewish family in Ukraine shortly before they emigrated to Brazil, where she became one of its most important writers. We read two of her works, the novella The Hour of the Star (1977), and the short story “The Departure of the Train” (1974). I know there are girls who sell their bodies, their only Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #15 “The State of the Art” by Iain M. Banks
This time, we talk about a novella in the late, great Iain M. Banks’s famed Culture sci-fi series, which is centered around a utopian, post-scarcity society that spans various planets (and other habitats) within the Milky Way galaxy. They have hope. The Culture has statistics. So says Linter, one of the chief protagonists in The State of the Art. In the story, a group of Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #14 “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov
From Ponce de León to Woody Allen (and likely every self-reflective person who has lived), entropy has been at the root of human anxiety. Is there a way to hold off or reverse the inevitable? A testament to this primary apprehension is “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov, a short story we discussed a few years back (after which the resultant sound files had their very own Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #13 “The House of the Dead” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Our reading this month is The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a semi-autobiographical novel about life in a Siberian labor camp. Dostoevsky was sent there after being convicted for his connection with the Petrashevsky Circle, where Western philosophy and literature were discussed, which was deemed subversive by Tsar Nicholas I. Told through the eyes of Aleksander Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #12 Stories by James Baldwin
On two short stories by James Baldwin: “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon” and “Sonny’s Blues.” Both are included in the collection Going to meet the Man (1965). Unfortunately, Daniel had to be absent this time, but we did get Mark Linsenmayer to join us! For the first time in my life I felt that no force jeopardized my right, my power, to possess and to protect a Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #11 “The Body Artist” by Don DeLillo
Grief. Is it mourning loss or is it mourning change? Our book this time is The Body Artist by Don Delillo, an absorbing look at Lauren, a performance artist, and her experience of overwhelming loss when her husband commits suicide. We reflect on her travels through the murky struggle, accompanied by a strange young man ("Mr. Tuttle," whom she names after discovers him hiding Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #10 “The Fall” by Albert Camus
We discuss the novel about what you do when you're "called" and how you live afterward. You can listen along while Cezary, Daniel, Laura, Mary, and Nathan discuss The Fall by Albert Camus, which Sartre claimed was "perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood" of Camus's books. We get to know Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a renowned and successful Parisian attorney, as he Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #9 “The Grand Inquisitor” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Within The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky penned a passage, considered one of the best known in modern literature: "The Grand Inquisitor." The character Ivan uses this tale to question the existence of God to his younger brother Alyosha, a monk. In the older brother's story, Christ returns to earth during the Inquisition, is arrested and sentenced to death by burning, Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #8 “Erewhon” by Samuel Butler
"Utopia means Nowhere." Welcome to Erehwon by Samuel Butler, wisely chosen by Daniel for this month's read. We all agreed that we enjoyed our conversation about it even more than the actual reading experience. Is there not a molecular action to thinking, a dynamical theory of the passions…should we not ask what levers a man is made of rather than what is his Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #7 “The Call of Cthulhu” by H. P. Lovecraft
Get ready for the frightening, the horrifying, the sublime—the (in)famous Cthulhu! It’s time for H.P. Lovecraft! Join us as we read the tome of this scandalous mythos, this perturbing unrealism—The Call of Cthulhu. Lovecraft opens his work about the green, gelatinous, multi-dimensional creature with fear for all us human sycophants: The most merciful thing in the world, I Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #6 “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." So said dear Nietzsche, and seemingly on his heels, the sentiment was reiterated by Henry James. Our discussion of the short story The Beast in the Jungle pushes the question of madness and love to the limit. Mary and Laura exclaim over the remarkable narcissism of the character John Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #5 “Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov
So, you think Lolita was Nabokov’s best? We humbly submit a solid contender. Cezary, in his wisdom, suggested the book for this episode: Pale Fire. Structured as a 999-line poem followed by an extensive afterword and index, Pale Fire has been described by the critic Harold Bloom as “the surest demonstration of [Nabokov’s] genius…” Join us as Cezary kicks it off with an Continue Reading …