DYEL existential crisis: What's the point of reading fiction anyway?
A provocative listener question has us reflecting on what we're getting out of the project. should we go back to reading more nonfiction? or succumb to TikTok and brainrot? What's the point of being alive at all?
A quick inbetween ep before we get into to our next read.
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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
13 Oct 2026
James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues: That Scotch and Milk Goes Down Smooth
A man hasn't played in a year. He sits back down at the piano in front of a crowd, fumbles through the first set to polite applause, and then, with a little help from the band, wades out into the deep water without drowning.
That's the ending of the 1957 short story we read this week. It's also roughly what happened to us. It's been a month since our last episode, the Nabokov we promised is off the table, and this was our first time back at the piano.
Somewhere between a long argument about respectability politics, a detour through Isaiah 51, and a real investigation into whether scotch and milk is an actual drink, we found the rhythm again.
"For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."
Raise your glasses of milk punch you filthy heathens.
Next up: Cam has picked something "on the easier side". It's Dickens.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) synopsis: a Harlem algebra teacher and his heroin-addicted kid brother(00:03:31) Taking Children Seriously in 1950s Harlem(00:07:20) which way, African-American man? respectability vs art born of suffering(00:12:06) the uncle scene: how much is down to white oppression?(00:18:37) is Sonny's dream childish magical thinking?(00:23:01) whose side is the reader meant to be on, Sonny's or his brother's?(00:26:28) society needs extremists, just not in your family(00:30:11) scotch and milk, the cup of trembling, and the final set(00:36:02) do great artists need heroin?(00:40:34) Sinners: a modern take on this story, or corny Oscar bait?(00:43:59) Creole's blues speech + next book
Next book
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Get in touch!
Email us at douevenlit@gmail.com
5 Sept 2026
Herzog Part II: Great men take on the potato
Wrapping up Saul Bellow's Herzog, where the going gets tough and the tough take baths.
First up, the failed murder. Herzog gets his dad's old revolver, works himself into a state of total conviction that killing his ex-wife Madeleine and her lover is not just justified but righteous, and then loses his nerve at the last moment while watching the guy give his daughter a bath. A brothers K rerun?
Up next, potato love: Herzog's own dismissive term for humble, unglamorous sentimentality. The stuff he's spent the whole book mocking while secretly craving it. And Rich's new favorite concept handle.
Finally, the Nietzsche breakup. A final burst of letters, an uncalled for closing shot at semen reabsorption as the fuel of creativity, and the implication that Herzog doesn't resolve his arguments so much as simply stop needing to win them. Plus the book's real-life backstory.
Chapters
(00:00:00) intro, and loving Herzog more the second time around(00:01:44) the custody plot: Herzog gets his dad's gun(00:08:55) the Brothers Karamazov parallel: two men who couldn't pull the trigger(00:15:10) potato love: Herzog's word for humble, unglamorous love(00:22:46) the child-killing trial, and humanity's urge to bite and pity its food(00:30:35) Madeleine takes June, and an unreliable narrator's sob story(00:37:18) the final letters: making a clean break with Nietzsche(00:40:54) Ramona, and giving up the 'great man' act for good(00:47:15) Saul Bellow's real-life betrayal, and why he wrote a book instead of more letters
Get in touch!
Email us at douevenlit@gmail.com
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