Recent Reads End of May

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Hi, BookTube, and welcome to new video.

[00:00:01]This is a recent reads.

[00:00:04]Those of you who watched my last video in which I said I would be traveling abroad on holiday for 8 days with four long train journeys.

[00:00:15]And that idea marked four books I hoped to complete during that, including a thousand-page novel. Well, I managed three of them, and I'm two-thirds of the way through the other.

[00:00:25]So, quite satisfactory progress, but I'm not just going to talk about three books cuz I've read others before I left and also as since I've come home I've read I've read some shorter novels. So, eight books in all to talk about. Ink by Angela Woodward.

[00:00:45]Fragments of a revolution by Seb Doubinsky who is French, but he writes in English.

[00:00:52]So, no translator.

[00:00:54]The perfect circle, Claudia Petrucci, Italian. This is one of the four books I took. I wanted to take a little book by an Italian in Italy, and this was it.

[00:01:03]And this has been translated by Ann Milano Appel.

[00:01:11]Quite appropriate because Milano was where we were based for our trip.

[00:01:16]Morgan Day, The Oldest [ __ ] Alive.

[00:01:21]Pretty terrible title, but you'll see what I thought of the book.

[00:01:25]A very early Jonathan Lethem book, You Don't Love Me Yet.

[00:01:29]As I inch towards a sort of completion of Jonathan Lethem.

[00:01:35]Michel Faber, D, A Tale of Two Worlds.

[00:01:40]Can't seem to hold anything straight today. Not quite sure why that is.

[00:01:44]And my big thousand-page book as forewarned, Jonathan Meades' Empty Weeks.

[00:01:52]And finally, some non-fiction, Will Storr, The Science of storytelling.

[00:01:58]So, I'm going to start with Ink by uh Angela Woodward.

[00:02:03]So, um this is a book about two uh middle-aged American women who are sat in an office working on typewriters.

[00:02:14]And uh we get occasional bursts of what they are typing, which is transcripts of what can only be termed torture sessions. Uh notionally, that I suppose the army would feel that they were interrogation uh sessions, but it's very much sort of what went on in Abu Ghraib.

[00:02:30]And this is so um cleverly done that it's it's sort of almost toneless.

[00:02:38]Everything Everything that happens within is sort of uh has no it's sort of unremarkable. So, from the banalities of their lives, the banalities of the office through to this terrible stuff that they're typing, it has no effect. And that's that's the book's subversion.

[00:02:56]So, uh one of the women um is fretting about her son who has um a big concert coming up, and she can't afford to buy him the clothes for the choir, so she's sort of mixing and matching for him. The other one is starting a new relationship which turns out to be abusive. So, we get these quite mundane domestic things gradually building up, but we also have uh the office life. So, for example, one of them is is obsessed with the quality of soap uh in the bathrooms and brings her own to replace it. But then the smell of urine seems to not only permeate, you know, it doesn't matter what the soap and the cleaning is, it seems not only permeate the bathroom, but starts permeating their office. And that, of course, is because they are repressing the the horror of what they're typing.

[00:03:47]So, they begin to develop these sort of um symptoms um symptoms of their own as a, you know, that that's saying, you know, you're not processing this horror that you're you're typing up.

[00:03:59]We also get sort of quite a few, um, almost sort of slightly essayistic short essays on sort of things like the history of ink, uh, Netflix. There There are several sort of chapters. There's one of [snorts] the women mainly spends her time off work uh, in the evening watching Netflix.

[00:04:16]And it's just a perfect blend, uh, of this sort of slightly hybrid uh, approach of, as I say, these sort of transcripts of of torture, the domestic life, the office life, the personal lives of these women. It's brilliantly done, as I say, very subversive. Five stars.

[00:04:36]And on to, uh, Fragments of a of a Revolution by Sep Trobitsky. So, this is 1969 Mexico, and three Mexican brothers are launching, um, a revolution working their way up towards Tijuana.

[00:04:51]Uh, and they are joined in their motley band not only by sort of uh, local peasants, but by various European anarchist um, revolutionaries who are really nothing more than adventurers. We get very little on the battles, you know, what's happening in the various battles, but we get a lot of their downtime in between the battles, drinking, playing cards, philosophizing, uh, going with women, some prostitutes, some not, falling in love. But of course, they have to leave if they have true loves.

[00:05:23]They have to leave [snorts] them behind because they're moving on to attack the next city.

[00:05:26]And it's called in Fragments because this is told from the, uh, the retrospective of of, um, he's an Italian anarchist who partook in the revolution.

[00:05:37]And, uh, he's looking back on it from, uh, his sort of old age where he's got a completely domestic life with a wife, uh, and a and a a coming, whether it was male or female.

[00:05:50]And he's really struggling to remember.

[00:05:52]You know, this this is not only a a sort of a lifetime ago for him, it's also so far removed from where he's ended up that he's really struggling and can only offer fragments. And he's always cursing himself, you know, why can't I remember?

[00:06:06]Um [snorts] it's it's quite short, and I really enjoyed it. It was a real sort of page-turner.

[00:06:13]Sort of, you know, treads lightly in its style, but tells a good story.

[00:06:19]Lots of nice sort of little um scenes and events. The character The characters are good.

[00:06:24]Um yeah, I enjoyed it. Five stars.

[00:06:29]And onto the Italian book that I took called The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci. So, uh this starts off with a a young woman uh jumping to her death in this sort of architecturally designed house. She's on the third floor with this sort of spiral staircase, and uh sort of whirlpool at the bottom, and she [snorts] jumps to her death.

[00:06:48]And then, I'm not I can't remember exactly how many years later, maybe 30 years later, and uh Italy is uh suffering the effects of climate crisis. Specifically, this is Milan, and it's sort of beset by fog.

[00:07:02]People can't see in front of them, you know, they have to have lamps on their head like miners and and things and it's really dangerous to drive or ride a bike or whatever.

[00:07:11]And we have a real estate agent who specializes in selling uh either top-end properties or even state-owned, you know, they used to be museums or whatever, uh state-owned buildings to the private sector. Now, it's not quite clear to me why, when you've got a climate-stricken um city, why people would invest in in houses in there.

[00:07:38]Um she does try and justify that. I'm not sure I'm buying it. It's all to do with sort of when you're that rich, you know, why wouldn't you buy something that's sort of doomed?

[00:07:49]Anyway, that's not really the main the main point of the book. It is a book that that that that um uh got works backwards and talks about the development of this house. And all the time you're nearing why you know, why did this girl throw herself off off the third-floor staircase to her death. And the estate agent um takes possession to have a look around. You know, it's been it's been sort of empty for for 30 years pretty much. You know, so what what work does it need doing to to get shipshape Bristol fashion for sale.

[00:08:26]And when she arrives, there's someone squatting there, a young girl.

[00:08:30]And uh it she appears to be have a lot in common with the girl who committed suicide. Is she a ghost? You know, there are some sort of supernatural elements suggested. It's quite nicely done. It it you know, it it leaves you not quite knowing what level this is pitched. And it is a thriller.

[00:08:51]And as I say, it's very architecturally based.

[00:08:54]Um obviously, there's sort of you know, lots of romantic interest as well. I think it's really well done. I did think the ending was a bit predictable and a bit tame. Obviously, I won't spoil that for you, but that didn't really um just sort of detract from my enjoyment of the book. I gave this four and a half stars, which I could rate around down to four.

[00:09:16]And onto Morgan Day, The Oldest Witch Alive, which I think is a terrible title, but actually this is a wonderful book.

[00:09:22]It's a philosophical book, um and its main characters are an old dog nearing death, um a how a domestic pet, and the two parasitic worms that that in infect it, invade it.

[00:09:38]Um and it's mainly told from their points of view. Now, normally, I you know, anthropomorphic books drive me crackers.

[00:09:47]You know, how can you know what a a non-lingual animal uh thinks?

[00:09:53]Um but actually, this concentrates on the philosophy because it's about life, it's about in- inner spaces, outer spaces, it's about aging and bodily decay, it's about vision, um it's about uh obviously sort of, you know, squatting, parasitical, you know, we all have parasites in us in our digestive gut and stuff.

[00:10:20]Um and it's really, really good.

[00:10:23]Uh as I say, so I didn't get bogged down on the anthropomorphic nature of it. I was I was engaged with the philosoph- philosophical um uh points that it it was sort of making.

[00:10:36]It wasn't sort of laying it down with a sort of thick, heavy, uh slab. It was It was It's quite light. Treads lightly, very clever, very ingenious. And uh this dog uh again, we a sort of an architectural um uh sort of specialist house which is basically all glass. Everyone can see into it, everyone can see out. The dog can see out from it, but it feels like a prisoner.

[00:11:01]Um whereas, of course, the parasitic worms have no sight inside the the dog's interior. Um yeah, it was just so, so good. Five stars.

[00:11:13]And on to Jonathan Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet. So, as I say, this is an early Lethem book, and it's uh basically around a band who don't even have a name. They've never played a gig.

[00:11:24]Um but they do practice a lot, and they've got some good songs. They've got um a sort of socially awkward uh lead guitarist who writes all the songs, and he's a sort of genius musician both on the guitar and writing the lyrics.

[00:11:39]And but they all all they're doing is rehearsing. You know, they're they're aren't playing live.

[00:11:47]And the bassist, who's a female, uh who's had an on-off tortuous relationship with the lead singer, and they finally decided to call it quits because their relationship isn't working, but they want to keep bands together.

[00:12:01]And um because she's a struggling artist, she has a you know, she has to get uh day jobs. And she's recruited um by this artist uh for an installation of his where he's sort of mocked up a complaint complaint sort of telephone office.

[00:12:18]And she and two other women have to sort of um answer calls. Um uh basically sort of complaint lines.

[00:12:28]And she has this mysterious caller who keeps calling back, and they sort of start um a telephone relationship sort of off the books, sort of not really uh you know, about and through the work.

[00:12:40]And he's sort of throwing her these sort of tidbits of uh his sort of personal philosophy. And eventually they do meet.

[00:12:48]And what she does is um he is so sort of off-kilter with the way he he views the world and the the language that he uses that she basically steals some of the things he says and um works them into lyrics for the genius guitarist to set to music. And it's at this point the band sort of feel empowered because the these songs are even better.

[00:13:13]And through the guy who's running the installation, his next art project, he hires them to hires the band to play their first ever gig in New York, and they go down an absolute storm.

[00:13:25]And it's all very ho-hum. The romantic element kicks in and there's a response who's going out with who. Um the the the weird guy on the end of the phone realizes his cuz he's attends that concert and realizes that his words have been stolen so he demands a role in the band as keyboardist.

[00:13:48]And he's sort of more because of his sort of strange philosophy, he's sort of more of a muso and artist who's out there than the rest of them are.

[00:13:55]But, you know, there's not a lot to it really. I think when it came out maybe it was more about the sort of the the music scene in New York that that it was to this was sort of probably touching a lot of bases with but I mean I didn't get a lot from this book. Two and a half stars.

[00:14:13]And Michel Faber, I love Michel Faber. I think Under the Skin is wonderful, The Courage Consort is brilliant. I first encountered him in the Myths and Fairy Tales um series.

[00:14:27]Um I haven't read everything by him.

[00:14:30]Um but I but I his last book that I read I think was the previous one to this and it come out a long time ago because his wife died I think shortly after.

[00:14:39]So, he seems to have sort of been a bit of a recluse in terms of the literary world.

[00:14:44]Uh that book was called The Book of Strange New Things which is one of my sort of favorite books ever.

[00:14:49]Um as far as I can tell this was this was the book that he finally re-emerged with and it's terrible.

[00:14:55]So, it's set up in a weird way in that this sort of immigrant to the UK from Somaliland uh is describing her experiences at school where she's obviously an outsider the color of her skin and everything.

[00:15:09]So, you think it's going to be a sort of you know, it's set in two worlds cuz the the title's there and you think it's going to be some the second world is going to be some sort of parable or equivalence about sort of racism or migration, that sort of thing. So, the first the first sort of early sections which are set in our world in the UK, you can recognize exactly what she's describing. It's at our level of reality.

[00:15:33]But, uh the letter D starts um disappearing from from spoken language, written language.

[00:15:41]And she is the only one who who retains the letter D. Everyone else, it's as if the letter D never existed. And so, for example, the word existed, you couldn't say existed, you'd just say exist.

[00:15:54]Um She's the only one and she Anyway, so she she sort of tracks down this sort of old retired academic who was a former teacher of hers. And he says, "Oh, yes.

[00:16:07]Well, you know, you there's a dangerous mission in a in a sort of another universe in order to get the letter D back. Will you undertake it with my faithful um Sphinx who can sort of morph into any kind of um uh any kind of shape and and mainly takes the form of a dog." So, she and this dog come Sphinx, they go to this this kind of world. And then it it seemed to me to get into the the territory of sort of like early China Miéville, something like Un Lun Dun and things. It's very childlike. You have all these different communities which you know, is a bit kind of a travelogue.

[00:16:48]But, obviously, just not as good. So, we see all these different communities, all these different populations. They all have their quirks. Some are good, some are evil, some are pow- some have powers bestowed on them, others don't. And there's this leader of this land, and there's a great parade. And the book takes its resolution. But, it's so I mean, it reads like young adult fiction. I'm sure it isn't. I'm sure Faber wrote it for adults, but it's just so simplistic.

[00:17:16]And I'm not really As I say, I thought he was setting us up for a sort of a parable about sort of racism or immigration and things like that, but he wasn't. He was just telling a story the same way China Mieville ultimately just tells stories. So, yeah, this was really bad. Two stars.

[00:17:33]Now, onto the thousand-page monster which I find very hard to talk about because I thought it was great.

[00:17:40]I've loved everything Jonathan Meades does, but a lot of people who might read this would find it very offensive.

[00:17:47]Because Meades Meades' writing is very over the top.

[00:17:51]Um he deals in in sort of sex and sexual positions and scats and all the things that, you know, good Christians would uh try and censor. And it is written over the top. It's funny. It's stylish. So, I'm just going to read, you know, just give you an idea of one of the jokes.

[00:18:11]And there's lot There's lots of jokes in here.

[00:18:13]Um I'll just have to find it. So, um there's a city in the UK called Bristol.

[00:18:20]It's on the southwest coast and it was the center of the British slave trade.

[00:18:23]Obviously being on our west coast meant it had direct sea to to the US.

[00:18:28]Um The ham-faced handsome cab driver was all that we expect of Bristolians, maritime entrepreneurs cruelly forbidden to engage in the only two trades in which they excel, piracy and slavery.

[00:18:42]So, that gives you an idea of the tone.

[00:18:44]Um it it's called Empty Wiggs, which is a coinage of of Meades' own.

[00:18:49]And it seems to be about the empty-headedness that allows fascism and Nazism and far-right ideas to creep into these empty minds. It's very much about high the the the the shakers and influencers uh in power. It's about sort of aristocrats and politicians and rock musicians, very much the world of Jeffrey Epstein, I suppose. So, the first chapter starts off in Algeria, the the sort of relative success finally the Algerian independence movement, where they do a deal with France for um uh for independence. But, there's still plenty of French people ethnic French people living in Algeria, and they feel absolutely betrayed by France. I think uh by de Gaulle. I think it was de Gaulle who made the deal with the Algerians.

[00:19:40]And the Algerians are gradually sort of take over their their sort of they're not plantation houses, but they're they're the equivalent.

[00:19:46]And they they think they've been absolutely sort of betrayed and cut adrift by France, and they form uh terrorist organizations.

[00:19:54]Um so, we uh the first chapter is about someone work you know, a young boy who joins this uh sort of uh French anti-Algerian terrorist movement, and it's chilling. I mean, it's brilliantly written, but it you know, they are fascists, effectively.

[00:20:10]Um Then we have our sort of British aristocrats couple um who make a threesome with uh a young woman off the streets.

[00:20:22]And they sort of have our sort of Dr. Moreau um sort of breeding program of of trying to breed animals with humans because they want to improve the breeding stock of humanity and they're very sort of again fascist far far right um view.

[00:20:39]Now, I will say there's lots of minor chara- I mean, these characters or at least their legacy carry on throughout the thousand pages, but there are many names that you will encounter in the early pages who won't reappear for two 300 400 pages, and you would have forgotten who they were. And that I think that's almost an inevitable failure of a book as big as this. It's my only quibble, really.

[00:21:03]Um there's a story about a rock musician who is sex obsessed, drugs obsessed.

[00:21:11]And the great thing about his, I think it's one of the strongest sections, the great thing about his is he gets his comeuppance.

[00:21:18]Um he's not directly linked to the fascist thing, but this is a book about the falsity, the false notion of true pure blood because all of these people who think they're this or they're that, they're not because a lot of them are born uh outside of legitimate marriages, outside of legitimate marriages, and either they don't know and one of the themes for one of the characters here is a search for his true mother.

[00:21:45]Um so all these sort of notions of sort of fascist purity of blood believed by these people, and they don't have pure blood themselves and are willfully ignorant of that. And it's about heritage, you know, they they they want to pursue this heritage to build this this thing, but they can't cuz it's based on false premises.

[00:22:04]Um there's actually a section in the Second World War whereby um uh a Nazi who's working for Himmler uh as as Germany is collapsing around him is trying to escape and he uh sweeps up uh a Polish woman who was uh in one of the sort of Nazi breeding camps, uh you know, just there to have babies as a as a slave for the master race.

[00:22:33]Um so he sweeps up with her, but he's he's arrested by the British and the British officer who arrests him and sends him to um a military prison then takes up with the Polish woman, so we get a lot from her point of view.

[00:22:51]Um and on and on it goes and gradually it comes back on itself and we see how all these characters fit together. As I say, it's about the empty-headedness that allows sort of fascist ideas in, the false nature of these ideas in that a lot of them are about pure blood, breeding, and heritage, and they're as sort of miscegenated as trying to breed humans with animals.

[00:23:14]That happened in the second chapter.

[00:23:17]Uh actually, I don't think it was the fourth chapter. So, I think it's really good, but it is very offensive.

[00:23:24]It's dealing with fascist and right-wing ideas, which means it's portraying them, and some people just find that a tough read, and it is a tough read, but maybe you don't want to encounter that. Maybe you don't want to stick with it, and I would entirely understand. I you know, I thought it was fabulous. I gave it uh four and a half stars. And just as uh So, I I I gave an example of his sort of uh his fine humor, but he can also write. So, here we go. Then he wheezingly sunk himself into his absurdly ornate quilted velvet chair, all gilded claws and distraught eagles.

[00:24:00]He might have been sexually united with it. He might have thought of it as a throne.

[00:24:05]It was more like the catafalque of a tin pot absolutist.

[00:24:09]He was a preposterously ugly figure. The complexion betokens the man. Fat hung from him like a dropsical fruit. He used the coercive first-person plural.

[00:24:20]So, as I say, I mean, I got a lot out of this, but I find it hard to recommend uh unanimously um cuz I think it would upset some people.

[00:24:30]And finally on to this book, uh Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling. So, I wanted to hate read this book because uh the notion of science of anything to do with art, you know, that there are these sort of almost natural laws or hardwired things to produce art, I reject. But also, the notion of storytelling is not one I favor in my novels. I mean, obviously, plenty of the books I read and review on this channel are storytelling, but for me personally, um in my own writing, I am not interested in it. So, I wanted to hate read this. And when he says The Science of Storytelling, he's basically sort of saying how current, um understanding of neuroscience and psychology, um could be could give us sort of laws, I suppose, um that that that explain our way the human tendency to storytelling. And I, you know, I wouldn't disagree that we, as human beings, we seem very, very keen on storytelling. I'm not disputing that.

[00:25:34]Um Now, as for the neuroscience part, I kind of agree with his take on it that basically our sealed brains in a unlit vault inside our craniums, um they create reality. They establish reality. They paint the picture. And what our senses are doing is they're feeding uh data into that uh picture.

[00:26:00]And in doing so, we our brains are scanning for change from what that picture is showing.

[00:26:06]And that change, you know, that that most of what our senses feed into us, we sort of um don't react to because we've already put it into the into the landscape it picture in our heads. It's only when there's change. And this this goes back to, you know, our our dawn of mankind and survival, you know, with hostile environments and stuff. And I absolutely agree with that.

[00:26:32]And he says, "Therefore, change is absolutely the key element."

[00:26:36]Okay, yeah, I can I can go with that.

[00:26:39]But he therefore says change is at the heart of all storytelling.

[00:26:44]And I'll come back to that because that that that is twinned in tandem with something else to sort of plump up his theory.

[00:26:53]However, the psychological um bodies of knowledge that he brings into this book, I reject utterly as as being useful in any way because psychology is not a science, it's a pseudo-science um or a presumptive science. And the experiments that psychologists claim proves this or that tendency, so there are several cited in here, but they to me, and I've always felt this about psychology, to me they don't prove what they claim to prove. So, for example, similar findings have been revealed by researchers at Shenzhen University.

[00:27:32]22 participants were asked to play a simple computer game, then told {brackets} falsely they were {quote} a two-star player.

[00:27:41]Next, in a brain scanner, they were shown pictures of various one-star and three-star players receiving what looked to be a painful facial injection.

[00:27:51]Afterwards, they claimed to have felt empathy for all the injectees, but their brain scans betrayed the lie. They only tended to experience empathy for the lower-status one-star players.

[00:28:02]I don't think it proves that at all.

[00:28:04]You're going from a computer game which has already the computer game playing generation of which I'm not one, so I think I would react very differently. But they've got their own set of sort of parameters and emotional reactions inbuilt because they're game players, and that would differ from me, for example, because I'm not interested in that world.

[00:28:24]And then they're transferred to totally different medium inside a a scanner, told something, so it's it's it's like a a mile removed from playing a game. I don't see how you the transition from one state playing a computer game to being passive inside a scanner and being told something, how does that relate back to computer game playing? It To me, that doesn't prove anything.

[00:28:51]And another one where he talks about babies are shown I think of a sort of a film or a TV of a square shape being mean to a circle, something like that.

[00:29:05]And then after they've sat and viewed this TV screen, they're then presented with three-dimensional toy shapes, and they all go for the square because the square is kind has been kind in the film.

[00:29:18]Again, I don't see how you can deduce one from the other because again, you've gone from them watching passively a flat screen, and now you're going to a world of 3D toys.

[00:29:30]I don't know how all these babies were, but it does say they were babies. You know, how do we know when babies can differentiate between two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional shapes? When I say differentiate, what they're actually doing is associating a square on a screen with a a square toy. So, to me, these tests prove nothing. So, I discount all the psychological, but the neuroscience is a tougher nut to to crack, I feel, because he and I are starting from the same place. Just the conclusion he drew, that it all comes down to change, sorry, I mean, I would agree with that, but then to say that is at the heart of our storytelling instinct, and how he justifies that, tries to argue that, this is where I disagree with him. So, the hallucinated world our brain creates for us is specialized. It's honed towards our particular survival needs, by which he means individual, within our unique environments.

[00:30:27]Like all animals, our species can only detect the narrow band of reality that's necessary for us to get by. Dogs live principally in a world of smells, moles in a world of touch, and knife fish in the realm of electricity. The human world is predominantly that of people.

[00:30:43]Our hyper-social brains are designed to control an environment uh of other selves.

[00:30:50]Um Okay.

[00:30:53]Um How does story How does storytelling fit into this narrow wavelength?

[00:30:59]He says, "Like all animals, our species can only detect the narrow band of reality that's necessary for us to get by." I sort of agree with that.

[00:31:07]But he says, "Can only detect the narrow band of reality in the same way as there are certain light wavelengths of light we can't see, like ultra um What is it?

[00:31:17]Ultrared um X-ray, you know, all that sort of stuff our eyes can't detect."

[00:31:24]But surely one of the one of the tasks potentially for art is to burst through that narrow wavelength, to suggest other realities or at least other ways of conceiving. So, that seems to be a very narrow uh band.

[00:31:39]Um His notions of um post- of modernist work, of which I wouldn't call myself a modernist or or a post-modernist, but I'm obsessed with form in the novel.

[00:31:51]He seems to have a very bizarre concept.

[00:31:54]And it's worth saying that a lot of examples in this book are films, not books. Now, he doesn't say in novel storytelling. He just says storytelling. So, he's entitled to bring in films and stuff. But I'm always very suspicious because the world of film should be, unfortunately isn't, very different narrative form to novels. And the reason film isn't different because virtually every film starts life as a book and is a and is an adaptation of a book. And quite honestly, it should stay as a book and not be adapted to film.

[00:32:26]Film needs to find its own because it has a different language.

[00:32:30]It's different It's a different media, obviously. It's a different uh or the way the audience respond to film is different to how a reader responds to a book. Film should do its own bloody work and come up with its own narratives, but that's a different that's a different story. So, this is what he says about modernism basically.

[00:32:48]When you consider literary modernism and arthouse storytelling alongside more commercial forms, it seems to be the only true plot fundamentals are that a story event on the surface triggers subconscious character change beneath.

[00:33:01]Quote, "Some paint dried isn't a story.

[00:33:05]It's a synonym for boredom. But, quote, 'Graham watched some paint dry and reflected on his life' is the unwatered seedling of a modernist short story. No, it isn't. And if it was, it's terribly dull. Um he he has no concept of what modernist uh storytelling is if whatsoever. And not only that, um modernist stories are different. While they're built from the same dance between surface drama and subconscious change, their causes and effects are often left ambiguous. Character change occurs, but it's less clear how these changes are being triggered by the drama and what message we're supposed to glean from them. More space is left for the reader to insert their own interpretation into the text. And that's his understanding of modernist literature.

[00:33:51]That it's it's a bit more ambiguous. The reader has to work a bit harder. I mean, this guy has no concept.

[00:33:58]He basically he is as I said, because his uh primary value is change.

[00:34:06]And he's also said correctly that we construct realities or brains construct realities that we inhabit. And that for him all art is that through a series of events the the the main character realizes that the reality they've lived their life by cannot be sustained.

[00:34:27]That the actuality of events uh brings all that crushing down and they have to change. They have to draw up a new or a different version of reality.

[00:34:36]So, his whole thing about storytelling is that it's character focused and it's focused on the characters change, i.e. a character arc, character journey, all those tired old tropes. Now, that may be true for commercial fiction, but there's plenty of fiction which doesn't even, you know, place any kind of value on characters. It's dealing in voice.

[00:34:57]As I say, it's dealing in in formalism.

[00:35:00]It's playing games. It's It's fragmentary, you know, it's fragmentary.

[00:35:03]Like a Curtis White novel like Requiem has six or seven different stories running through it which may or may not be metaphorically or thematically linked, but they certainly aren't linked plot and character-wise with each other.

[00:35:17]And he has no He doesn't offer anything about that. He He doesn't even consider it.

[00:35:21]Um, so just a couple of other things.

[00:35:25]So, bear in mind that his focus is on characters, character change, and um, building new realities. And this is what he says. We're wired to find selfless behavior heroic and selfish deeds evil. Selflessness is thought to be the universal basis of all human morality.

[00:35:46]He's basing that on sort of life when we were sort of cavemen and had to rely on each other. And the And the first sort of narratives that sort of told around campfires were to they they had several functions. One was to explain away the supernatural, the the like, you know, thunder and lightning. That would be personified in gods or whatever.

[00:36:07]It was also to tie the community together.

[00:36:11]That heroes in the stories were shown to be the selfless people who helped the rest of the tribe and then it was a sort of educational model for everyone listening to the story.

[00:36:21]It was also, uh, a sense of identity and then it would recall the lines of heritage of people who are no longer there.

[00:36:29]Um That So, all that's fine for when the first order man, Homo sapiens, is it still relevant in 21st century? Um You know, are those mechanisms still in play? I would say not.

[00:36:44]So, and it I mean, this this is what really tops it off for me. The surprising discovery that's been waiting for us at the destination of our long journey into our evolutionary past is that all story is gossip. Again, going back to the caveman thing, people are talking about each other because they're sort of saying, "Yeah, this guy's selfless. He helps the tribe.

[00:37:02]He always thinks of other people before himself. That guy is a narcissist." Oh, they wouldn't use that word obviously back then. He only thinks of himself. He doesn't help the tribe and we'll we'll um blackball him if he doesn't buck up his ideas.

[00:37:18]Simplistic to the extreme, and I just want to read you this this again.

[00:37:25]Um the surprising discovery that's been waiting for us, blah blah blah, is that all story is gossip. No, it isn't. I mean, if that's if that's the the primary value of literature, God help us. I know what he means. What he What he really means is that all stories are about human beings, you know, that that that that we we we're into their characters. That That's what interests us. That's what hooks us. I'm not sure that's even necessarily true, but that's his point. But then, to reduce that to gossip, you know, literature high literature has nothing to do with gossip.

[00:37:58]And this is in the introduction.

[00:38:01]The cure for um No, I'm going to read from the big This is the very first paragraph in the in the introduction.

[00:38:07]"We know how this ends. You're going to die and so will everyone you love. And then there will be heat death for the planet. All the change in the universe will cease. The stars will die and there'll be nothing left of anything but infinite dead freezing void.

[00:38:21]Human life in all its noise and hubris will be rendered meaningless for eternity.

[00:38:26]But that's not how we live our lives. I agree with him on that. Humans might be in unique position of the knowledge that our existence is essentially meaningless, but we carry on as if in ignorance of it.

[00:38:38]We beetle away happily into our minutes, hours, and days with the fact of the void hovering over us.

[00:38:45]We're not really aware of the void, maybe as we approach old age, but certainly not as children, and teenagers, and newlyweds.

[00:38:53]We're not aware of the void on on the whole.

[00:38:56]To look directly into it and respond with an entirely irrational descent into despair is to be diagnosed with a mental health condition, categorized as somehow faulty. Can I just say I do look into the void both in my domestic life, you know, in my everyday life when I'm not writing, but obviously obviously also in my writing. So, I should be, according to this guy, diagnosed with a mental health condition, but anyway.

[00:39:19]The cure for the horror is story, and this is where I disagree with him.

[00:39:24]Our brains distract us from this terrible truth by filling our lives with hopeful goals and encouraging us to strive for them.

[00:39:31]What we want and the ups and downs of our struggle to get it is the story of us all.

[00:39:36]It gives our existence the illusion of meaning and turns our gaze from the dread.

[00:39:41]There's simply no way to understand the human world without stories. I don't know how he comes to that conclusion.

[00:39:48]Yes, we I've already agreed with him that the brain is constructing reality.

[00:39:53]So, the brain is making up a a story of what we expect reality to be.

[00:39:57]And it's a story that's largely shared that that if everyone on my street looked out of their window, they'd see houses just like ours. So, eventually you build up a shared consensus of what reality is. But there are minor tweaks for each and every one of us. For example, if you're color blind, you'll have a different view of the street than my next door neighbor kind of thing.

[00:40:18]There's simply no way to understand the human world without stories.

[00:40:21]I don't I mean, I have a absolute um disagreement with that. The problem is is that we apply stories to things I don't think stories should be applied to.

[00:40:31]Politics, journalism, uh charity asks even, advertising, all rely on our thirst for stories where maybe they're not appropriate.

[00:40:43]They fill our newspapers, our law courts, our sporting arena. Yeah, why would you make a story out of a uh a sports event? Like a uh uh a match between two teams. Why does it have to have a narrative thread? Why do you know, it's dramatic in its own right, but you don't then have to dissect and and write down what that drama is when a team wins the cup in the last minute of the game.

[00:41:06]Um our governments, our debating chambers, our school playgrounds, our computer games, the lyrics to our songs, our private thoughts and public conversations, and our waking and sleeping dreams. Stories are everywhere.

[00:41:19]I agree, but the problem is is that they are everywhere. Stories are us.

[00:41:24]Again, I would agree the tendency seems that we are absolutely obsessed with stories, but I think that is holding back our future evolution. I mean, God knows what's going to happen with AI and and all that sort of stuff, but leaving that aside, if that if AI didn't exist, if we could break out of our reliance on not only on the stories we're fed right now, but on our need for stories being so dominant, I think we'd progress as a species. I think we would be so creative. We'd move into I mean, as I say, it's been completely undermined cuz AI is going to take all that away from us anyway.

[00:42:01]Um And yeah, so I agree with his way into this, but I disagree I eat science or at least neuroscience, and the nature of human awareness or whatever.

[00:42:18]But I don't agree with the conclusions that he draws from that. He completely ignores language as well.

[00:42:26]Um Yeah, so I mean I didn't actually hate read it. I disagree with it constantly.

[00:42:35]But I didn't hate read it. I mean, I give him props that at least I think he got the science right.

[00:42:41]But just transferring it over into production of literature and also films as he insisted on, I think is where he went badly awry. And again, just to go back to that quote, "We're wired to find selfless behavior heroic and selfish deeds evil." Are we Are we hardwired? I mean, I don't believe the psychological tests that he he offered up, psychological experiments offered up prove that. And yes, I understand going back to the time of cavemen and tribes, absolutely. But just look at us now.

[00:43:12]We're ruled by narcissists. We're ruled by people who have no respect for law.

[00:43:17]We're ruled by people who are on the make. So we're not hard I don't believe we are hardwired for altruism, for for communal behavior. I think we might have adapted it as a useful strategy.

[00:43:28]But people certain people, increasing in number, no longer see the need for it.

[00:43:35]So it's not hardwired, and that knocks his thing about storytelling being a sort of reversion to the hero who who manages to change their own sort of false or flawed reality. Absolute nonsense.

[00:43:51]I was going to give it one star. I'll give it one and a half stars.

[00:43:55]So there you have it. It's my latest reading. So the one book that I hadn't finished I took on holiday, I'm two As I said, two-thirds of the way through is Richard Powers' The Overstory.

[00:44:05]I've also started the new Claudia Piñeiro book Cathedrals and that's excellent. I shall hopefully finish both of those by early next week.

[00:44:14]And then I'm not sure what I'm going to turn to.

[00:44:16]But anyway, they'll be in the next wrap-up whenever that is. Till next time. Thanks very much.