Episode 146 – Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s "A Canticle for Leibowitz” with our Patron Book Club

Now you wanna talk about reading? Let's talk about reading. Let me tell you the days of my adventure. The book served as a passageway to the evil world's beards. Ready to go, Doc? Oh, yes, yes, my dear fellow. Just check the driver's boots. Hey, Robbo. How you doing today? I am good. Yeah. Hey, boy. Hey, Jeff. There you go. Is Barnabas AC-18 Adam? Yeah, that's me. Hey, Robert. Hello, Jeff and Adam. Hey, Robert. Hey, Robbie. How you doing? Jeff. Hey, Robbie. Hey, how's it going? There we go. Hold on. Change the name here. I think the only other person we're expecting at this point is Brandon Cruz. Okay. That's okay. It joins us or not. Oliver was going to be on it, but he just emailed saying he isn't going to be able to make it. He's busy shipping out. The new edge towards the source. I think it's about to be everybody's 20 little palms. Very soon. That's great. That was not the reason cited. The reason cited was new puppy related reasons. Okay. Equally good. Yeah. Yeah. Oliver and puppies seem like the thing that goes together. Yeah. So this episode is going to be released to the main channel. Is Sir Kendrick. Oh, there we go. Brandon. Hello, Brandon. Yes. This is my hard name. Change. Is this. I got back. You. Brandon is the stash new. I'm not sure if it's going to be a good one. Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? It's a summertime. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sweet. So I want to just go ahead and start by acknowledging. Rick's passing. And how sad that is. And since this episode is going to be released to the. I'm going to start by saying that. Yeah, yeah, I said I had a good fortune to meet Rick last year. He was in town and had an afternoon to spare. And everything that you said that we saw through the screen was very much him in real life. And that's a brief time. I'd spend with him. And then beyond that, you know, he had joined after that, shortly after that, he joined our Friday Night Games. So Adam also got to know him a little bit better and he's been an incredible contributor to that game. And still, indelibly, Rick, too. You mean the way he played his characters and he brought a different energy, which was a lot of fun to a group that had been going on quite a while. And he was just fully accepted as the woman he came in because he just had that gift. So we are somewhat diminished without him, but I think we're so lucky the world that had him here in the first place. So yeah. And I want to share an idea. There's a thing called disenfranchised grief, which is grief that isn't able to be expressed the way that we traditionally express grief because for some reason we feel like we can't, it's commonly experienced with like the loss of a pet or if somebody dies by suicide or drug overdose and people are like kind of weird about talking about it or if it's a celebrity who meant a lot to you that you never actually knew in person and you really impacted by it or whatever. And I think a lot of people might be saying to themselves, well, I never met Rick in person. So my grief doesn't really count. Or maybe even people who haven't even participated in these book clubs who just have listened to him on the show. who are really sad that he's passed. I just want to acknowledge like your grief is valid. You're allowed to have whatever feelings you're having around this. - Thank you, Jeff. - It's cool. So we can go ahead and move on to a canicle for Libowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. And we can take a look at which edition of the book we're working with. Brandon, what do you have? - Well, my library book didn't come through in time, so I actually had to buy this. So I got the brand spanking new. You've never been out of print. I realized after looking online. Amazing. How about you, Robbie? - You know, I have an old paperback. I gave it to my wife to read maybe like a year, year and a half ago, and it's vanished into the ether. So I want to listen to the audio book this time. - Just, how is that? - It's not bad. It's well narrated. I feel like, let's say you want to audio book is always a very different experience from actually reading the book because you're not in control of the pacing. And especially a book like this where, like Miller is so, I guess intentional with his language. Like sometimes you really just need to kind of like digest a phrase or just kind of like sit there with like a pile of Latin or whatever. And it's much harder to do that. - Right. How about you Adam? - I got the same one that Brandon has. It's got St. Louis Whitt's getting burned there in the front with a lot of books. - Right. - The buzzer is tying the overhead. - John Picasso cover. And it's interesting because it could be St. Louis Whitt could literally be any of the characters. It could be Brother Francis. It could be any of the ones also, you know? - Yeah, that's probably true. I think it's supposed to be legal itself, but I don't know. - How about you Robert? - It's the same one, the EOS trade and mine's from the library brand. And so take that local library where you are. - I've got a 2007 mass market paperback that I actually bought at the Strand. - There you go. - And yeah, it's got like a kind of a stylized image of a candle and a pen and maybe some kind of stylized smoke. It's not a particularly exciting cover. - So you said you bought it St. Louis Whitt. How long have you had you been intending to read this book, Jeffrey? - Oh, this book has been recommended to me for as long back as I can remember books. Like yeah, this is, I've been hearing any to read this book for forever. - Right. I have the Picasso one as well. I used to have that one with the Pope and the sort of spaceship flying overhead and I couldn't find that copy. So this is the one I have in the moment. Has anyone ever also read this before? Also? - Oh yeah. - Okay, I read it a long time ago myself. So, but didn't remember anything really other than the last chapter. The literal last chapter, which is indelible. Any high-gexy nominations? - Ooh, I got one. Go for it. - Okay, they called a battering ram in here, but that's not what it is. And they're describing the bomb going off. And when the fury of the sun had faded, the city was in flames. And a great thunder came out of the sky, like the great battering ram, Picadon to crush it utterly. And Picadon is a Japanese word and it means, "Pika" means brilliant and "Don" means boom, representing what was seen and heard when the bombs in Japan were detonated. As Picadon. - Wow. - Like that one. - That's powerful. - Yeah, I was gonna say, I think that there's a really natural choice for liturgy. And I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't give you like an exact reference, but it's mentioned sort of once or twice and sort of the outward practice of religion, which is kind of central to the whole book. Yeah. - Yeah, I mean, this is so many words. I mean, obviously just the various Latin terms, but the Bindelstiff appears many, many times too. And when the order of the sort of the wandering component of the order of saving their boys from their smuggling books and transferring knowledge, and they all suppose to pretend to be hoboes essentially. So, there's a few words. - Frequently in the early, in the early, yeah, the first novella that forms the book. - I've found Dorons or Dorons. Dorons' vile is the phrase that it's commonly associated with, but Dorons means imprisonment or incarceration and Dorons' vile is like extremely long. And they talk about that on the trade page 134, where he's comparing the cloister to a place of imprisonment. - And I found X-Propery Hate, which is a fancy word for steel. And it's on page 151 of mine. And it's the town council X-Propery Hate, our school don't forget. I was aligned by Dom Palo in the second section. - Another word I thought was, it was using humorous intent, although it was, you know, it was Ornithophagy, you know, to E-Burns, but it was talking about the whole part about whether a cat, or a cat could be, you know, scholars of birds, I said. - Yeah, calling to, was it, calling to Ornithology, even though it was on the moon. - Could a cat become an Ornithologist? Does a number of interesting, like, I mean, this whole book is a log philosophical digression, but does a number of sections like that where it's a very compact philosophical digression within a larger philosophical digression, which I think are wonderful. - Mine is very non-Gaxian, kind of the other end of the spectrum, but in the middle book, I can't remember their names, but is it the middle book? It's when Benjamin, you know, he's desert in the prior, or whoever he goes out to visit him, and he calls him "You old pretzel." And I thought, that's gonna pretzel's good. And I started thinking, like, everything is so anachronistic, like, do they have pretzels? Do they know what it is? Or is it just a word that they've read? And now they've appropriated it to be, 'cause it is, I can kind of see calling like some of pretzels an insult. And then there's a little bit of a get-ish feel to it. Anyway, it was like, oh yeah, I can kind of, kind of bit somehow, I like that. - Yeah. And definitely has that sort of like conversation of that stereotype with the mid-20th century, of like two sort of cranky, but wise, Jewish men arguing with each other, (laughs) and slipping in and out of the edition. - Right. (laughs) - So did anybody here hate this book? - Nope, that's like, I said, you had some reservations there, Jeff. - No, I don't. And as I was reading, just like, this seems like a book that would be pretty hard for somebody to hate, but I'm sure the people out there who do hate it. - You know, Jeff, I was nervous about you, 'cause I've come on here a few times with books that are old favorites of mine. And like, I'm still like the wound from Neuromance or hasn't healed. (laughs) - Yeah, yeah, I was also disappointed with myself for not loving Neuromance or-- (laughs) But thankfully, we don't need to be disappointed with myself with Cannicel for LimaWitz. Robert, what are your thoughts about this book? - Okay, well, I wasn't going to speak up when you asked if I hated it, but I will confess that I started to like this book less and less the further I got into it. I love the first part and I really felt like that was the strongest part of the book. And I liked all the rest of it too, but I got really, I started to get worn down by a couple of things as I went. I resented a little bit, having to jump forward in time and losing the cool characters that I met in the beginning. And so I got a little bit more disconnected from the engagement of the story. And then also it felt like it got more serious and less funny and also more philosophical, more explicitly philosophical. Like they start having conversations about, how are we going to, are we going to euthanize these people or not by the end? And that just wasn't as much, obviously, wasn't as much fun for me to read about. And I'll just go back real quick to the beginning. Like you, Jeff, I've had people, not had people recommend this book to me, but I've always known this was a book that I should read even from when I was very young and looking for books like this. And I always passed it up in the paperback aisle because I would read on the back cover like, "Oh, it's about religion and it's about a bunch of monks." and growing up in a very Catholic city, New Orleans. I was like, no, no, and I'm not religious and I wasn't really raised to be that way. So I just, I always kept away from this book and even started it this time reading it for the first time. I was like, okay, you know, I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about it, but it won me over very quickly. So I remember the the person in my life who's recommended this book for me, the hardest was a friend of my name, Neil in New York. And I remember I was reading Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. And he was like, oh, if you like Catholics in space, you have to read. Is that a genre, Catholics in space? At least with those two books, it is. There's there's a case of conscience too. Is that also Catholics? Is that the publisher? Is that the introduction? Yeah, Mary, Mary Doria Roth will write the introduction to the straight beat back version. So there you go. For what circle do you? That's hilarious. James Blish wrote the case of conscience and it's a Jesuit. Yeah. It's really good. Well, the Jesuit is always more forward thinking. So it makes sense that Jesuit's space actually married the Mary Doria Russell was also Jesuit's space. Yeah. Yeah. Robert, did you know that that was going to happen with the end of the first section? No, either. And I relate to a lot of what you're saying. And also I found the abruptness with which brother Francis was killed at the end of it to be really brutal and really effective. So although I also share in your frustration that suddenly like we weren't with these characters or in this world anymore, I thought that the way that it was done was so effective and so powerful that I was like, oh, damn, whoa, that was cool. How about you, Adam? As far as the ending of the first part, just in general, what are your, what are your, what are your open thoughts on the book in general? No, it's a lot to chew on, man. It's, there's a lot going on in this book. Yeah. And I kind of light what Robert didn't in that. I like doing it like when the brother gets killed at the end and like, you're right, it's shocking, you know, but effective, you know. But then like he zooms way back. And it's just like, the universe doesn't care that all this stuff is going on. The buzzards continue underway, you know. And it's like, I like that date, that structure of it because it's like I don't know. It's interesting how he zooms back out at the end of everyone and you get to, it's really pessimistic and grim like the universe is just going to roll on, you know, if people are going to die and then somebody else to take over, you know. So I guess what Robert dislike that kind of liked, I suppose. Yeah, I think I, so Robert, I don't, I don't want you to feel like we're, we're kind of picking on you, but I agree with a lot of things that you said, but sort of had a different feeling about them. Like I do agree that the the first part of the book that The At Home All is the best, right? Sort of like The At Home All And The At Looks And The At walled to us to a. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my Latin's rusty. I think that's what it's like, let that will be done. Yeah. I agree that sort of it starts out more fun and gets kind of a little bit more bleak as it goes on, which I think was a very intentional choice by the author, but I also like, Brother Francis is the best character in the book, like, clear standout. And like all of the stuff with him and it is really great. And like when, when, when like the Abbott, it's like, you know, trying to ask him to be certain whether or not the, the pilgrim that he met was like a man or a saint. And he's just like, he's just in way over his head and not processing it. And like, it's like, it's a lot of fun. It's a really great, great bit. And yeah, I also, I really like the transitions like that where it stops being about Brother Francis. And then like, it's briefly about the buzzards and like, you know, their community sort of like thriving. And then, you know, like the Empire of Laredo comes out in the where and it's sort of, it's, uh, yeah, it's really shocking. It's really affecting. And I think it kind of, um, it drives home the point that like, that's not what this book was about, right? Like this book is not about Brother Francis or like, you know, these monks living in this time. It's about sort of trajectory of humanity after everything sort of broken down and builds itself back up again, which I, I think it's really, it's really impressive, right? It's hard to write a book on that scale. It still like makes sense as a book. You know, I mean, like when, when people try to talk about things in sort of like, you know, how civilizations develop or whatever, um, a lot of times it gets sort of very dry and impersonal. And the way that, that Miller manages to kind of personalize it by sort of zooming in on these like vignettes that significant times, um, I, I, I, I, I just things. Yeah, I agree a lot. I feel like this book is able to really explore like the cyclical nature of, um, human violence and cruelty and also the, the, the rising and falling of human civilization, again and again on loop, um, without it, I mean, it is essentially about that, but in each section, we're spending time with like a couple of people and a, and it's, it's, it's very micro in its, um, narrative scale, but very macro and like the themes that it's looking at. And I think that that's a really interesting way that it's approaching it, rather than like telling the story of like, it's, it's not like, it's not like the Lord of the Rings, where we've got like our adventure, like going out there and like saving the world. These are people who are existing within this time in a very specific way. And we're just kind of seeing the world through their eyes. And I thought that that was like very effective and interesting. Well, and even having said that, they're part of this much small, I mean, they're almost like the hobbits if we're going to take the use of Lord of the Ring thing, right? Where they are directly affecting history, but they're not aware and they have no possibility of being aware of how they were affecting history, right? I mean, just that, I love that a little bit where the Pope tells Brother Francis that no, your 15 years wasn't wasted, illuminating this, you know, re-drawing and illuminating this blueprint, circuit diagram that you have no possibility by understanding. Because if you hadn't done that, you would not have saved the original blueprint, right? When you were robbed, right? And so, you know, Brother Francis is important, so he reoccur as at the end, the very end, when the, you know, the habit is lying there, you know, after the, you know, the nuclear explosion, and sees the, the, the, the whole the relics of the app, you know, and one of those with Brother Francis is calling, isn't even know that his brother Francis, right? So, I really appreciate that. I just say, it's the macro and the micro. This is an element of, I'm going to give it, thoughts, backs, sorry, just interrupted, but I really, there is, despite Miller's reputation for citizen, there is a sort of an element of hope, right? In this book, how the wise name would never have this, you know, have this arc that goes off into space that attempts, maybe it's just going to recreate the same problems, but it's going to attack, you know? If Miller was properly cynical, we would never have gotten that, that, like, character that's threaded throughout, where it's like the, the hermit, the first story and then the hermit and the second story. Like that is, I think, a way of, sort of Miller, I guess, calling attention to and challenging his own cynicism, it feels like to me, right? Like, if you look at, like, what's the purpose of this character in this story? That's what I get at. So, Brad, now see, you've been nodding along on some of the comments and what's what do you do, General Thoughts? Oh, you did. Yeah, I'm just mentally agreeing with everybody. I'm like, oh yeah, good point. Like, when you said, it occurred to me at some point when you said Lord of the Rings, like, I was thinking, when I first thought it was a fantasy novel, right? I was thinking, like, what else? Was there any other fantasy setting where characters are coping sort of regularly with despair? And I was like, I think Lord of the Rings is the one. Like, you know, like, sword and sorcery, generally, that's not, that's not what the hero is grappling with, right? But, and then what you guys were saying about the throughlines, I think I've said this on the podcast before, but it's a very Catholic book in that it blends the linear nature of the hebraic tradition, right? With the circular, you know, the seasonal, the recurring nature of the Greek, and the Hellenistic tradition, and that's, you know, that's the spiral, right? Things re-occur, but things also move forward. That's Dante's in Ferno, right? You're going down the spiral. You're sending a spiral to heaven. And he does it, you know, in a book like this big. It's amazing. It, it, it was, it was a real enjoyable read for me because, you know, I read a fair number of fantasy novels, and I didn't know where this was going. I'm like, what am I in for? Like, at the end of the first third, I thought, oh, well, this is going to be like a book of parables. This is, you know, Francis, you know, he kind of has the hat trick of the perfect life. He dies in a state of of like having achieved his, you know, his holy duty, he's achieved his professional duty and he is also dying with a sense of hope. He's looking forward to something and he dies instantly and painlessly. It's kind of, you know, a parable in that sense. And that was thinking like, well, maybe it's a parable about like someone who's, wife was like, waste. Yeah, 'cause he's constantly being criticized by his colleagues. He's seven years in office before he gets to become an actual monk. Like, people are constantly telling, you know, and we the reader know that what he's working on is probably this worthless schematic. You know, this is not anything that's kind of lead and this is an actual genuine, you know, relic. This is kind of a farce. But then, you know, you get to the next book and I'm thinking, oh, this is gonna be like a game of thrones. This is like high politics. These are like nation-states warring, you know, in a plane, this is gonna be, you know, this thing. No, then we jump ahead another, what is it, 600 years, 1200 years every time? It's a year. And it turns into like, you know, a modern day, you know, it's Dr. Strangelove. Suddenly, you know, we're in the war room, you know, and we have these cutaways to, you know, these farcical news conferences. He does have a great sense of humor. So it just keeps you on your toes and, I don't know, I just, I think it's a masterpiece. I don't know. (laughs) Great. Yeah, I mean, I don't think you have the qualify. I think many people do. It's, although it's interesting that the initial reaction from sort of, I was reading a little bit about in Wikipedia, the initial reaction people were kind of like brushing it off and saying, oh, this is kind of tri, whatever, but sometimes you live in those times, you don't see, you see, but it's just before the Cuban Missile Crisis, right? It's like two or three years before the Cuban Missile Crisis. You know, I, also, I think Robert, and Jeff, you remember this, like, I remember seeing this book around a lot as a kid. Thinking it was incredibly old book, even though it was only kept in public like eight years before I was born, right? But I think, 'cause, yeah, I guess, 'cause the particular art for that was on the cover at the time, and we were, you know, we were still during the Cold War, but we sort of passed that period of like, you know, constant open confrontation, at least until Reagan came back around, you know, and so it felt like, okay, well, you know. (laughs) This is already interesting, but now it feels fresher than the first time I've heard it, it's about, you know, maybe 90s, I guess. Yeah, 'cause then I think it was sort of a historical, period where we're pushed historical, but now we're not. That's right. I think for a long time I was getting this book confused with flowers for Aldrinon, 'cause it's both like, you know, now and for name. But I also remember now when I bought it from the strand, the guy who rang me up was like, really excited in telling me how this is his favorite book, and like, it's just an incredible tale about like the nature of humanity. And I don't know if this thing that I was really enjoying was part of what the author was going for, if this is just kind of what I was adding to it. But also the ways in which Brother Francis's story was evolving and becoming more and more fantastic, reminded me a lot, it made me think a lot about stories from the Bible and how a lot of these like wild stories from the Bible may have all come from pretty reasonable events that happened. And then as the centuries went by and more and more people told each other these stories, they became these like, really wild stories of, you know, a worldwide flood with two animals of every kind on a boat, where like in reality maybe this was based on a thing that happened and it'd be curious to know like what that thing was. And looking at that and then also seeing how religion, like specifically Christianity is like a thing that survived the great deluge, what do they call it again? - The flamed deluge. - The flamed deluge, yeah. It's also interesting 'cause I wonder if in some ways it feels like the author is very cynical about religion, but in other ways it's also like the kind of the glue that's holding the little bits of what's left of society together and keeping us, I don't know, able to hold on to the knowledge that we have and carry it on to next generations. I don't know, there's interesting stuff going on with the religious piece too, and that I don't really know how much of it is intended or not. - Yeah, I really like exactly what you're talking about in the second book, there's a part where they sort of like give the whatever, the religious reading, like sermon or whatever, telling the story of the flamed deluge and it's sort of taken as like a mishmash of different biblical stories, right? It starts out with like job and then they throw in like cane and able and I think that was like, yeah, that's similar doing exactly what you're talking about. Saying, okay, well we take these things that happen and sort of the lessons that we draw out of them, take on a life of their own. - Jeff, I think your point about bringing stuff, it's actually well taken because you can't read a book and not bring yourself to it, right? And to me, what's interesting about this whole project, but in particular this book and a couple other books like "Lotal Rings" is that, 'cause all the books I have revisited, that every time I've revisited and then I understand them in a different way than I did the previous time I read them. And sometimes for the worst, like, oh, I see this was that, the thing I really enjoyed was actually kind of do it now, but sometimes it just deepens. And to your point Jeff about religion, I think Miller is a man of many contradictions but he was actually a convert to Catholicism. He wasn't raised Catholic. So it must have had a lot of resonance frame despite seeing whatever flaws there were in organized religion and instructors. And then again, I'm the history in there, so he was apparently a radio operator and tail gunner during World War II. And he was deeply affected by the fact that he had been on bomb mission to destroy the minister, it's a Benedictine monastery in San Tic, at Monte Casino, so they basically destroyed the oldest monastery in the Western world. And this is actually a weird resonance for me, personal resonance for me, because my father came over to this country on an exchange program, the family that put him up, the father and that family had also been, I think actually a waste gunner, but also an eat Italy in World War II, and actually he got shot down and had been a prisoner for, but he had always sort of implied that he felt that was his just penance for actually potentially having killed civilians on these bombing missions, really, you know? And so that was a really interesting thing, it just connected with me when I was reading this book this time, and remembering those two things connected together. So, and the other thing that's reminding me a little bit of for some reason is Lohi McMurtry's "Lonest of Dove", you know, this sort of thing, it starts out very lighthearted, then it gets darker as it goes along, but it still tries to connect to the humanity of the characters, even at the very end, so this kind of work. Again, I don't know why, I guess Western landscapes, and you know, kind of thing like that. Adam, you're nodding there a little bit, you have a. - No, I just, that was just interested to hear the "Wastest Gunner" story, you know? - "Fades of Bonnigot." - Yeah, yeah. - Well, it is definitely a title that's sort of, for me at least, kind of like, kind of like Francis Keystone, it kind of plugged a hole in like, you know, reading history. Like, oh, this is the book, right? I don't know, like Robert Harris wrote a book called, "The Second Dawn" or "The Second Sleep", or something that starts off as a medieval, you're like, I was a medieval fantasy, and then it turns out it's post-apocalyptic. - Well, this is, it's, it's, it's canister for "Leba Widz", which is writing it. There's a crazy old wizard who lives out in Medezard, whose name is Ben. Where have I heard that before? - Yeah, yeah. - This is where you're right. - Right, right. - And this cool, I get highlights a lot of these, like, interesting cyclical things that happened in society. I think this idea is a little half baked, but I think about the, like, the idea of like, Nazi symbology, for example, like how like, you know, in the late '70s, British and New York punk bands were putting swastikas on things and wearing SS gear as a way of being shocking, but also at the same time, like, it's only 30 years after, 30 some years after World War II, and I think that there's this presumption that, like, well, of course, nobody's actually a Nazi anymore, and I'm just gonna use these symbols to, like, be shocking and be wild. But then in the '80s, you've got, you know, young, you've got, like, teenagers who are now seeing these, like, cool punk kids with swastikas, and now they're starting to be like, oh, yeah, Nazis are cool. And then, like, there is this big resurgence of white supremacy in punk music in the 1980s, and I don't know that, I don't know for a fact that they're connected, but my mind's drawn a connection there. And it is just kind of interesting how these things just play through again and again. And this book just says a really beautiful job of illustrating that stuff on a much, much grander scale than what I'm describing. - Thank goodness there are no more Nazis now. - Exactly. - Oh, of course, I'll get better. - Oh, okay. That's it, that Kennedy song gets me. more and more relevant every year. - That's a question. So Robert, you had mentioned obviously, because you had New Orleans and Supercalf, like it's most visibly Catholic city in many ways, in the North America, right? Except for maybe Quebec City. What actually happened to having read this was your reaction, at least, to sort of, I mean, as you said, you got more sort of depressing as you're reading along, but sort of the role of religion, you know, and all that. How did that, how did you make your peel up here? You know, actually, I'm in rhythm. - So I really didn't mind it once I was in it, you know. The resistance was completely like, I did not go to Catholic school, but I went to an Episcopalian grade school. So I did have some interactions. I really didn't get along with the headmaster who was father, I won't say his name, he was a priest. So I've got that chip, but my neighbors all went to Catholic school. And I would hear about how they were treated. And I was like, this is back when you'd get spanking, corporal punishment, and wrapped on all this stuff. So I did not like that. So that's my background. I'm my baggage. I'm bringing to it. And then, but you know, like everybody else, I love brother Francis. And I really, you know, we're all book nerds, right? And that's what this whole order of St. Louis is. It's like a bunch of book nerds who are, they're the only ones. They're the only ones who are trying to keep it together. The rest of it's just anarchy and savagery, you know. And so, of course, I'm rooting for them. And I think, you know, in previous conversations, that you all, previous comments, y'all all focused mostly on brother Francis, but they're the other characters that I really hooked into. They were successful for me. I think we're the abbots. At least I'm thinking it was the last abbot that was so in the last section that was so broken down and about to die. Isn't he the one that's constantly in the middle of one? I think the middle one has a, like, a implied has stomach cancer. It's the one that I'm going to be the first to write. Oh, okay, that guy. Yeah. Well, so the people that are from the monastery, they're the ones I identify the most with. They kept me going. I just didn't think that those characters were as successful as brother Francis. Like, I love the guy that creates the electric light, you know. The electric light. But going back to your question about religion, the religious stuff, I mean, in the end, it's like, I guess I'm prejudiced. I'm going to admit to my prejudice of, like, I'm not going to really be accepting of a religious argument if that's what this book is having. So I'm not here for that. But as far as the success of humans, the race and surviving for that. So, you know, I would just look at it as a means to an end, I guess. So it didn't keep me from liking the book. I just, I just don't want to, I'm not going to cheer on the credit going to, to religion for that. Did that answer your question? Yeah, yeah. No, actually more than, more than I was wondering if it presented a sort of, continued to present a barrier to your, enjoying the book as you were reading it. What was I guess like, a single question? Yeah, it did. Like, yeah, the more, the more serious, like the more it tried to kind of grind down on those serious issues, the less I was flowing along with it, even, you know, I finished the book. I mean, I could have just put it down and been like, I'm not joining this conversation. Right. I guess also, sorry. Go ahead. One of the key. Sorry. You do it. You do it, Hoi. One of the key arguments in the last, especially in the last book, is about Euthanasia. And we did, and I just read, again, today in Wikipedia, that, you know, Miller, you know, ended his life by suicide. In the 90s, just before he finished his second novel, we were never finished his second novel. It goes right. It's basically the last major work he had. He had right his block for like 40 years. But it's interesting because he knows a whole section of Euthanasia that clearly Miller was wrestling with this idea had been wrestling with this idea. For 40 years or even more, right? Even for, you know, he ultimately ended up taking his life so that or even going farther back, who knows how far back. But, you know, anything's lifetime. So, and it's interesting because the fact that he wasn't originally cast like. And I don't know if he continued to consider himself a Catholic, you know, to the end, but how he was how he was wrestling with these. And did he have to like put on the lens of Catholicism to like. Say that, you know, maybe he was suicidal and the sign of life. But that's the greatest mortal sin. And I think he puts that in there and so having a conversation with himself. In his last, especially in the last book. Anyway, that's again, also half what we thought, but. Now put back there. Yeah. And Robbie, I think you I got you off. So. I think you could have Jeff. I do have some stuff to say, but. Okay. I need to jump in. I'll say my thing real quick and then I'll throw it to you, Robbie. The thing that I wanted to say is that. That I do feel like the conversation about religion in this book is a more nuanced one. And that's allowing for multiple things to be true simultaneously, which I really like. I think about how, you know, religion is something that is used to oppress people has caused great suffering in our world. Has been the source of major wars and horrific acts of human violence and grabs for power that have oppressed other people. And also religion is a huge source of comfort for people. And so, you know, I think religion is a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose and a sense of community and it brings people together. And I think, yeah, religion can be a very complicated thing in that way because it can be. They can both have really fantastic elements for society and really harmful ones. I think about how like if I was a. I think that's a very cynical empathy lacking person who wanted to make a ton of money and I decided to start a mega church, even though I don't believe in God. And I'm just willing to take advantage of all of the people and get all of their money and convince them that, you know, their life's maybe better if they just give me their money to support God. You know, like what I'm doing is unethical and immoral and the church I'm starting might be creating really might be bringing a lot of people together and changing people's lives in a really fantastic way. While also oppressing other people's lives and making their lives harder. It's it's also complicated in a way that I find really interesting and I love when people are able to engage in these topics in a really nuanced way without just saying religion is good or religion is bad. And I and this I don't think this book is being super forthright with where the author is coming from with it, but I do at least appreciate that it does seem to be from a more nuanced angle. So that was my thought, but Robbie. Yeah, and I first of all, I like this whole line of conversation. I feel it's very, very important. But one of the things I really appreciate in the book is that to the monks sort of what they believe there's sort of like religious doctrine and whatever and the work that they're doing of sort of preserving these these books and you know, sort of collect knowledge of old civilization are really intertwined, but to the outside world they're absolutely not. And I think that's like I really like the way that Miller handles that issue in in the second book in. And I think that's what I think is really important. Where he first shows up at the at the monastery and the Abbott sort of like has this speech that has been like prepared and like delivered down from like generation to generation and he just doesn't care at all like you just like grunts at him and it's like so thoroughly deflating for the Abbott. And I think it's I think it's a really good point right is that sort of you can have this organization that does these sort of like good and valuable things, but that that does not necessarily make it sort of like a good thing or a net positive in people's lives. I think he does portray them on this very sympathetically, but I don't think that necessarily expect readers to kind of take that in with them. It's very much from the monk's point of view and from the from the Abbott's point of view, you know, and I agree with what Jeff's saying about how it's nuanced and it's it's smart enough that you take it more seriously because it's so nuanced, you know, and because it's like, you know, although I find myself agreeing, you know, all the time with the secularist in the book. because that's what I think. But it's like they put forward, and it's from their point, from their point of view, and they put forward a good enough arguments about how they see things. And it's coming from a good place, really, if you think about it from their point of view, that you respect it, you know what I mean? Even if ultimately you would say, you know, and it's kind of like implied, like when I first was writing a note for this, saying like both the secular and religious philosophies fail, but that's not really what kind of happens. What it is is they just didn't listen to the monks, you know, and it's kind of implied that if they had, you know, paid more attention to them, maybe this second disaster could have been avoided, you know? So I agree that it's very, it's pretty deep, and it's got a lot to chew on there, so it's pretty cool. - I wanted to leave some space for the gaming side of this conversation. Did anybody find things that they thought would be interesting to steal from this or they were inspired to bring into their game? - Well, clearly the gamma world slash MCC artifact rules, right there in the first book, and don't they like talk about various monks having blown up like a whole village and some ancient artifact? - Yeah, with a lake where all the fishes are monstrous. (laughing) - Yeah, the Pope's children, I mean, that's definitely a character class there. So yeah, I love them, and also I was going to, when I was first trying to think, well, what can I pull out of this? I really appreciated the deep look into the cleric's life. I mean, this is a cleric background. You wanna think about what it really does mean to be a cleric than use this book. It was really nice for that. - I think that I thought was fun is how, when brother Francis comes back and simply release the information about what happened, he's now in a ton of trouble because the information isn't exactly in line with what the abbot wants to hear. And it got me thinking about how fun that would be to incorporate elements of that into a game or maybe your folks are sent on an adventure and then they come back and tell the people what happened, but somehow that's not in line with what they wanna hear. So now you guys are in trouble for delivering a message that they didn't wanna hear and that they're not believing 'cause it's not an alignment with their particular views on things. I thought that could be a fun little plot twist to incorporate into a game that I wanted to potentially steal from this. - I think it'd be cool to play a character that his power or his ability, his special ability is that he can read and write. - That's good. - Your NPC scribe or NPC sage has his day in the sun. - Yeah, I'm just imagining that in like a D&D vibe game where it's like, oh, I can shape shift into a dragon. I can shoot laser beams out of my eyes. I can read and write. But if the world that's littered with ancient high tech, high tech super science, if your character is the only one who can figure out how to make those artifacts work because of their literacy, like that could be really interesting, but you bring up a good point, Robbie. Like it has to be the right kind of setting and the right kind of game for that to be super power. - I could also see this being the basis of sort of a story journaling, so a little journaling kind of game, maybe like a thousand year old vampires like that, where first phase is you write some pre-apocalyptic text and then you destroy that journal and then you maybe even turn around, robbing it and you pass it on the next player and they have to interpret and recreate what would a civilization look like if this is all they had, this is the only documents they had to rebuild off. And then someone takes it the next step and says, okay, and what would that civilization look like once they've rediscovered certain basic physical principles like 100 years later and boom, boom, boom. So I could see this being like a very sort of R.C. journaling/story game also. I don't have the design shop to figure out how it would work, but you could see the bones of it in there. - I've had this game sitting on my shelf for years and years, sadly unplayed, legacy, life among ruins, where, you know, it's, I think it's a power by the apocalypse game, but each player plays like a faction in civilization and then it's sort of like significant times you zoom in and you're playing like characters sort of enacting significant events. And every time I've tried to like sell it to people, like we should play this and like it's like, can't go for Leibwood's the game and they're always like, what's can't go for Leibwood's and I'm like, that's the sad. - Sunday, Sunday. - You've got your game a group here now, some days. (laughing) And do you have any thoughts you've been not in long again also? - Well, yeah, I mean, it's kind of what Robbie just said, what you were saying was that I have aspirations (laughing) 'Cause I mean, I think about this before I read the book, but I, you know, like just the historicity of everything, like I would love to have a monastery that had a history that was thousands of years old, but you know, you see a relic and, you know, there's a story behind this is a, this is somebody from another era and when you come down to gaming, nobody cares, right? The flyers don't care. Yeah, it's just, there's not, there aren't enough hours in the gaming session to make that kind of thing pay off. That, I mean, it's what makes the book beautiful. But also what, forget Robbie was saying, somebody was saying, - Absolutely. - And about the literacy, like it occurred to me while I was reading this. There's always a beat in a gaming session or a campaign where the characters encounter like it's the secret library, right? And then all of a sudden the dungeon master has the spotlight on him to like, oh, I can't pull a book off the shelf. What is it? What's a history? Well, if nobody can read, you know, I can't be a deal with any of that. All you know is you have some valuable literature and you have to go maybe hire somebody who's literate. But what I would take, I guess is, I don't, I mean, I always kind of feel this when I come across a good character, but like the two headed Vulture sharpshooters at the end of the first book who are just like, (imitating Vulture music) just simple little characterizations for your NPCs that stick in the mind are invaluable. That would just like to be able to, you know, populate my chorus with characters of that caliber. - Yeah, I love post-apocalyptic, you know, I mean, sort of like Asa Jean-Roye in general. And it's like a, like a gaming setting. And yeah, I think like that first book that like Viat homo, I would love to like, lay run a game just sort of sitting that kind of world. - Yeah, I'm under, yeah. Yeah, definitely a story game. Of course you could do it with something like stupid involve like, or does anyone remember aftermath? You could have like an armor rating for like your elbow pad. (laughing) There's one of the ones that was like for the basis for like a system was when they just stripped down for like the shido and a couple other fans, FGU games back in the day. I wanna point out one more very funny sort of gaming book related comment. I can't remember the exact page citation but Brandon since you had mentioned that we're all book nerds. I think it was Pawn Tadeo who was like, ragging on the monks, where he says, oh, they wanna preserve the books, but they don't wanna actually do anything with the books. That just struck my heart as a game. (laughing) I don't know why I've been around to loom Hayden. This conversation got me thinking, do you guys know the left behind series? - Yeah, that's the question, right? - Yeah, it's the question. - It says question novels about the people who were left behind after the rapture. And I was just thinking about how funny that would be to play like in a left behind style campaign with a bunch of people. (laughing) Having Robert in a left behind campaign. (laughing) - I'm very excited. - All game nerds left behind. (laughing) - Time and up to game break out the 25th. - We're all sinners. - We're doing it, right? - Perfect. - So let's go ahead and start wrapping up there and start looking at our final thoughts. Brandon, what are your final thoughts? - I would say, I don't know. I always feel like final thoughts are kind of the little blurb underneath the movie. But I mean, it really is masterpiece. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I hardly recommend if you've had this on your two read list. Run, don't walk, get yourself a prop today. (laughing) - You take it, pay for the whole seat. - There you go. - Robert. - Yeah, I like the book. I'm just not as unreservedly over the moon about it as everyone else. So. - I'll just mention a funny part. Faun Tadejo, in one part, he wants to convince everybody that Rossum's universal robots is actually actually a historical document. I don't know if you guys caught that, but like he said, they found this play and it's like the, you know, the RUR where the robots revolten, take over and kill the humans. And he says, yeah, that's what us, we're not the original humans. I knew it was a reference. I just didn't catch what it was. But yeah, and then the, the, don the, the avid is like, that's made up, dude, that's, that's not a real story. Many impumes thought today as character for wanting that to be true. Robbie, you know, uh, final thoughts is a terrible place to introduce like a new thing we haven't talked about yet. But it's not because it can be a thing to get a chance to chat about that you want to acknowledge real quick. Yeah. We just drop it on the table and let people sort of like do this at home as an exercise. But I think one thing that kind of stood out to me this time, so I read this book a few times. And in the, in the second book, there's like the, the, like sort of wild tribes that are sort of roaming the grasslands or whatever, the whole like mad bear in his plan. And like the thought that I was really having this time, which I did not stick out in previous readings for whatever reason is like, is this, is this racist? Right? Like it's sort of, you know, is looking at it and like there's really strong parallels to sort of like the depictions of, you know, different native peoples from, um, from this country, from America. Uh, but you look at it and you're like objectively, this is divorced from all that context, right? Like these are sort of like non-specific people after the apocalypse, you know, like fill in your own idea about like, like, um, ethnicity or, or dissent they are. Um, but sort of the portrayal, I was like, is it, is it possible to like have people that are depicted so similarly to these like racist depictions that we've seen of, um, you know, sort of like Cherokee, Comanche, um, Navajo, like take your pick, uh, and, and to have that not, I don't know, you know, I literally did not know if that was racist or not. It just kind of like, like something about it just kind of kind of stunned me a little bit. Well, how does the performance on the audio book, uh, you know, I think like the voice was very growly when he got to, you know, the, the mad bear character. Uh, and I don't know how to take that either, right? Like he didn't, he didn't say how there was no one from, so like, you know, not like dead on racist, but like, I don't know, um, that's like, it is a great book and, you know, anybody who's sort of on the fence, uh, read it for yourself and, and make some notes about whether or not it's racist. And also want to throw out there that, you know, sometimes it's, it's not as clear cut as is this racist or is this not racist, but, um, if there are things that we're finding in the text that is bringing up questions and making us feel uncomfortable, like those are good questions for us to be having and helpful conversations. And I think sometimes the desire to explicitly quantify something as racist or not is not always super helpful. Uh, currently the, the conversations around it, I think can be very helpful. I mean, I think that's, that's, that's a thing. Like I'm a huge fan of like a, like Robert Howard or even HP Lovecraft. And there's a lot of stuff where, um, uh, God, so like I, I have young kids and like the thought occurs to me at what age are they mature enough to read these kind of things where you know that they're going to read it critically. They're not just going to like absorb it and say like, Oh, yeah, this is, this is great. This is how like the world is. This is how things should be and say like, Okay, you know, there's, there's good stuff in here, but there's some bad ideas and sort of being exposed to bad ideas is also valuable. Yeah. But not trying to, you know, put Miller on a level of Lovecraft. I'm just talking about like, yeah. Um, just, uh, again, no answer to this, but he does like knowledge and explicitly talk about the, the idea of racism when he talked about the, you know, the various, in the third book, when all the various, you know, the brown, the yellow, the white or, okay, voyaging out in space. But then the, the avids know that they can't maintain racial purity because there won't be enough of them out there in order to survive. They're going to have to intermix. Um, and, which is not to say that he's got, there's any more about his attitude towards that. But, um, some of the attitudes towards women are still very mid 20th century. It's like, oh, the women are, are, especially the last book. And I think the last book is meant to reflect the mid 20th century, right? Because we always know that science fiction is about the present and fantasy about the past, right? Like it's sort of the maximum that people have to say about these things. Um, and maybe the mad bear and all are my archetypes of whatever people who'd arise instead of playing hostile, playing environment, regardless of ethnicity. I don't know. It does lead to the second novel, which does explicitly talk about this is in same time frame. I think maybe 80 years after the second novella. And I know it's considered a lesser work. Uh, it's a little bit in the wild horse woman. But I would, I'm interested to read it at some point after a sufficient pause from this book. So that doesn't completely color or suffering comparison. Yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And, um, I guess my final thoughts, rather than talking about canicle for Libba with says my final thoughts. I just, I guess, I just kind of want to talk about my, my journey on this show a bit. Um, yeah, it's been six or seven years that Hoy and I have been doing this. And I've read a lot of really amazing stuff and a lot of absolute fucking garbage. Uh, and also I'm, I'm kind of a slow reader. So I don't get a chance to read a whole lot other than what we're reading for the book club. Um, so I am both incredibly grateful for all the things that I have read and really looking forward to being able to read things that aren't fantasy and science fiction for a little while. I'm really desiring some nonfiction or some literary fiction or some just something else for a bit. Um, definitely I'm going to take a bit of a break from my sci-fi fantasy reading. But when I do pick back up, I already know exactly some of the books that I do really want to read. Um, I've still, I've still, I've never read dude for Christ's. Um, I've, still never, I, I want to finish the book of the new sun, um, books I want to read Hyperion. There's a bunch of stuff I'd really like to check out at some point that I know I will get to. Um, but yeah, I've been so grateful for this project, um, from the perspective of it introducing me to all this, uh, really cool literature. But also I love the community that this, um, podcast has, um, created. I've gotten so much out of getting to know you guys, um, the people who are specifically in this call, but also other folks who aren't specifically here, who've been in calls with us in the past, and on previous episodes on our special guests as well. Um, it's been really humbling and really honored and it's been a great honor to like get to work with everybody and I've, I've loved this project and I've loved this process. Um, so it was really hard for me to, um, to decide to give up on this project, which is also why I really dragged my feet, even though I was really feeling that burnout a year ago. Um, it was very hard for me to give up on this. Um, I still feel like it's the right choice for me. Um, but it's also, um, like I guess we're talking about the religion conversation. Things can be more than one thing at the same time. I can be burnt out from this, uh, tired of reading sci-fi and fantasy for the moment and be really sad that this show's coming to an end and that, um, I'm not gonna be seeing all y'all on a regular basis like I used to before. Um, so I don't know, I guess those are my final thoughts. Yeah, well, Jeff, it's been a, uh, hell of a journey and, uh, I mean, we're not gonna fall out of touch, you know, we're not just being a regular touch. Um, but whatever form just takes, if it continues, and I hope it does, um, you know, it's always open to anybody who's participated, not just you, anybody's participated the past to come in and, you know, participate, um, even if it's not directly a presume, it's just dropping a note on email, whatever, viable social media platform exists, you know, pretty much a lot of a year from now. [laughs] That I hope, and for people who come on the show later on, that I hope that it is a valuable resource for all of you who may be listening to or not cut up or just diving in at, you know, at random. Because I don't think the show needs to exist in a linear, in the way that the label would see in memorabilia. [laughs] I just, in fragments and in this outside of linear time, I don't think this podcast needs to disappear in a linear time for people to appreciate. So that's, uh, that's my hope, that it can be. Yeah, after the apocalypse, they're going to build a whole religion based on what you've done here. That's right. We're going to find a way to encode this on some kind of, uh, easily retrievable media, maybe wax cylinders. [laughs] Goatism. And then people will be able to, you know, hear our thoughts and argue about whether the D12 is the perfect dire dot. [laughs] It's not as the D7. Ah, there you go. [laughs] All right, so with that, we can go ahead and wrap up this episode. So fantastic seeing you all, and I look forward to the ways in which our paths may cross in the future. Yep. Keep an eye out. I'm not sure what form our little symposium, so what to do next. Maybe we'll just do a couple episodes to keep them momentum going and then figure out as we go along, but that's something that we'll do in the future to go ahead. Thanks. both. Thank you. I would you're up to Jeff. I followed you from Spellburn to here. So I'll track you down on whatever. All right, sounds good Jeff. Jeff left Spellburn and they just like it's not worth carrying on for like a year after. Right. Yeah. All right, everybody. All right. Yeah, if we'll get to play a game at a constant time. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. There you go. I'm okay. Everybody here. So good one. The live bravy is closed.