You're listening to the reversing climate change podcasts by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change podcast. I'm Ross Kenyon, I'm a co-founder of nori which is a carbon removal Marketplace in Seattle. Today, I have with me Daniel becquer longtime friend and collaborator of mine from my more Writing days, he's a novelist.
He's written books, like Abraham Lionel Lancet in the right Vibe. You also do a lot of literature education on YouTube. Tick-Tock Instagram, you can find on YouTube. Off-the-wall novels in Tick-Tock and Instagram as Daniel backer author. Hey, Daniel. Actually I don't, Daniel did, I don't ever ever, they have ever called you Daniel my entire life.
Hi, Danny. Hi, I transitioned to Daniel and then back to Danny. So either, I what happened is I was like to maybe too boyish and you want to go pro or So that was on my mind but I had a boss named Danny and he made it perfectly clear that he was the Danny and the room and so I went by Daniel and my parents had kind of called me Daniel to growing up so it wasn't completely absurd. But then realizing that was the reason I started going by Daniel I was like oh that is actually pretty silly.
I'm just going to be Danny now. So you have a bossy like reassigned your name. Actually, he served as the inspiration for the character Damien in my novel and I know he will never listen to Ooh, this podcast episode. So I feel comfortable saying that. Wow, Damien also just has such context to it as well as a name. I just assumed someone named. That is bad from the start. Should I even think that? I mean there's the satanic thing going on from set. The Almond is that right?
Who's the guy wrote Steppenwolf? Yes, Herman has. Yeah. It's like there's a there's a Damien I guess his father Damian who worked in Hawaii with Leprosy, he was good. Something that's a pretty noble thing that counteracts The satanic implications. I think there's a you associate with Satanism has a weird opening to the show 100%. I'm glad we go right into it though. We wasted. No time. Yeah, my priorities. What's the point of this show Danny?
And I have been talking about how to do this for a long time. We're both passionate about literature, I've learned a lot from Danny. His novels are super fun and play with ideas and really interesting ways. Of course, we would be friends. And as much as I like more High literary fiction and your someone, I associate very strongly with sort of contemporary fiction, especially like the postmodern fiction of the second half of the 20th
century. I also like genre fiction bad books, bad books, where there are innumerable sequels, books that are meant to titillate. You might know Jean Reflection from things like detective, stories are quite popular for this, where there's a whole industry around writing zombie books, and zombie books were there, you know, 10, 15 20, books in a row somewhere. Last apocalyptic fiction prepper fiction which are like plays into fantasies about the end of
the world. Whether there's gonna be an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts all electrical motors and what that looks like obviously erotica is super popular and super prolific, and I imagine quite profitable as well, Danny missed opportunity there unless I have a pen name. I don't know about romance mystery. These are like quite Tropi genres, and the way that I want to frame this show, is that there's a lot of sci-fi that is
high literary fiction. I think things like the parable of the talents, parable of the sower Kim Stanley, Robinson's Ministry for the future. Perhaps the most like high literary version here, choose the road by Cormac McCarthy. Some Cormac McCarthy is so impenetrably. Difficult to read us often closer to something like Melville. I'm like, okay, I need to modernist close reading techniques to just make it
through this at all. I'm still not getting all the meeting and all the illusion that is happening here. So I try to talk about how long do I need to? Wait for there to be climate fiction. That is genre. In bad in serialized in such a way. And is that how, you know that climate change is saying that people actually care about? Well I think that if you're realizing that there's a dearth of that sort of thing in the marketplace than the name on that novel would probably be Ross Canyon.
So there's an opportunity here, there's a vacuum that you could definitely fill. I think a big issue with a lot of serious literature is that they shook so many conventions of what makes a story work that I find myself sometimes reading more difficult books and being like, why is this 700 pages and not to because when you have a plot, Not. I think it creates a metric and plots aren't for everybody.
You don't have to like a plot but there's something nice about a plot that you're like, oh, okay, it feels done now or it feels like at the middle part or the beginning. Like the I think the conventions are very useful and so I think that's something that kind of Drew me to postmodern fiction, is that they're very intentionally in dialogue with
more traditional narratives. And so even if they're trying to subvert it, you often do get some sort of an appeal to a traditional plot even if they are trying to twist it into a pretzel. As they're going. So that has been pretty much the thing that's got me interested in it. Because as literary is the
stuff, is I like to read. I like something that does entertain me, you know, I like to indulge in the Big Ideas and important things about being humid, but part of that is entertainment, and have only Park, even if some important people think that were like finished with the idea of a story as something that's meaningful to humans.
So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think you're blind some listeners Minds right now that the idea of play Lot might be old hat at this point, but I think in some ways I think act structure is programmed into our brains for what to expect in a story. To get the fuel fully paid off invalidated for investing the time in it.
And I mean, I know you're big Thomas pynchon fan and you have you read the crying of lot 49 ahead of this time before that, I'd only ever seen inherent Vice, which cracked me up to. I thought I'd movie was brilliantly funny because I started watching it. I was like, what do people to this movie's complicated? I don't get it. Sort of a straightforward detective story. He's going, he's following leads then like 40 minutes into it. I was like, oh my God. What is even is there a plot I
remember? Did you ever read the illuminatus books? The Robert Anton Wilson series earlier but I have not Thomas pynchon is like the same. I feel like and also I think they're both l.a. people I think dish or at least their stuff is often in LA. But in The Illuminati's books it's like all conspiracies are simultaneously true. Even contradictory ones so you'll have things we like I thought this wasn't all of these things coexist at the same time and it's not really about the
plot. It's almost just about being in that place in the hilarity of story and do stories matter. I don't think I'm smart enough to understand what is trying to be said by that pyncheons like this too, right?
What do you need to say this? So I think the criticism of a lot of this experimental stuff is true in a lot of cases, is that it can be just navel-gazing it can just be an author trying to show off, how experimental and stranger they can be, but I think, The standouts of postmodern fiction and experimental fiction. Do a great job of subverting stories and ideas in a way that feels very meaningful to
people's lives. And so for example like I'm rereading V by Thomas pynchon right now and one of the main themes in it is that myths are the things that guide people's decision making especially people in power is that they will commonly evoke a myth in order to justify certain actions. Certain atrocities And specifically, like a tenant of fascism is evoking a Mythic past, so that's like pretty important putting that in there.
But then this kind of goes without saying, but these are myths, these are not true, they're not historical documents. There are stories that people often tell the unreliable narrator is a popular thing in many different literary forms. But especially in postmodern fiction when they're trying to engage history and storytelling and myths. They blur all of those things together. So that they're saying that.
Like when we talk about the past we're telling us Story and we're telling a myth but it's more complicated than just that because they're also saying that this is what makes us human. And so one of the main themes of V is that myths are made up and they justify atrocities, but to get rid of them makes us as inanimate as the material objects in the room around you.
And so his thesis at the end of this is kind of like keep cool but care that you on some sense, sort of have to detach yourself from the historical train tracks that you're on because they are fraudulent. But at the same time you do need some utilitarian myths, just to have a soul and to have emotions and have a relationships with other people which people have any association with post-modernism at this point. Depending on your political background.
You might have set associated with criticism from people like Jordan Peterson who are saying saying post-modernism is just about the death of Truth and that there's there's sort of at least two a cultural dead end of nihilism and despair and what you've just said Struck me, as none of those things. Where do you think that gets twisted along the way? Or I mean, yeah, we can start there.
I think truth be told the criticisms that people like Jordan Pederson have I think are valid ish, but I don't think he gives a very charitable interpretation of it, because post-modernism is a lot of different things and not a lot of post modern. Thinkers necessarily agree with each other on everything. And so it's almost like when you hear someone criticize something without demonstrating their familiarity with It you're kind of like a you may be right?
But like that's actually hours to criticize because it's important to us, but I mean, post-modernism can refer to an Era to a sensibility to anesthetic, sort of the cop-out that I give myself sometimes is that I really try to ground the conversation in art because I noticed that when people are not familiar with post-modernism, the first thing they try to do is turn it on itself is that they're already going meta before they've even kind of mastered the fundamentals, which
is just a method of Questioning its questioning, some fundamental assumptions asking the question. What about the way we're asking? The question is determining the sort of answers that are coming up, you know? And I think maybe the super charitable interpretation of post-modernism is that it's not supposed to be a comprehensive worldview. It's a tool in your toolbox.
So and like a classic example is like what about the way that we divide men and women influences the answers that we come to when we ask questions about what is a man What is a woman and it doesn't necessarily come up with conclusions, but it's just asking you to say, hey, let's, let's take a look at our
categories for a second. What about the way that we've created these categories, might influence the conclusions that we reach interesting and if you take for granted the stuff you said about myth as pretty core to post-modernism, you might say the idea of what makes a man, what makes a woman or myths that different cultures have stories that they tell ourselves that these are not just inherently fixed immutable. Characteristics. In fact, there's a lot of
culture that's tied up in here. And that how we engage with those myths changes, the answers that we might receive from them. Exactly. Yeah. So I think following that thread like one of the classic ones is that men are traditionally associated with dominance. And women are traditionally associated with submission and so they're basically just asking like, how do we drag that into conversations, where it doesn't belong.
And so, like I get people's frustration with it because if you are Are used to just kind of tracking a traditional logical thread and you hear that like oh Derrida said logic is not
necessarily always great. Like I get why Jordan Peterson freaks out about that because he's built his life and career on this notion of objectivity which I'm you know highly critical of on my Tick Tock in particular because I think often people will use the word objective just as a rhetorical strategy and even though I think we can come to some objective observations about World. I like to use the word objective ish is that at the end of the day, were always going to be
observing the world through the holes and our face and experiencing things in a mitigated way.
And so like even though I understand why people think it's very nihilistic, I don't think they've always actually even read the thinkers that are associated with these ideas and so almost talking out of two sides of my mouth, people who are familiar with post-modernism sometimes get frustrated that it doesn't have enough conclusive information within it but Again, that's that's kind of why I like to put it mostly within an artistic framework because most people don't read fiction and be
like, wait a minute, did this really happen? Like there's a suspension of disbelief and I think that's where post-modernism is most interesting, but I find arguing about post-modernism is a total dead end and trying to make a postmodern criticism of post-modernism is a total waste of time, even if it's kind of fun, you know, you don't really give what is the do this podcast now, man? Because I got more time to fill. Well, I mean that's the thing.
I guess it's not a waste of time, but I just find that. Usually again, the criticism that post-modernism undoes itself is usually made by people like as they're learning about it is that they're like it questions fundamental assumptions. But what about the fundamental assumptions of post-modernism? It's like, well yeah, but one of their tenants is that they think that discourse is something where you organize the parameters. And so like they're organizing the parameters and Just for
utilitarian sake. They're like well, let's like maybe not undo the discourse before, we know what it is, but I think there's also a reason that post-modernism as an era is considered kind of over in a lot of ways and like, meta, modernism is, I think more in Vogue, in critical circles because it sort of takes the critical incredulity of post-modernism. But then is also like, okay, but like we need a truth. We need objects.
And so like within that realm, there's speculative Some an object-oriented ontology and they kind of take the Best of Both Worlds. Is that they're like, we have objects, both material objects that are like, in the room with us. But also philosophical objects of of conception, like within your mind and even though they're like real ish, there's a part of them that's always a little bit removed from us so we can't know them completely, but
we can sort of build games with them in a way that works for us. I'm going to share with you in something that I've used to Anchor by thinking for a long time. It was this Insight was one of the main reasons that I figured out that philosophy, grad school was not the right fit for me and I've always associated with post-modernism but it sounds closer to meta. Modernism frankly where I read Nietzsche's on truth and lies in a non moral sense.
Have you ever read that? Well, I thought I'd love to hear. It's a classic people. Consider it. One of the like, like, Proto taxed of post-modernism, where he talks about how every category, every concept is a lie. Everything is truly unique. Yet we are forced by how Verse and numerous the objects in the world are to make sense of them by grouping them. And every grouping is inherently unjust, because everything is truly unique.
Yet, if you fail to group them in any meaningful way, you you lose your mind because you cannot categorize. And anyway, it's just undifferentiated mass and you will drown your mind will drown. And in some ways that has made like kind of like a more boring King of the Hill, Hank Hill, kind of figure in my life. As we discussed, I'm kind of
like conventional. Oil in my life, where I used to be a little bit more radical and interest interesting and taking The Road Less Traveled. And, in some ways this postmodern or even met a modern inside has caused me to respect tradition a little bit more saying. Okay, this is the product of thousands or hundreds of years of evolutionary insight for what makes stable-ish light, that is
worth living. I'm more willing to trust a given postmodern the tendency to philosophize with a hammer to use another neat trick phrase that post-modernism gets called actually in. We've made me like more dispositional. He personally conservative wanting a more stable, less artsy. Anything goes kind of life. Is that might of modernism? That is a fascinating question. The short answer is, I don't know, but I do know that, you know, critics of post-modernism.
I think sometimes do gain that people, people notice it, like Jordan Pederson and David Foster Wallace both who criticize post-modernism, albeit in completely different ways, very different ways, but yeah. Yeah. And like, I definitely like David Foster Wallace's criticism of it more because all of his work is postmodern bike as much as he was trying to advance it. I think categorically, it's post-modernism. I Wouldn't Die on that Hill.
I could hear an argument that it was otherwise, but but both David Foster Wallace and Jordan Pederson during Peterson more. So get accused of being conservative and of course, the cop forger and Peterson is no, I'm a classical liberal, it's just everything I say is conservative, but a little bit more of a digression that being said, I find that Buddhism and Text in Buddhist philosophy, tend to access some of what I consider valuable about post-modernism but in a more
accessible and experiential way. And so sometimes the concept of Dharma is interpreted as attachment to certain truths. And so it's not necessarily that we're playing the game of what is true and what is false but it's like what Notions of solidity? Are you projecting onto the narratives that you have and in what ways are you identifying? With truths instead of just evaluating if they're true or
false. Because one of the biggest criticisms that I have against like this notion of objectivity is that it's just a lie, is that people are like I'm being objective and my emotions and my desires are not influencing the data that I'm processing. And then again, just should on Jordan Peterson. One more time, is that like, the Venom? Which he has begun to kind of an act to the second part of his career.
I think demonstrates or of an attachment to certain ideas that he has, then any kind And of, you know, disinterested just stating the facts. So yeah, all of that is to say that like I think that you know, people do need stability and maybe where conservatism goes wrong as saying that everyone should have the same exact kind of solidity that I have or the same kind of stability that I have as an individual.
I don't think those are necessarily bad things to want but when we attach ourselves to those truths and say this as the Divine truth Or the objective truth. That's where I'm kind of like this. Just sounds like we're using our desires and opinions to rationalize the data that we're processing. Hmm. What do you make of the presence of red herrings and pinch and that almost feel laid to mislead? Like there will be people named silly. Think what was the example that
most crack me up? There's a couple, was it a memory boys? Oh, yeah. Kevin gets Cohen is like a very, very funny combination. There's like a bunch of things like that. We're is it meant Say something, is it? Because those words are claimed by cultures, right? They have meanings that precede your reading of the book, and it's meant to play with that, but I can't tell if it's playing with it in a meaningful way or if it's just meaningless word play. And is that is that
post-modernism? See, that's the kind of question you end up asking and the then you become the guy who says, I don't like modern art, I find Modern Art to be distasteful, and that's not really. That fun of a place to be in by also, don't know what it's doing. Yeah, that's that's the thing. It for any one of Pensions names that he uses it, I think is a coin toss that like this one
could mean something. This could just be a silly joke of his because he is a very Whimsical writer and is characterized as being very difficult and people don't I think push through that difficulty to realize how cartoonish and absurd it is. So yeah I mean for anyone named it's very difficult to tell but the more I have read pension in particular but also just other post modern stuff there.
Often is a Thread, that isn't always easily grasped on the first read through, and that's a huge barrier to entry, I completely understand. But when I first read this kind of stuff I would finish these books and just be like, it was cool. There were memorable moments. I have no idea what it is, but the more that I have read them crying of lot 49. For example, I think has a very clear thesis that doesn't mean that every phenomenon in.
The book is easy to place within that he sits but yeah, on subsequent readings. I think that there are definitely An argument that he's trying to make. But again, that argument is criticizing a traditional way of
constructing truth. And so the yield of this thesis or the big take away from the book is kind of slippery and not always easy to pin down, but it's there, you know, your videos on the book are really good and taught me a lot and also maybe appreciate the book a lot more because I watched over me, I enjoy humor. There's plenty in the book to laugh about your like, this is absurd.
Sir, does even make sense these this world is being constructed in front of me is just hot nonsense and it has a realistic comedy to it. As the same thing I mentioned with inherent Vice to your like, does this mean anything? Is it signals that noise who even cares? The ride is fun and the same way to I also with capers are often like that. Did you watch on? Sorry? I have so many thoughts racing
through my head. This did you watch the Paramount Plus show about the making of The Godfather, the offer? No. My dad was just telling me about this. I I know that it exists but I haven't seen it if you like the Golden Age of Hollywood and Bob Evans and that whole shtick it's good but Bob Evans is trying to get Chinatown produced near the second half of the show. And Chinatown I've seen a bunch of times, I have no idea how it
works. I'm like so there you slept with the twin and then who the money goes to who's getting paid off here and in the offer they actually don't know what Chinatown is about, and no one can really explain it and it's sort of a running gag. These, I picked up on it and made me feel less dumb for never really understanding Chinatown. And whenever I read or like brick the Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the tiger of high school today. I'm like what even Big Lebowski?
I'm like, what he threw out a ringer for a ringer and there's a tow and like, who got paid? And what woohoo do the Germans even think they're doing in the thing is none of it matters because it's all world-building. Just being in this place and it's like a set of feelings and that's all that I'm left with which is maybe a superficial read but I had that really strongly here, teach me more about What is actually happening in this book and maybe introduce it for people listening.
I mean, yeah. Nora is a perfect Touchstone for this because it achieves a lot of what postmodern word does, but obviously in a simpler more straightforward way, but you're exactly right. Like, if you watch Chinatown or The Big Lebowski, I think part of the intentional effect of those movies is to, disorient you. I've seen The Big Lebowski probably 15 times and I could not accurately tell you what the problem is. Thank God, this is such a relief.
Thought this is just me. Everyone else is watching his loving this movie for decades and did none of them. Get it either sounds like. Yeah. I think the Big Lebowski is a perfect Touchstone for it to because the dude for all of his admirable qualities without being too, judgmental is dumb. Like he is not a bright guy and he does not solve the plot like a Sherlock Holmes type who's you know relying on his just unique sharp intuition.
The Big Lebowski advances, the plot kind of in spite of the main character. I think that that is, you know, what's kind of fun about that, but then what is, what's cool is that, you know, pynchon was a big fan of dime, novels and genre fiction, and detective, and spy fiction in particular. And so, I think that's what gives his books. So much fun at least from my perspective is that they're kind of like a rump and a play on this traditional genre.
And so, with the crying of lot 49, you have a housewife who is substituted for the smooth-talking. Detective, who relies on his into, Tuition and wit.
And I think that at the beginning of the book, there's like a very clear thesis statement about at a pub Moss, as a character allows her to access the deeper truths that a detective would traditionally suss out with a more conventional way of assessing the truth and that it's the fact that she's able to empathize with other people and see their pain. And he beautifully did puts this
into an image with her tears. And that's one of the reasons it's called The Crying of lot 49 is that she has a lens of tea. Is that are always filling her eyes that seemingly distort, the information that's going through them and she relies on this instead of a logical thread tracking suspects, this that or the other. And if I remember correctly, the crying of lot 49 ends on a very ambiguous.
Note you get to, like, the crying of lot 49, but you don't actually get to see the scene of them at the auction of whatever lot 49 is supposed to. B, I might, I think it's ambiguous. Yeah, yeah. And one of the comments that I make in the video is that her last character action is that, she has to sit back and await the crying of lot 49 in her own story. And I think I could be reading too deep into this, but I think that this is a comment on her marginalization in a
male-dominated world. And I think that it's kind of a bittersweet ending is that she gets to be our protagonist and she gets to in some ways unravel this big conspiracy.
But then at the And in her own story, she kind of has to sit back and watch the men sell property in front of her and suss out this inheritance that was really supposed to be for her and I mean, we can, we can explode this conversation in two different Notions of the Oedipus Complex in ways, that that's instantiated and symbols within Society. But I think that more than anything.
It's it is a play on the detective genre and a critique of scientific rationalism and traditional ways of constructing
meaning, beautiful thoughts. It's also possible Well that I mean the Oedipus complex both in pop culture and also in literary criticism is extremely old now thousands of years old and so just just naming someone oedipa already, could be a red herring or like, a misleading thing because there's so much meeting already tied up in it. That's the most frustrating part of reading pynchon is that like a special with a short book like that, you're like, oh, I'm going to Breeze through this in an
afternoon and then like in the first line her name is oedipa moss. And you're like, okay I gotta hit Wikipedia for a second. Like I've got a I've got to unpack this already and like a single paragraph will send you on a little little journey like that. I wish there was more play with genre and climate fiction because today it hasn't been in the same kind of playfulness that I long to see. Like, for instance, when my SNL
sketches ever. And I've never been able to find a, because NBC is so stingy about what they allow to be put onto YouTube. But there's a Kelsey Grammer sketch when he was hosting and he was a detective and is one of those like you knock on the door and everything they say, is some sort of metaphor of it. The only metaphorical illusion that he has is Burrito related to be.
Like she was, she walked into my office, like, a warm Burrito on a cold Chicago night and it's like, Everything like every single thing that he has his burrito related. I won't get is one of the sketches that barely made the show. You could tell it was like the last 10 minutes and Lorne, Michaels is like, whatever the burritos that just fine. I guess, I wish there were climate books that approach this level of mainstream acceptability because people read a lot of this stuff too.
I've even seen the effects on loneliness of people re watching sitcoms. There's something inherently comforting about re-watching, the office for the big The end of time. And there's also a literary version of this to with genres. Like one of my friends older sisters, I sear on Goodreads sometimes and I'll seems like she reads like 500 Mysteries a year. I can't keep up with how many mystery novels this woman reads. How much deletion can one person stand in a lifetime?
I'm not sure she might be over her allotment but there is something that's having like the tropes that are regular rise that you were just re-experiencing. That is like really It Feels Like Home in a way and I write fiction does not feel like that so we've invited. David Foster Wallace has been reference. I've been reading Infinite Jest for like six months at this point and psyching myself up to read it. I have a good time every time except for thoughts of all the
terrible stuff. He did to Mary car, you put that aside and try to appreciate this Landmark novel its work. It's not really like a fun in the same way that I want to experience the familiarity of literary conventions, that make me feel at home. I'm being challenged, I being toyed Yes, and being subverted. I want to be subverted in my
free time. There's a line, I think on Parks and Rec where one of the characters is like Sorry, Charlie Kaufman people have work in the morning, I butchered the quote, but it's something like that. That like, yeah, I think it can be exhausting a lot of the, hyper experimentation and whatnot. But I think for climate fiction is that maybe it could seem like it's making light of a pretty serious issue that we haven't
had closure on yet. And so like, I can kind of see that there might be some Resistance to maybe parroting or satirizing, the genre. But at the same time I would love to see that especially someone who's like not as familiar with climate fiction. Like the postmodern climate novel, I think is is a super interesting notion and on that note to I know that like William volman I think has written a lot of nonfiction on climate and then also a lot of postmodern
fiction. So maybe if there's somebody to do it it would probably be him. You got red at least be real 15 in or Roz with Z's. Yeah, I think I've read at least
one of his maybe to even. Yeah, wouldn't be something that's nearly so highbrow or if it would be postmodern, it would be. So, in a way that would be playing with convention so that there's like there's an awareness that they're playing with an established genre and they're poking fun of it. While also affirming it something that's meant a modern is what I'm trying to say. I'm talking about genre fiction. Some of these books are like if you take apocalypse fiction, these are guilty.
Usher's of mine, some of which are terrible. Truly, some of them have politics that will make you want to barf and you'll have to rage quit but some of them are often quite good but they're often pretty Tropi like you know, you know, broadly. What kind of character you're going to get. In fact, most of these apocalyptic books. Get just just tell me like when you imagine who's the protagonist and apocalyptic fiction series. Who is this person?
I guess kind of like a rugged. I'm picturing a lot of torn. Link. Is that right? Like kind of maybe a rugged person who has, like visible scars, maybe like a sling of bullets across their chest pretty close. Yeah. I would say they're always like, like, recently former Special Forces or something like that. So they have the best like, absolutely super powers relative to the like set of skills.
Yeah, yeah, I can ask, ya, sneak around in the forest, no one would see me kind of deal slit a man's throat. Yeah. There's like always there's just a lot of stuff like that as pretty goofy. So you know what you're getting but current climate fiction hasn't had that as far as I know if you're listening still at this point and you like literature, is there something out there that is about regular people trying to survive in a climate change world. That is not, I don't know the
mystery for the future. It's a really interesting book on this but is also not heavily serialized. The kind of books that people consume one after the other page, Turner kind of deal. That's, that's what I'm Can for as I'm always looking for something less serious. Unless our see that what you describe as for upsetting? Yeah, I mean I would assume it's a newer genre to write.
So I think there's definitely still time and if it hasn't been clear, I'm obviously pressuring you to fill this void by writing this. This book that you would like to see in the world, I'm too goofy. I would write the version that was like too self-aware. Like one of the scripts we were working on back in the day as like, The most like intentionally fourth wall breaking just like satire of rom-coms and, and you're like that or maybe you told me about it. Iíve read.
One of your scripts that I feel like felt very aware. Yeah. And like, there's pluses to that to us kind of a commentary on how, like, at this point in Humanities life, everything is a reference to something else in there. Isn't a whole lot of unmediated experience, like everything has a link to some book. The movie or TV show that you can reference your life is just if you read old books in the pre-modern or even just early modern era, there's not a lot of like, oh, have you read this
book? Have you seen the latest season of Six Feet Under? You know, like there's like not a lot but I feel like maybe read a book about contemporary humans. It's like it's like 90% of what we even talked about. Yeah, it's complicated. I think that's one of the issues for fiction writers today and there's a lot of discourse about this on the internet of like Are you being unrealistic for not including social media in your
fiction or acting if you do? Because I don't do it not as like a rule but like I can't see myself writing down the word Tick-Tock in a story that I write and pulling it off in any kind of way that I would want to read a story like that. And so I do have to kind of contrived these stories to be like a little bit less realistic than they are because like I just don't want to read a book about somebody on their phone. I'm sure someone's done a good job at that.
I've seen it if they've gotten better up, the trying it and visual media recently where to like pop up on the screen, the sound will in this like little bubble. It's even that though. It seems smarmy. They're like oh look at us like truly. It is the modern era, you know, like I don't know, maybe that's just me. But like maybe the first time I saw it cause I know what house of cards they would do that a lot. Or they're like, really the first time that it was like, really big.
Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah, that's the first time I remember seeing it anyway, and like, I remember, A kind of being like cool but also kind of like no. Thank you at the same time it definitely felt novel. Yeah I like the old-school way of watching like Tony Soprano. Have to drive to a payphone. Found a deal. Yes.
But why do I think that though? Because my life is not like that, is it just because I've been trained through the way that we experience media that real real stuff happens on Via voce. Like, we're like, what why do I think that? Why can't real life happen? Digital age. I think this might be connecting us counter to what we were talking earlier.
Just about like the kind of loss of utility of stories is that, you know, I think this is kind of a cliche criticism now, but with how much technology and social media we have were not as active. And the traditional idea of like, you know, the hero's journey, you go on. You have to fight the monster not just to kill the monster but to kind of learn something about yourself and and to uncover some sort of truth that's like in the bun.
That you bring back to the community and I think in a very real way, the bun is just a few keystrokes away like any any question that you might have and then to like I think there's just like a growing distaste for that entire process of like, having to go on a journey to find something out. I think even Beyond just, like laziness. I think that we've sort of like, criticized, that cycle to death more than anything. The problems that plague us people consider very Eric even hard, right?
Winger Source ideating like citing major institutions to be the source of their problems. They obviously have a totally different angle than the more left perspective, but I think that there is this sense that we, like, we already figured it out. It's just a matter of these problems being too big for us to surmount. I'm kind of kind of spitballing to.
That's what comes to my mind. You think we no longer as a civilization or culture believe that individual progress is Meaningful That's your taste, I think so. You know and like it's something I struggle with for myself and just in conversations with different friends is that it seems like the more aware you are of the problems that plague Society. The less confident you are. That anything can be done about them.
And so maybe this relates to the climate fiction thing too, is that and you obviously know much more about this than I, but like, I think a lot of people are super depressed about it. There's climate anxiety. It's, I think maybe a little harder to tease out a light-hearted narrative when they're like, oh, You were ruining the world and the people responsible are in control of these enormous Industries, or maybe it's not even the people responsible, it's the industries
themselves. It's a runaway machine, that was started by people, that are long dead. And so my gut tells me, I don't want that to be the end of the conversation, but I think that does explain a lot of the paralysis and like, unwillingness for people to engage in individual Pursuits. Well, there's a big story that happened a couple of years ago, and I can't speak. With certainty on exactly how it played out.
But the idea that the carbon footprint was a corporate invention to take scrutiny off of Corporations, and to get people to think about their own liability, climate wise and to have them stop, criticizing oil and gas. And I'm pretty sure that has been pretty well validated this point, but I can't say with certainty that it is. And so it could be the case. That maybe we do believe that actually what you do, as an individual doesn't really
matter. Like, sure you can sort your recycling Better. You can fly last but like if the Earth is going to collapse, anyways, like why even bother? I think you're right. I don't know that we could say it's a fully explanatory solution that you're posing but it's in the cultural mix for sure.
Yeah. Well what it makes me think of two and I've made a lot of tick-tocks about this is that I think people have a tendency to jump to the most massive scope in any conversation and so like, I like to Make talks about the importance of community that just like, as an individual, it's important to find a community that you love and that
loves you super hard. Might take your whole life, but that's like a worthy Pursuit and people immediately will say, well, and I mean until capitalism's over, it's not
really possible. It's like, well, you're not wrong, like capitalism does make it very difficult to form communities and especially like, if you're fighting for your life, paying rent, and buying food, but at the same time, I noticed that we take Small individual problem, and immediately blow it up to the most massive way to think about it. Is that the only way to approach this conversation is on a massive scale with huge statistics and analyzing major institutions.
And this makes sense because you want to be accurate, but I characterize this in line of Lancet in the right Vibe. My second novel as like, taking a bird's-eye view of everything that people think what truth is is to sort of like, remove the individual. And only look at everything and
a huge. Text and there are different applications of this that it's like oh if you're an artist, you explain that story to yourself in terms of Fame that if you even say, you don't want to be famous and almost sounds like you're creating a self-defense story or not.
So, you're, you know, defending yourself by not actually going for it. And just saying, I don't actually want that where it's like, you can vary validly not want to be famous and still enjoy your artistic career and I just think there's countless examples of it is that people scope is often too big and then they justify doing. I think because like oh the only way to do something is to do it at scale which is funny because you can't ever achieve scale.
If you don't start with what's right in front of you and the funniest part of this critique is that it almost sounds like Jordan Peterson saying you have to clean your room. First before you both are called, try to change society. So like I want to I want to call that out that as that's not what I'm saying, but I think people go to big picture too soon. It's not literature inherently personalizing. You have to write about characters that people care enough to stick with for several hours.
Hours and this is small. Literature is almost inherently small and stories that don't do this. I often associate with things like science fiction, which they often come from a place where they have a theme or World. They want to create an Explorer would if we all lived on Mars. And and it was an anarchist Mars, by the way, rather than rather than someone coming out at the other, the other end of the telescope and saying, like, oh, I have an idea for a
character. It's like, it's like a mixture of some of my, the traits of my Ensign like what they would do. Under these circumstances, I have such a strong vision of who this person is and what it's like for them to be in the world. Those are two entirely different ways of being an author and are probably several more. Additionally, but do you agree that literature just has a personal touch right at its best, it should come from a place of character? I think so.
Yeah. I you could probably show me an example of something that doesn't do that. And it's very funny of books that are like, exploring worlds to. It doesn't always, but the literature that I like love the most. It's because it comes from a place of character. I think the first book that I had this with was Anna, Karenina, I told you about, where's Leo III? Like, I feel so much so strongly towards Anna, and count vronsky and then Karen into all these people.
My God, I feel like, I'm all of these people simultaneously and that to me was a Sublime achievement that has been very rarely matched. Yeah. Seth, Rogen of all people has an interesting Insight on this, is that like amateur writers will often make a blank main character because they want everyone to relate to it.
And so, Name it like John every man and the funny thing is that like I mean obviously you know, unless you're a very talented writer, it's probably not going to be very good, but he said that one of the things that he discovered was the more particular you make the character, the more Universal. It feels because need to have an individual in order to like project yourself onto or two like evoke those Universal
qualities. And so sometimes like as a writer, you're almost doing the audience's work for them, by trying to make it super. Universal. When really your job should be, to make it particular, choose your world, choose your details. Don't make it so abstract. And then the reader will bring that to the table, they will see themselves and they will see the whole universe within those particular. He's that you chose so insofar as we're trying to figure out how to write climate.
Genre fiction, low fiction here. Did you ever play that game this war of mine? No, never heard of it actually. I don't know to what degree you're a gamer but it's really amazing storytelling. It's based on this. Siege of Sarajevo and you're not, it's the only war game I've ever played where you weren't actually a soldier trying to kill as many people. It's just surviving like Scavenging, resources. Trying not to get hit by a
sniper. Like if someone there are cases where to put you into scenarios, where you can try to save someone, who's about to be abused by a paramilitary soldier. It can go badly, you can end up harmed or killed and then what happens with people who live in your house now that you didn't come home that night from Scavenging and like their emotional lives. That understand. How do you do that? It's really, really successfully. Beautiful storytelling. That's something.
There's nothing else quite like that. I feel like, if you were going to write genre fiction of climate and you would presuppose that, the world is going through hard times, you would want to write it in such a way as that it doesn't have to be nearly so dramatic because not all things related to climate change, severity will be nearly. So extreme the some, in some cases truly will, but that's the kind of humanizing that I think tells a good climate story.
Re that is not abstract. It's not polar bears, it's not parts per million but it's about individual lives and tribulations. I think that's where it would need to go. I think you're right. Yeah, well, it's making me reflect on that. That. It's like it. Yeah, it is, it is kind of hard to personalize a problem that it doesn't have a lot of personal experience to it. It's like, obviously there are different natural disasters that are being attributed to climate change today.
So there's always that angle. But like I think for your average Person in the suburbs in the midwest, even if they believe in climate change. It's not a very in-your-face problem for them. So like evoking, those particularities might pose a challenge. Unless you go straight apocalypse for out that like we're fast forwarding to collapse knock on wood. But that's I think how you would maybe create more of a genre tailless to make it like more of a personal experience for that
protagonist. There's also so there's so much apocalyptic fiction to it's just I don't see any of it being climate or a Did I wonder if part of its politics? Because a lot of the survivalists literature is quite right wing. I've rented a couple of bikes started. A couple. We're all here dog whistles. I'll be like what was that last thing he said was like I'm pretty sure I know where this is going. And there's a lot that are just you could just tell are written by quite lonely men.
Lonely men in bunkers are writing bad, books out there. I'm unsurprised to learn this now. Yeah, there's actually like so. Best zombie books are written by a woman in Oregon that I've read where I felt like they had actually like really developed characters relative for the genre and was pretty impressed by, but it was such a, in some ways, it's such a low bar, you're like, oh, it's not just like a Gruff, former Special Forces Soldier trying to save,
everybody. Oh, it's someone who actually has doubts and concerns and fears and mixed emotions about things. Wow, that's pretty. T. It's a little bar, isn't it? Kind of maybe I should write this. Maybe I could have a people care about climate change. Would they want to read a series like this?
I don't know. Well yeah, because like a specially at I'm not as familiar with this style or the genres much but like from what it sounding like is this a little bit of like wish-fulfillment on the author's part that people time. Many of these people will be disappointed. If an EMP does not destroy all cars pass 1978 or whatever, that's Vibe that I get and you know I mean I don't think that's the worst thing in the world.
It kind of makes me think of the onion headline that it's like man imagines himself to be four times as effective in a fight as he actually, I'm terrible at remembering funny things. When I try to reproduce them. The great. I know the one you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, but but yeah, I mean that's kind of what it strikes me as but then I think that that's ripe for parody to my head immediately goes to like Tropic Thunder that.
Yeah. The like special forces guy but they're really kind of Cetera is in the performance of the vet and acting weirder than that, character type of General. So yeah, I think there's a lot of want to play with there, for sure. Maybe I should it sounds fun, although writing, projects are so. So did we ever watched diversity that like that Hamlet to clip from when he's trying to write Hamlet to when he was like crying? Yeah, he's like crying it.
Like the beauty of it and like layer to that movie as you, are you too? And I love like the cut. After he's crying and he's looks at his cat. And goes who the hell do you think you are? Yeah, he's like walking around with their shirt and like no underwear on like playing on like a like a handheld keyboard be like yeah that's writing. I've always felt like on the brink of Madness writing a large project.
Oh 100%. I think I think that is part of the fun and I have definitely cried while writing something before. I'm not saying that it was good but like yeah I think you do. Kind of have to work yourself up into different places and and mind that in a lot of ways. One of the other series I read, I gave up on it, but it was very much like being a boat bum in South, Florida. And it was basically like an extended Jimmy Buffett song. So, if you were a fan of anything, Jimmy Buffett,
absolutely not. You could just exist in that world where you're like kind of a Smuggler but you're not like one of the mean like cartels Smugglers, you're like one of the cool. Like Hawaiian shirt guys, just trying to make a little like dirt bag, a living. There's something about it that I was really comforting and also quite they're gonna be a better word than John. Ray is just is just rho p and repetitive but good anyways something I gotta write this now is that where we're headed?
Are we agreed? Yeah, I think so. I expected on my desk in two weeks get going. Yeah, good grief. Well I'm actually happy, we Talk about climate stuff, nearly enough, I think. And hopefully, you know, how do you intend this? Post-modernism meta. Modernism, a whole bunch of weird literary ramblings. I hope you enjoy it. I think it's safe to say that there's nothing else like this in the entire climate podcasting space. So For Better, or For Worse, it now exists.
Well, yeah, I'm glad to be a part of it. Thanks for calling me up. We I think we planned this initially maybe two and a half years ago so I'm glad we made good. I'm glad we made good too. Well thanks for being on the show. Hey thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed this show. It was a fun one, an oddball one and one that is near and dear to my heart. If you like what we're doing
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