hodgepodge of things

Will we survive a massive snow storm? Do 1960’s encyclopedias make amazing mic stands? Who had lunch on Hemmingway’s boat? Tune it to find out!

  • Collin’s Haiku

    • Cold train in the night,

    • Ghostly whispers, darkened

    • Bells ring—chilling fright.

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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

PROVIDED BY OTTER.AI

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

podcast setup, makeshift recording, child encyclopedias, winter storm, generator usage, extension cord, Apollo 13 analogy, encyclopedia nostalgia, Hemingway's life, self-insert characters, lost generation, reading schedule, short stories, winter reading, Muppets Christmas Carol

SPEAKERS

Collin

Collin  00:04

Music. Welcome to Oh brother, a podcast where we try to figure it all out with your hosts, Brandon and Collin on this week's show, a hot podge of things My spirit animal. Well, it'll only get more tempted because you're in a basement. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, another live in person episode of What's up. How are you today? Indeed, it is tempted. Coffee in hand, and we have, we've upgraded our recording all today. Have, this was an we have a peek behind the curtain. Here the card table from the 70s, 70s. Now listeners, here's something you may not know. This is the most makeshift podcast of all time. Now, there, yeah, here is. Here's the setup, right? Card table from the 70s, possibly 80s. Random, really old dining room chairs from my grandma. And the problem is the mobile studio recording, uh, stands are five inches tall, very diminutive. They're very mobile, so mobile, they might even have these hypothesized, these are pocket stamps. They're just ridiculous. Now, the problem you might see here is that we are much taller than this. So we have grabbed some children's encyclopedias, child craft, that's right, encyclopedias, that's right, that's right. This is the return of encyclopedia corner with the old brother pocket they have. They supported our upbringing and curiosity now to support Mike, supporting microphones, right? So, so, yes, apparently, right? I did not know. I just sort of took it. This is one of those things that you have around the house again, listeners, this is our father's basement, right? So that's why the hodgepodge of things here, um, but, like, this is a book set right, uh, apparently for a long time, right? These must have been moms, I would say it has a child, yeah? Because the date on these definitely say 1964 64 Yeah. So this, I don't know how popular these were, right? I don't know, uh, Reddit seems to just be saying, like, oh yeah. That is a thing. Oh my gosh. So yeah, these are apparently, right, the uh oh, they originally created 1934 by the publishers of World Book, right? Oh, are these a slightly more like children version, I guess. Well, they're at least published by the same company, right? The how and why library, right? It's just sort of inside of picking for children with just to learn about all kinds of different stuff, right? Short stories, poems, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, trapping animals at sea, yeah, and a lot of other weird stuff, chopsticks, animal usage, yeah, right. Oh, I mean, I'm in the I'm in the the how and why. That's what they're all called. Oh, this one is it? Sorry, this was in what people do. There we go. Right the top one here, holidays and customs. That's right. Ooh, my, my other. Okay, again. This could be a whole episode where we just read out of 1964 child craft books. It's not, we'll try not to. But I do have to say, in these the what people do, in the what people do, what, oh boy, here we go on page 104, it's just labeled, seeing around corners, seeing around course that is a man with a periscope. I just that is something people do. I suppose I was expecting more like jobs. I mean, that's only page 104 so you might have to spot spike craft. I was imagining it was the 60s. It was the sixth. Like SPY versus five. Is all this checking forgeries on checks? Oh, catch me, if you can stuff right? Seaport people do tie ropes at seaports. That is true. Yes, this is see meter. Detectives. We don't have that's on a job that I knew about. Your dad used a meter today to detect so make sure we weren't going to electrocute ourselves. Oh, yeah, worse than we would, yeah. All right, ladies and gentlemen. All right, we'll come back to tile craft at a later date. Right now, I need to tell you about the most Midwest thing I've experienced in wild today, right? Oh, so I get here. There I come to the house. Outside of my father's house, there are two men wearing vests, only looking there were other there were okay, not only but like no jacket, just a vest, wearing a vest, investigating a circuit breaker and talking about generators. I can't, I can't, I mean, and here's and, and here's the context. Mosive winter storm coming in feet of snow. Possible like all, all week we've I've seen from my forecast, it's been like, do you want 21 inches of snow? Maybe 18? How about 20? Maybe 19. How about 21 now we're in like, the 15 inches of snow plus ice. It's a very reasonable thing to do. Yes. So, so they were talking about generator usage, right? How to Start said generator. Use generator, blah, blah, and my father does possess the forbidden extension cord, right? Internet, it's real. I have seen it. It has bitten me, right? Long time ago. I My father does have the forbidden extension cord, the double mail pronged. Yes, it, yes, it's a doozy. It's to plug your generator into the main box of your house, right? And this is, this is a different a lot of people think you just have to plug directly, like, oh, I want to run my computer. I want to run a fan. I plug it into the generator. No, no, here's the what you actually do is you shut off the main coming into your home so that a you don't blow anything up whenever this is going on, and you don't send electricity back out into the system for line crews that are taking care of it, protect the power line workers, people don't fry the power line, but then you plug your generator directly into an outlet that actually you have to do some little checking on where it's supposed to be, not just any, not just any outlet. It has to be aligned with what you're actually wanting to run and every other one so you don't overload this like it's not as simple. It's really some Apollo 13 checklist stuff right here, right remember, in Apollo 13, when they're trying to power up the limb, and they only have a certain amount of amps to work with to run the operating system. And if they power things up in a certain way, it will work. But if you power it up in a non certain way, it like shuts everything down. That is what's happening here. Yeah, yeah, well, and it really helps you set, like, define priorities for what do I need? Of like, Okay, I have no power, and it's a massive winter storm. Heaters, heaters find heat and a light, a light is what you that's what you get, and that's all, and that's fine, but you do have to, you know, define that yes and run that so yeah, I just find just like, okay, yeah. But my father was testing the forbidden extension cord with an amp meter to make sure that current was running through the cord right checking amperage and voltage of electricity being sent from the generator. I was standing by with the phone ready to call 911, case anything happens. And we should say, the reason it is forbidden is because you're plugging the mail into the converter on the generator. Yeah, and then there's a hot end. It is immediately hot with electricity. Yes, you know how I know this. Listeners, once upon a time, I got got by this extension cord. I just, like, barely picked up the wrong in, and I guess my finger, like, brushed the other mail in and it, man, it hit me during that. No, no, yeah. So it is. It is definitely a lot of order of operations, of when to plug in what and how to also shut down. Yeah, do that safe too. That's true. So we were, we were rehearsing and doing some dry runs with that. And I don't think, I think that's fine, I think that's that's normal. But people, I mean, that's true. I'm just saying this is an incredibly Midwest Yes. So for all of our international listeners that are wondering, right, all of our German friends that are like, do Americans really do? Yes, yes, yes, this really happened today. I witnessed this. At least we had the ant meter, right? We weren't just trying to guess, or, like, touch it real quick. That's true. There was no other weird implements involved. There were actual electronic equipment being used for functioning purposes. So that's a positive, right? That's a good but it was just very funny. I was like, wow, what is happening? Yeah. So there you go, meter, detective. It's what people do. It is what people and thank you, child. Craft for helping us see the people detect things with meters that's do to do. My goodness, just looking more at these, these things, you know, there's still some on the shelf back there, you can go grab the ones that are not supporting your microphone. Investigate, trying to investigate this. It's the it's the what people do make and do, how things work, how we get things, how things change. Oh, well, I have the, probably the most used one that I can remember, the poems and rhymes book. I also have stories and fables, world and space, life around us, and holidays and customs, right? There are four more over there, when I think an index book. So, yeah, there you go. Did you spend a lot of time in these? I remember the fables one a lot. Yeah, it's everyone. I can't I'm Hold on, grab it at the bottom there, that is used, yeah, the pole, that's the poems one, right? But that's the whatever. These were bombs. I thought they were here, but, yeah, I remember the poems and rhymes. One the most. I think, right? We have such some paper, air, smartphones, oh yeah, folio, you go, uh, yeah, like Mother Goose poem, poems for the outdoors, poems about plants, animals, rhymes of life and home, poems of play and make believe, right? Remember that I remember, like the Mother Goose when this illustration is very telling, right here, yeah, like right bye, bye, bunting. Ah, the classic rock a bye, baby. This is the way the ladies ride. I don't remember that one, super well known. Obviously, he's porridge, hot, he's he's porridge, cold peace porridge in the pot, nine days old. Nine. Nine days yeah. Oh yeah. Like the Mary, Mary, quite contrary, Jack and Jill. These pictures are everything right now. Also, like, I should take some pictures of some of these. But this is our, oh, the first story we got really we'll find a good one after but, yeah, these are, this is what I remember the most of. Did you read these a lot? Or they just like a thing that existed on the shelf? They were one of the things that just existed on the shelf. And I would, I didn't read them a lot. I would, I think I'd pull them down every now and then, but for no particular purpose and for no ends really, just to see as a as a novelty. But, yeah, I as somebody who is now very into encyclopedias later in life, it's true. It's like being enthusiast, man, it is. That's why I like when I go to work at our Public Library. The wall behind me has their encyclopedias. That's their 2010 Encyclopedia Britannica, and has their 2018 Yeah, World Book. That's my that's the three you go work, and you can turn around and reference something quickly. I've actually pulled out the World Book, yeah, well, I pulled out Encyclopedia Britannica. I was working on, actually a presentation, and trying to work, do a work on a presentation, and I was on productivity, and so what I did was, as I just went to the index, flipped to productivity, and then just started going to everywhere. What that word was, Encyclopedia said, I look the internet's great, but this is a fantastic way to find information, because you have to, you just pass in, you pass things along your way, and you you're like, Well, what was that where you can go back two pages? Anyway, it was wonderful, and I had had a good time, so I've actually been using them more frequently than I have in the past, and it's been great. I pulled out, oh, the stories in fables, okay? Because this is the other one I remember reading a lot. Well, this is the doctor do littles. Push Me Pull You. Thing about the animal that has heads at both ends. What have you ever read that? No, that's the show, not right there that? Oh my gosh, you're right. That's why I am taking that picture. Right now, I don't understand. What is this about. It's a push me pull you. It goes in both directions. Aha, right? Oh, that's the name of the animal, yeah. Oh, Lord, save us. Cried the duck. How does it make up its mind? I. Yeah, that really is the crux of the whole story, right there. That's everything you need to know, a little bit of existential crisis. Yeah, two heads. It's like, imagine a horse or, this is like an antelope thing. It's like an ibex or a Kudu. Oh, but it's like,

15:18

it's like, it's just more obscure.

Collin  15:22

Yeah, that's right, you pull out. It's just like the front hat, the two front halves stuck together, right? So it's like the worst Centaur ever. I also remember this story, this ice story, I don't remember why, but this picture looks familiar. This is a portents, hopefully not portents for Collins feature, oh, the little red inn, of course. Yes. So yeah, there. This is the other. This is the one that I remember the most. I don't remember looking at a lot of the other ones, the shoemaker and the elves, right? All this stuff. But these are the ones that I remember the most Rapunzel. I think I read a lot of these. Oh, the Bremen Town Musicians classic. I like this one too. This is a good one. Yes. Sorry, German friends, if I mispronounce that name as we know, my German pronunciation, not great, right? So, yeah, here you go. Okay, blam, I'll be our maybe that'll be a follow up episode of just reading out of old encyclopedias. That's true, or specifically these encyclopedias, yes, that maybe we have some we have some home. We have a world we haven't been set from the 70s. There were students when she was little, yeah, yeah. Oh, cool, yeah. Very clear in there, one of our Bucha, nice. This is what I'm talking about. It's needed. Yeah? I just it's hard for me to imagine a time where somebody would show up at your house and they'd be like, sir or madam, I would like to sell you this thing, and then you gave them money, and then they actually sent you a thing, right? That's, yeah, that is weird. The internet has ruined me trying this was the thing that people did. They just came like, yes, would you like this vacuum just show up at your house one day with a vacuum cleaner? It is okay, yes, I will buy this vacuum cleaner. Like, what the lens? How? You know. And it is interesting that it How now, door to door salesmen have such a bad reputation. But for a while, like it was a very it was, I feel like, more respected or reputable, more well received, because it was the only way you could acquire certain sale of items. And I don't, did it always have such a weird like, I don't know. I don't know if, like, I don't really know when this changed, right? I don't know when was the pivot point of, like, oh yeah, people coming to my house to sell me things as normal versus, why are you coming to my house? Like, I don't know when that happened, right? I probably, I don't know. I don't know. When did that? When did Arthur Miller write Death of a Salesman? When did that happen? When did when it's door to door, salesman actually go away and look it up in the encyclopedia set, but I'm using it as true. Probably not in the child book, probably not in the child Arthur Miller's in there, yeah, only 76% like the book 1949, I think it was probably after that. Yeah, I think that only 76 Well, that's pretty heavy book. It's a pretty Yeah, gets a 3.6 out of five to play, yeah, only have 3.6 out of five on Goodreads. I don't know. People, guys, what are you hitting on? Arthur Miller, what the heck yeah, what mental illness is in death of a sale, what did they Well, you know, there's a lot going on in them, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, that. You know what that answer is, actually just blank on Google. I just realized, what about what? People only gave the crucible 3.6 they didn't get the crucible. Oh, they did it wrong. That's what you're saying. Yeah, they didn't get the metaphor. There's a bit. The Crucible is an extended metaphor for McCarthyism. There you go. Just in case you didn't know that was no spoilers for the crucible. How about that? Yeah, it's a commentary on McCarthyism, but it's set during the Salem witch trials. It's a book about a literal witch hunt at a time when the government was going on witch hunts. Say, what subtlety, right? They go, what? That's crazy. He that's, I feel like, that's sad. I like art similar, yeah, okay, it's not happy, not like, ooh, it's, let me read a fun, uplifting story. Dive into this crucible. Sun is out. Let I'm feeling good today. Let me go lift my spirits. Yeah, further with the crucible. By Yeah, reading Death of a Salesman. Yeah, no, nope. It's definitely an event to to prepare for. You know, just stumble into that short though, the play is helpful. Sure you can read it in and honestly, that's probably why people don't rate it as highly, because it is a play. And those are those read kind of there. Those are different. They're a challenge. Reading plays is good. I think it's, I don't do it enough. Well, that's I'm saying. I think it is. It is a type of reading that not very many people do. That's fair. I would say that's fair. I mean, how many people read Shakespeare and understand the play format? In most cases, I don't know. I don't know. I don't find it this is a hard question for me because, like, I don't find it particularly difficult to understand that. So, like, people read, people don't understand Shakespeare actually. No, hold on, Shakespeare gets a bad rap because people think I read this online one time, and it resonated with me greatly, right? It's people think that Shakespeare is, like, pretentious, but it's fans of Shakespeare, right? It's like college English professors that are pretentious, not actually Shakespeare, because here's the plays that look really like rowdy and like, really rowdy and like, there's lots of, like, horribly dirty jokes in there people, right? They were, yeah, mass audiences and presented it in that way. Instead of a cloister behind things, it was a plays for and of the people, yeah, and so there are some things that are lost in translation. And like, like, the words aren't pronounced the same way, so some of the rhyme is gone. You have to, like, kind of go around, but like, it's funny. Like, Romeo and Juliet is hilarious. Yeah, right. Like, just read any line of marcucio you're in there. So this is the best I think what's hard about reading a play is that you don't get the voice over guidance of what they have, the chorus, sometimes, but in a lot of plays, you don't get the and deepen their thoughts. They were thinking like you don't get that kind of of guide, of guiding principle of behind the scenes. Fact, a lot of it is just lines or line reading. You do need to infer, yes, right? That's, I think that's what makes it challenging to read a play and go, Oh, I understand. And that's why, you know, actors in theater have to understand the motivations of the people that they're playing. If you're just reading this for kicks and grins on a Sunday, it's true. It does take a little bit more of getting into it. That's true. But some of them, I mean, it depends on what you read, right? Like reading a really, really long play, like, like, Macbeth, right, heavy, right. Sorry, the Scottish Play. Thank you. Yeah, sorry, thank you. That's the one right. Um, I get that in Hamlet confused. I can't remember which one is the one you're not allowed to say anyway, if you read, if, like, if you read Hamlet, right, it's quite it's a lot longer, and there's a lot more plot going on there, yes, right? If you read The Glass Menagerie, it's very succinct, right? It's more of like a smaller, shorter play situation, right? If you're gonna go watch a Glass Menagerie take like, an hour and a half, not a big deal, but like, it's a very good it's my other one of my other favorite plays, right? You should read that one like, it's a good one, and it's very like, distilled down. And so I think, I think, I think they do have a bad reputation of being like, unapproachable, right? Because, let's be fair, people of the theater sometimes, again, the pretentiousness comes from like them. Like, if you go to just like a theater, just like, what's a thing, there will be, like normal people there and then there will, you can visibly see the theater people usually wearing ascots. Yes, that is true, uh, ascots, or, like, big, like a lady, like a big coat, right? Like a, like a, you know, like they look like a crazy person, like a 30s, like a huge like Ferb, it's not real for anymore, but, like, for that kind of jacket, right? Like they're there on, like a Thursday evening and, like a ball gown. You're like, what, bro, what are you doing? It is an event, yeah. But this is just like the local production of pirates, of pins, ants, right? Calm down like it's not entertained. So I think that, yeah, they are. I can't see how it is, like do, and they're hard to read because it's people don't know how to read the like, it's all dialog too. Yes, right? It's a lot of dialog. Again, there's no and they walked down the aisle and blah, blah, blah, blah, I don't know they invented it. I realized that that phrase they popularized can be used and that like, well, they were, at least the ones to use it the most. They used it a lot. Modern parlance calls it the Greek chorus. So, like, it's a thing, it's a thing, it's a big thing. So, like, I, you know, I'm hedging my bet on it's okay, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Yeah, so speaking of exactly things that are, uh, hard to parse, we have decided right that we are going to do a second reading of the season. Here we do winter reading list, the Oh brother, winter reader now we have decided to help you overcome that pesky seasonal depression and terrible, bleak winter atmosphere, yeah, by reading Ernest Hemingway, really gonna lean into the seasonal Again, well known mood picker upper, yeah, helps with that and full of happiness. This guy also very known for his joy. Oh, wait, but we have a twist on our book selection as we were aided by drew something as far as every year things come into the public domain, and this is always a lot of fun, and so one of Hemingway's books and stories is entering, and it is the ineffable. Happy again, wonderful joy. Happy boyful. Here, A Farewell to Arms. Arms. A Farewell to Arms, right? So we're gonna do that now. If you would like some backstory on some Hemingway, well, here's something that's interesting, right? Important Missouri connection, as you might know. You know Hemingway's first job reporter for The Kansas City Star. Ah Oh, there we go, right? So, there we go. That's an important Missouri connection for us. Hemingway did work at the star for 10 months or so before he became a ambulance driver in World War Is that what? Yeah? Is that what he did? Yeah. Oh, so also we also connection personally, to the show. Oh, okay, in a roundabout way, Johnny Morris bought one of the boats of Hemingway. Did? He did, of course, he did. Why am I surprised? And it now sits in his wonders of wildlife Museum in the entrance. That's, is it? That's Hemingway's boat, if you're interested. Oh yeah. And I had lunch on that boat. Whenever it was back in storage, Collin used to eat lunch on that Hemingway boat. Look at that back in their their distributor, their main distribution center, is also what they call their fish farm, which is where all the fish that are in any store in the United States, in Bass Pro, come to be quarantined, treated and take care of, before they're shipped out on live wells. Well, through one of the back doors, you get into their big storage area where they store all of these stuffs and mountains. And there was this boat, and we would just climb up in the back there and eat our sandwiches on Hemingway's boat. Is this from when he lived in Cuba? Yes, there we go. So after the Spanish Civil War, he moved to Cuba, he didn't know that. Yeah. So, so now here's the anyway, yeah, so Hemingway's work interestingly, right? It's interesting that you bring up the fact that some people don't like to read plays, because there's just a lot of dialog, and there's no chorus to tell you the backstory Hemingway, famous for being an extremely heavy user of dialog, yes, right? And people love Hemingway. Maybe it's just the way it's presented in novel form, right? But people love some of Hemingway's work, very divisive, right? He struggled with a lot of things during his life, which we'll get into later, but, like a lot of his book, like, he had books that were like, lauded, like, universally, and he had other books that were, like, completely panned, yeah, like, what is that? Yes, not. Received it all, yeah, and so I think just, you know, he the weird part is, right? So, so, in doing research for this, I have been reading through and the Sun Also Rises right a little bit, right. Now, here's where Hemingway's writing becomes interesting, right? A lot of Hemingway stuff is like, self insert character, right? So after recuperating right at home from some of his military service stuff, he went home he became a war correspondent for The Toronto Star, and he lived in Paris, and he was surrounded by a lot of these expat authors, right? F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Ford, Maddox. Ford, all these people, all these people are in Paris at the time, and he's a newspaper writer, and he is working on writing non fiction pieces. And he's around all these like writers and interesting people, and he's meeting all kinds of people. This is the plot of The Sun Also Rises. The main character here is in Paris, post war. He's got a lot of author friends. Is, you know, look at that. He's going around. He's going on these trips to Spain with them, right? This is just himingly writing about himself, right? This is well, and I know his, his writing in general, does get, does get panned, and it is hard for people. A lot of people actually don't like it because it is very understated, it is very brief, kind of to the point it doesn't but, yeah, this the people that like him say, Well, this is a thing from newspaper writing. Exactly yes, yes. It was first and foremost, a newspaper writer, newspaper, and he was on the beat, you know, doing, you know, war correspondence and things, interviews, stories like, you don't have exactly the fast hitting, but not like, it's not just like punching, always super engaging, but no, it's just terse. It's less boom, boom, boom, boom, to the point like, it's very economical, is how I was, yeah, is how I would describe the writing, which, again, is purely a some people really get it, and some people but it is a style. It is a style, yeah, right. It's a very copied style after he became very successful. Like, it's a very, he's very influential on the rest of American literature for the 20th century, right? Because of this, and I think it's very interesting, right? It's, it is extremely dialog heavy, right? It's just conversations the whole time. And now this is interesting because, right, he has this theory of writing. He, he kind of talks about later in interviews and stuff about his he's kind of this Iceberg Theory of writing where he is telling you the surface level stuff, right? And but all of these characters, you have to infer the backstory, right? There are a lot of layers here. Now, I think part of this comes from the fact that he is writing based on his personal experience. Again, The Sun Also Rises. This dude is Hemingway, right? Sure, he's David, Jake, whatever. This is ervis Hemingway. Okay? And the fact that he is going through and he's just like, oh yeah, here's this dude. And they talk like they've known each other for a long time, you can kind of think about like this guy is based on somebody that he knows, right? Yeah, these are things that he has seen. These are things so he doesn't have to, like, tell you all about all the backstory, right? You just need to know about this dude for right now, because he's not going to show up again ever in the book, but you infer this deeper history between these two people, right? And I think this is, uh, for sort of opposite reasons, something that he has in common with Tolkien, right? Because, like in in his, in Hemingway's mind, like Hemingway knows all the backstory, yeah, and he's only telling you part of it. Whenever you read like Culkin, he's doing the same thing, right? There are he knows all the backstory and all the history and all the stuff, but he's just telling you the part that you need right now, right? Because you're just being exposed if that's the part of the story where it's going to surface, right? And you move on from that, yeah. And so, in a weird way, for very different reasons, they at least have that little bit in common, where they're just telling you the story, right, and the reader does have to do a lot of inferring and thinking about things right, and going from there. And so that is a pretty, pretty interesting, right? Just you know, to prove my point that the all of his most popular books seem to be self. Characters right? For a long time, he lived in Spain. He was around and reporting on the Spanish Civil War and doing all this stuff in another one of his famous works, For Whom the Bell Tolls, this is a novel set during the Spanish Civil War, about an American volunteer in Oh, you see where he's going. Like using, we found it after, after the Spanish Civil War. As before mentioned earlier, Hemingway lives in Cuba with the boat that Colin knows. Well, apparently he lived in Cuba for a long time, right where he wrote the old man in the sea story about a Cuban fisherman fishing for giant Marlin off the coast of Cuba, just Oh, yeah, which is what he did, which was actually This boat was his marlin fishing boat to go. We need to be very clear about he also wrote To Have and Have Not down there, which is like, also about rogues, and there's fishing boats in that boat too, yeah. So, and this is the part of his life that gets highly romanticized, right when he in, like, this part, this is what this is, was, this is in the 50s, 50s, Yeah, boy, by time he's in Cuba. It's in Cuba these right after the Spanish Civil War, after the supremacy of war, was after World War Two, because Key West was before, right? He was in key that was during the war, right? He was kind of living there around that. That's when it was, like 30 grenades at the U boats, right? That's, yes, yeah. That's what he was. He was doing that, yes, but he Yeah, he's living down there, and then he laid it right. So this, that's when it, it really gets, um, romanticized. So now he's down there, and then it's not so much when he's living in, like Massachusetts and in Kansas City or New York, for no one cares about that part. Nobody cares. It's whenever he's down there, yeah, launching hand grenades and fishing for Marlin. They're like, You know what? Yeah, maybe that's my Yeah. That's what he did there. Yeah, he it's when he was going to Africa for the hunting trips, like you do in the 50s, right? That's what he's doing now, to tie all this back to Farewell to Arms, right? I would like you to very young Hemingway. Right after leaving the Kansas City Star, he goes to enlist in the military. Now, he has an eye condition where he can't really, like the Army's not gonna take him, so he enlists with the he goes with the Red Cross to be an ambulance driver. Right? However, when he's 19 on the Austro Italian Front, he gets injured right in an attack, and he has to convalesce in a hospital where he falls in love with a nurse. One of the many random love flings that he has throughout his life. Spoilers, but this is the plot to a farewell talk. Yeah, right. So, like again, we have a very self insert character to Hemingway. And it, it, it feels like to me that these are his four most popular novels. All four of these have self insert aspects to them. A lot of the other ones are less so. So I feel like maybe one of the reasons that these are so widely accepted as great is because there's a lot more of him in the book, right? And the personal experience that he has in these kind of situations like it just shines through, right? Some of his other stuff are like, it's less exciting, like, he's got personal experience hunting in Africa. There's a book about Africa, but it's kind of like everyone's like, that, whatever. So I feel like that his ability to self insert into these books is what kind of brings them up. Right? There's such an element of realism that people can connect to because this happened to Hemingway in some form or another, right? He has personal experience with this, so his writing style of, like, I was gonna tell you the story, but here's like, inferring all the background information. It's allowed to happen more because it's just him, right? He's just writing about him, like, sometimes it's very thinly veiled as in A Farewell to Arms, right? This is very right. And in the Sun Also Rises. The guy reporting in Paris has war injuries that he's like, talks about sometimes. Wow, yeah. Who could have seen that coming? Yeah, right. This is earnest. Anyway, it. Really is a plug and play, which is almost unlike, in case we take the Tolkien thing here, like Tolkien is, like, it means, what are you talking about? This is no allegory. This, this place exists, and there's, there's no connection to the actual, you know, yeah, I'm sorry. But like, yeah, these are, yeah, I think, I just think that's what makes him so successful in this part, is is his four most successful novels have big elements of him in there, and you see that throughout his life, as he falls in love again, right? His writing picks back up again and again. And he has this where it's like he has an event, something happens, and he's able to take that and turn it into something. It's like a inspiration, right? And it's so interesting, because later in life, obviously, you know, he's suffered from mental illness, oh, yeah, big time, deeply, deeply. And later in life, you see him continuing to struggle with that, to pull these pieces together, and he wasn't able to write, and how that just completely broke down right later in life, but, but how in his early career, it just came so quickly to him as he experienced these things, well, as he got older, to a lot of the weight on him more he deteriorated when his eyesight got worse, I Think the drinking probably didn't help. Probably didn't help. Think that was probably a problem too. But like, he had a family history of this, yeah, because his dad died in the same way that he did, yeah, right, which trigger warning, it wasn't good. Trigger Yeah, literally. And so I think that played a party too, right? He was treated. He went to several hospitals in his later life to seek treatment for depression and anxiety and these type of things. But, you know, in the 50s, what, what are you gonna do, right? Like there, I think he got electro shock treatment and some other stuff, so like that. Luckily, we don't do that anymore. That's good. We don't need that realm, right? So, yeah, I think, unfortunately, he's kind of the, you know, that's, I think that's the myth of Hemingway is so big because of that, right? He's a very bigger than life person, sort of in the late 40s, early 50s, right? He's like, the machoness personified, right? That's kind of like you were saying, that's the part that gets, like, really, you like, really blown up and, like, romanticized, anything like that. Is that, like, very stereotypical macho manliness of that time period? It was, like, personified in Hemingway, and I don't know if he'd always relished that being put on him. I think it's one of those things, like sometimes he did other times he was like, bro, stop it. Like, yeah. Well, and you see people who, it's just the modern writers. They have their their go to, like, who am I going to try and write? Like, be like, and the people who are like, Oh, I'm going to be like, Hemingway. So I'm going to, you know, go to Florida. I'm going to use a typewriter. I'm gonna, you know, have a bunch of cats, and I'm gonna write like him, or whatever it's like, but you see people who do that, yeah, I know, but they're kind of missing the point, right? Like, yeah, you need to have, like, you know, his writing is like, you know, it's even, even some of the stuff in Sun Also Rises, right? Like, it's, like, it's, it's, you can tell that some it's, there's anguish there, yeah, right, some of the conversations are like, they're tough, you know, they're difficult, and they're, you know, it's the struggling person, and, you know, that's that is the romanticized version of a author, right? Like the tormented author, too. And I think him and gets tossed her there sometimes, yeah, but he is firmly in this, like he didn't like this phrase, uh, notoriously, even though he'd like help popularize it, like to the thing. But he is definitely firmly ensconced in the lost generation, right? That is him. Yeah, right. He didn't like that term. He rebuffed it. But also all of his writing says, Yes, I am right. So he publicly rebuffed it, quoted credited to his friend, Gertrude Stein, right? Like, but all these authors, you know, a lot of them were in Paris, like I mentioned earlier, or, you know, even Tolkien, he was in that he wasn't in Paris. He was sitting at home in England, but he was still give that time, you know, kind of ensconced in that thing. So he's definitely there where as is sort of the antithesis to Tolkien. In another way, is, whereas Tolkien's outlook is pretty positive, a lot of the times, Hemingway's is definitely negative to melancholy a lot, right? Sometimes there's a. A positive ish, right? Like, acceptance factor, but it's never like joy, you know what? I mean? Like, it's not so it's kind of the opposite of that. Like, you could definitely tell these are two people that dealt with these things in a very different way, right? Of like Tolkien is always very positive. He's like everything kind of has this positive slant. There's a lot of redemption in his writing. It's harder to find in Hemingway, right? It's much more difficult. So he's much more pessimistic. So that will be, well, fun, winter reading, breakout, your fighting underneath these. But because he wrote in such a it also some of the terseness comes across of like, because he wrote such a lean, hard, economical way, it makes that distinction all the more prevalent, right? More like, Oh, definitely, boom, it's here on the page. It's not hidden behind flower. There's not like, I've got to read through or parse through four pages to get to what's going on. It's like, no, it's literally right here. Like, there's two sentences, right? You know, true. So have you read a lot of Hemingway before, or how familiar you are? Anyway, I have, I have not read a lot of Hemingway. Actually, I, I was actually pulling up his, his book list, his list here, and I completely lost it. Which one? No, I think I had. I had read the old man in the sea, so I only read the later one and a little bit of the the was across the rivers. Okay, across what is it? Across the river and into the trees? Yes. So I've only read his two stuff, later stuff, and I've read none of his other like, more short stories, like really early, early stuff. So some of his short stories, okay, like, I can't remember which one I've definitely read hills with, like, white elephants. Oh, boy, that's a heavy one. You want to talk about inferring, if you want to know what the word inference means, read that one. Holy, can only it's really good. But like, yeah. So I've read a few short stories here and there, and I think I've read, I get the Sun Also Rises. I read that. And I think I've, I know about if I wasn't arms kind of but I don't know if I've ever read, yeah, right, yeah. If I have, it was like, not, maybe just, like a cursory reading, like just a little bit of stuff, yeah, so I think it's interesting. So we chose Fauci arms a so that, because it was came across a list of things. But also, I'm interested to see the very early writings, as early, because it's 1929 right? Is when it came out? Was that when it was published, or 19 just closed the list? But, okay, yeah, I think 1929 so very early on, yeah, his next big I just pulled my list up here like he was very he did torrents of spring in 1926 The Sun Also Rises. 1926 also. And then Farewell to Arms, 1929 his next one was as To Have and Have Not 1937 so it takes a big break. They wrote a couple things. The green hills of Africa was 1935 right? But those are, like, nobody read death in the afternoon, well. And these, I think there is more full novel that's true, things too. That's true. Those are shorter things, I think, yes, yeah. So yeah, in our time was first, because it was part of the poems and stories thing, and they got a standalone release. But, yeah, Sun Also Rises, 1926 Farewell to Arms, 1929 even though, in his life, those things happened the other way around. I think he wrote Sun Also Rises, because that was the most recent thing that happened to him, right? And then I think he went back to his time in Italy, pulling his experiences here, of like, what was the most pressing on him? What could he What was he most connected to, exactly? And then digging back down so, and then I'm looking here, I think I've also, I don't think I've, have not read For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I have, I guess I'm familiar ish with that. So, yeah, I'm really mostly disconnected from Hemingway, except for the later work, old man and see. But so you have you you've read a little bit again, The Sun Also Rises. And then I have read some short stories. And if I've read a Fauci arms, it's been like pieces of it I don't remember. And if I did, it would have been ages ago, so I don't really remember a lot, so sure, yeah, and the old man, this is one of those things that I always meant to get around to reading, and never did, right? You gotta be in a Hemingway mood, and it is a mood, right? It is a mood. It's kind of heavy, right? Which is why we're doing this in winter. So it may have to have another book to read on the side to rebound. I find that when we do these right, it's very interesting thing happens to me, like, because I'll, like, I get in a reading mood, and so I'll read my chapters here, and then I'm like, oh, I want to read more. Yeah. So I just read something else also, like I did rectivity, energy, yeah. I'm like, Well, I don't want to read ahead. I don't want to go, so I read this, and then I'll read, like, other books also, sure, like, jump starts my reading, which is hilarious, I think. But yeah, so there we go. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm interested to see, I think we should set a pretty aggressive reading schedule well, and some of the that's what I was gonna bring. That's why I brought my copy to look at. A lot of the chapters are quite short. Yes, there's a lot of chapters, but, like, the whole thing is not really that long or and you can find it into book. There's books, 12345, I'll look here, yeah, because I have a copy, I have the collected works here that I've had for a long time sitting on the shelf, and so now I get to read it. So that's good that. Yeah, no one's on that anyway. So yeah, we'll look at that after we get off. Yeah, but yeah, I think a lot of the chapters are quite short, and they are. You do read them quite fast, because a lot, there's a lot of dialog and less stuff, and so you can kind of like, blitz through, yeah. So, yeah, so yeah, we can do that. That's fine, yeah. So this will be fun. I'm excited we will move forward with that. Yeah, next time and do do that. All right, so let me see here. Hold on, I'm pull I had to pull something up. I was like, I just panicked. I have to find mine. Okay, that's right. I just panicked. Listeners, we're getting ready to end the show. And I was like, oh, whose week was it to write a poem? I don't remember. I have, I have mine in a note somewhere. Just give me a turn. That's what I do. Mine is in a Notes app. I have a folder for them, but then I can't remember. Sometimes I write them in, like, the middle of the week, and then, like, I don't remember that I've done it. So it's like, oh, wait, do I have one? I don't remember. The Panic of, did you write a poem? Did not yes, and then, and then, if you did, where is it? Yeah, that's actually what's more terrifying is that is also problematic, right? I need to find it. And I realize I have nothing in where I normally do, because usually pull everything up and I'm not on my computer, except I am kind of, but it's the mobile

52:40

one. Well, okay,

Collin  52:42

I have mine here. I found it note. We're ready. Okay, cold train in the night, ghostly whispers, darkened plight. Bells ring, chilling, right, oh, wow, there we go nuts in a bummer, but I did watch a terrifying Christmas movie that's true, affected me deeply. That's all right, it's okay, right? Spoilers. Listeners, the show may be a bummer for a while, so, but, but we'll see what happens. Counter counteract that we also did finally get we did watch our our annual watching a Muppets Christmas Carol, and I was reminded of the quote as to why Michael Caine and Tim Curry do so well in the Muppets movies. Have you heard this? Oh, yeah, I think so. Michael Caine believes the Muppets are real people, yes. Tim Curry believes he is a muppet. Yes. Yes. That will end on that note. All right, instead of scary With Well, love you, bye, bye.