Mark, Wes, and Dylan conclude our discussion of Shakespeare's play. We talk about the exchanges about art in the play: How does art relate to life and to commerce? This leads us to consider more generally Shakespeare's language and how we moderns can be good spectators of these plays. Are we meant to just get the gist, or is study and preparation necessary before Continue Reading …
Ep. 244: Camus on Strategies for Facing Plague (Part Two)
Continuing on Albert Camus's 1947 novel, covering the old functionary Grand, the criminal (or just paranoid?) Cottard, and more of our narrators Dr. Rieux and his doomed friend Tarrou, plus more on the overall message of the book and how it might relate to our current situation. Start with part one or get the unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! End song: "You Continue Reading …
Ep. 244: Camus on Strategies for Facing Plague (Part One)
On Albert Camus's novel The Plague (1947), which has been selling out lately like N95 COVID-19 face masks. How shall we face adversity? Camus gives us colorful characters that embody various approaches. Should we put faith in God (Paneloux), or refuse to believe that a God would allow such suffering (Rieux)? Should you dwell on the one you love that the plague is keeping you Continue Reading …
Ep. 244: Camus on Strategies for Facing Plague (Citizen Edition)
On Albert Camus's novel The Plague (1947), which has been selling out lately like N95 COVID-19 face masks. How shall we face adversity? Camus gives us colorful characters that embody various approaches. Should we put faith in God (Paneloux), or refuse to believe that a God would allow such suffering (Rieux)? Should you dwell on the one you love that the plague is keeping you Continue Reading …
Pretty Much Pop #42: Star Trek Lives Long and Prospers (Intermittently)
The world-wide Tribble infestation and Star Trek: Picard dropping make this an apt time to address our most philosophical sci-fi franchise. 44 years of thought experiments (with photon torpedoes!) about what it is to be human should have taught us something, and Brian, Erica, and Mark along with Drew Jackson (Erica’s husband) reflect on what makes a Star Trek story, world Continue Reading …
Bonus: (sub)Text #2: Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”: Is There Such a Thing as a War Story? (Part One)
For Episode 2 of (sub)Text, Wes discusses Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five with Phi Fic podcaster and PEL Blog Managing Editor Mary Ricci. Slaughterhouse Five is a story about war, yet one that seems to advance the thesis that there can be no war stories that don’t entirely falsify the experience and significance of war. That falsification is effected by the way in Continue Reading …
(sub)Text #2: Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”: Is There Such a Thing as a War Story? (Citizens Only)
For Episode 2 of (sub)Text, Wes discusses Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five with Phi Fic podcaster and PEL Blog Managing Editor Mary Ricci. Slaughterhouse Five is a story about war, yet one that seems to advance the thesis that there can be no war stories that don’t entirely falsify the experience and significance of war. That falsification is effected by the way in Continue Reading …
Combat & Classics #19: Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
Is human life “nada”—nothing? In their discussion of Hemingway’s (very) short story, Brian, Lise, and Jeff examine the contrast between youth and old age and the states of being hurried versus unhurried. How are those distinctions related to the question of whether there is a difference between those who need a clean, well-lighted place and those who do not? Get more C&C 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 #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 #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 …
Episode 164: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” on Perfection (Part Two)
More on the novel with guest Corey Mohler, considering Dostoyevsky explicitly as an existentialist in terms of his analysis of the crisis of meaning and his consequent views on religion. Listen to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. End song: "Don Quixote" (acoustic, 2010) by Nik Kershaw, as interviewed on the Nakedly Examined Music podcast #37. Continue Reading …
Episode 164: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” on Perfection (Part One)
On Fyodor Dostoyevsky's philosophical novel from 1869. Could a morally perfect person survive in the modern world? Is all this "modernity," which so efficiently computes our desires and provides mechanisms to fulfill them, actually suited to achieve human flourishing? Dostoyevsky (whose name, incidentally, can correctly be spelled with either one "y" or two... the Continue Reading …
Ep. 164: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” on Perfection (Citizen Edition)
On Fyodor Dostoyevsky's philosophical novel from 1869. Could a morally perfect person survive in the modern world? Is all this "modernity," which so efficiently computes our desires and provides mechanisms to fulfill them, actually suited to achieve human flourishing? Dostoyevsky (whose name, incidentally can correctly be spelled with either one "y" or two... the translation Continue Reading …
PEL Special: Phi Fic on James Baldwin’s Fiction
On the short stories "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" (1960) and "Sonny’s Blues" (1957). To supplement our episode on Baldwin's essays, we're doing a crossover on to the PEL feed here from the Phi Fic podcast. PEL's Mark Linsenmayer joins Phi Fic regulars Nathan, Cezary, Mary, and Laura (read about them all plus the absent Daniel at our new "Meet Phi Fic" page) to Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #4 “Grendel” by John Gardner
What’s with these self-aware monsters anyway? Both Frankenstein and Grendel bemoan their fates as the necessary evils in this world—so that goodness may exist, perhaps? Listen as we join their struggle, and Mary calms Laura’s frantic worry about Gardner’s use of the “other” to make his philosophical point while the guys argue about who is the real monster here: Grendel or Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #3 Frankenstein (PEL Crossover Special)
PEL welcomes a new podcast to our fledgling network: Phi Fic, which grew out of our Not School Philosophical Fiction group, featuring Nathan Hanks (who you'll likely recognize from our Not School anouncments, Mary Claire (who helps edit the PEL blog), Daniel St. Pierre, Laura Davis, and Cezary Baraniecki. This time they discuss Mary Shelley's classic novel, and are joined by Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #2 “The Moviegoer” by Walker Percy
Looking for the meaning of life? You and me both, my friend. And so is Binx Bolling, protagonist in The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. Join us as Mary and Daniel praise this story for its examination of the existential crisis presented in beautiful language and Southern charm, and as Nathan salutes Bolling’s view of life's preciousness. So step away from the dishes to be washed and Continue Reading …