Phi Fic: A Fiction Podcast

One of Nietzsche's favorite novels, Le Rouge et le Noir contains some of the most profound psychological analysis in all of fiction.  The novel tells the story about a young man from a modest background who seeks a glorious career, but ends up in enormous trouble as a result of his love affairs.  The novel is divided into halves, with the first half being about a job where he ended up having affair with his boss's wife, and the second half being about another job where he has a passionate romance with his boss's daughter (all hell breaks loose at the end).  The setting is France in 1830 right as the restoration monarchy is losing its grip on power to the rising bourgeoisie, and the writing seethes with pent-up energy.  Fabrice, Nina, Rob, and myself, Daniel, investigate what this novel has to say to us today with a focus on how Stendhal's ethical beliefs are similar to and yet quite different from Nietzsche's.  Though written before Nietzsche's works, in some ways the novel seems to present a sort of deconstruction of Nietzsche's binaries of weak vs. strong, master vs. slave, etc. – to the point where one wonders what Nietzsche thought of all of this (his own remarks on the novel are incredibly cryptic).  Though the title is usually translated as The Red and the Black, we read a new translation of the novel that renders the title more simply as Red and Black.  In this episode, we took the opportunity to have an interview with the translator, Raymond MacKenzie.  Having sampled just about every major translation of the novel written in the last hundred years or so, I believe that MacKenzie's translation does the best job at balancing fidelity to the original French with maintaining a strong sense of style in English. Below are the start times for the show's three segments.  While a synopsis is provided in the audio, the synopsis also appears in the text below in case that is more convenient.     _______ Start times of segments: 0:49 – Synopsis and historical background 8:48 – Interview with the translator Raymond MacKenzie 42:15 – Discussion among Fabrice, Nina, Rob, and myself (Daniel) ____________ Synopsis: The novel is divided into halves that are referred to as different “books.”  Book One opens in the fictional town of Verrières in eastern France.  This is the home of our protagonist, Julien Sorel, who's a sensitive intellectual young man in his late teens.  Julien's father looks down on him because he's not very good at physical work, and his brothers beat him up, so he is looking to get away somehow. Julien starts studying to join the clergy under the instruction of a local priest named Father Chelan.  Even though Julien is studying to become a priest, he's actually a hypocrite who's joining the clergy just to advance his place in the world.  In fact, Julien isn't really religious at all, and instead believes in the ideals of the French revolution and views Napoleon as his hero.  Julien finally manages to get away from his family when he gets hired by a local aristocrat named Monsieur de Rênal, who's the mayor of the town of Verrières.  The job is tutoring the mayor's children, and it requires Julien to live with the de Rênal family at their house.  Once Julien is living with the de Rênals, the mayor's wife, Madame de Rênal, immediately takes a liking to him.  Even though she's about 30 years old, she has never really experienced love and doesn't understand what it is.  Julien eventually begins to make advances on her, but initially it's not even because he really likes her; it's because he feels like it's somehow his quote “duty” as a lower class person to seduce an aristocratic lady like her.  After he sees how much she loves him, though, he eventually falls in love with her for real.  The de Rênal family end up taking a trip to their country home for the spring where Julien and Madame de Rênal spend the season together in idyllic surroundings.  Unfortunately, though, their happiness doesn't last.  The maid of the de Rênal family ends up falling in love with Julien as well, but Julien rejects her, and eventually the maid learns about the affair between Julien and Madame de Rênal.  This maid is a schemer and carries out a few plots to try to bring an end to the love affair between Julien and Madame de Rênal.  Eventually, the maid tattles on Julien to his mentor, Father Chelan, who commands him to end the affair, leave the family, and join a seminary in a nearby provincial capital.  Once Julien is at the seminary, it seems to him that nearly everyone there is very smallminded and conformist, except for the director of the seminary, who takes Julien under his wing and becomes a mentor to him.  This seminary director has an aristocratic friend, the Marquis de La Mole, who eventually makes a job offer to Julien to be his personal secretary in Paris.  Julien accepts the offer, but before going to Paris, he visits Madame de Rênal to have one night with her, which is how Book One ends.  Book Two begins with Julien moving in with the family of the Marquis De La Mole in Paris, which includes a daughter named Mathilde.  As the personal secretary of the Marquis, Julien attends many of the family's parties, but everyone seems fake, and he starts to get bored by them.  He notices that Mathilde is bored too, and the two start to become attracted to each other.  Julien and Mathilde soon discover their shared love of Napoleon, and Julien is really impressed by Mathilde's passion for life in general.  Julien and Mathilde eventually sleep together and start a relationship, but after an initial period of romance, they then go through a period of violent mood swings, and it's really like a power struggle between the two of them.  She eventually gets pregnant, which leads her to asking her father for permission to marry to Julien.  The father initially consents to the marriage after making Julien a noble and getting him a position in the army, but the father eventually withdraws his consent after receiving a tell-all letter from Madam de Rênal, Julien's first lover.  In the letter, Madam de Rênal claims that Julien seduced her and that he's a gold digger.  After the father withdraws his consent, Julien learns about the letter and goes back to Verrières where he finds Madame de Rênal in a church and shoots her in the back.  Luckily, she survives, and Julien immediately begins to regret what he's done.  He's taken to jail to await his execution, and while there, Madam de Rênal comes to visit him.  She says she's sorry for sending the letter, and that she sent it only at the behest of the priest who she was going to for confession.  Despite Julien shooting her, he and Madam de Rênal love each other even more at this point.  In jail, Julien is visited by Mathilde and a friend of his from earlier in the novel named Fouque.  Mathilde is still in love with Julien as well and tries various ways to free him, but they all eventually fail, and Julien is finally sentenced for execution.  In his last days, Julien regrets having been so ambitious and hypocritical, and wishes he could have just gone on loving Madam de Rênal somehow.  Julien is eventually executed by guillotine, and Mathilde ends up burying Julien's severed head in a private ceremony.  Three days after Julien's death, Madam de Rênal herself dies because of her despair.  Book Two then ends with the dedicatory words that Nietzsche liked to quote in his own works: “To the happy few.”  So ends the novel. 

Join Nina, Daniel, Fabrice, and Rob us as we discuss Edith Wharton's 1913 satire of American ambition, The Custom of the Country.

Each of the four contributors picked a different poem to read and discuss for this episode.  The poems we picked are listed below.  Also below are links to the poems and the starting point for each segment. Emily Dickinson, "The Brain is Wider Than the Sky" - 2:35 https://drupal.yalebooks.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/TOC/edelman_wider.pdf Charles Baudelaire, "The Albatross" - 13:05 https://fleursdumal.org/poem/200 Elizabeth Bishop, "The Art of Losing" - 29:45 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art Lord Byron, "Darkness" - 40:38 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darkness-56d222aeeee1b

We're looking for people to come join the show as regular contributors to the Phi Fic podcast.  The idea of the show is to discuss literature from a philosophical perspective.  I will be handling all the back-end work and costs associated with running the show, so you can focus on the readings and contributing to our discussion.  We're hosted on the website for the Partially Examined life, and we usually get over a thousand listeners per episode, so this is a great opportunity to get your voice out there.  You'll also have a say in deciding what we read.  If you're interested in joining us, please contact me at the email address phificpod@gmail.com.           --Daniel

In this episode we struggle, spin and madly rub our eyes as we work through the puzzling and enigmatic beauty of William Faulkner’s "The Sound and the Fury". The post Phi Fic#37 The Sound and the Fury first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

In this episode, we are discussing the Pardoner's Tale from the Canterbury Tales, a book of stories by the Late Medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer. This follows up on our last episode, where we discussed other selections from the book about a group of not-quite-pious pilgrims traveling to Canterbury Cathedral...telling each other stories. The post Phi Fic #36 The Canterbury Tales--Part Two first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

Join us with Mark Linsenmeyer in a previous discussion on two short stories by James Baldwin: “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon” and “Sonny’s Blues.” Both are included in the collection Going to meet the Man (1965). This is an unprecedented and critical time to listen to this remarkable man. For the first time in my life I felt that no force jeopardized my right, Continue Reading …

It happened in that season that one day In Southwark, at The Tabard, as I lay Ready to go on pilgrimage and start For Canterbury, most devout at heart, At night there came into that hostelry Some nine and twenty in a company Of sundry folk happening then to fall In fellowship, and they were pilgrims all That toward Canterbury Continue Reading …

We are Reposting our Discussion on The Machine Stops by EM Forster because The Machine is stopping. Stay Safe! 'Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it Continue Reading …

There was some element of loneliness involved—so easy to be loved—so hard to love. -Tender is the Night This episode we are reading Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Reflected upon by Ernest Hemingway: “…in retrospect, Tender is the Night gets better and better,” which came a good time after his first comment to F. Scott: “Not as Continue Reading …

Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be.

We also discuss the themes which Nathan, Laura, Jennifer and Daniel each found to be what resonated most: the circularity of time, memory, loss, humanity, and the caution the novel leaves us with about living life.

Cezary Baraniecki, Laura Davis, Nathaniel Hanks, Daniel Johnson, and Jennifer Tejada. In this episode, we discuss the classic Latin American novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Join Cezary Baranieckli, Laura Davis, Nathaniel Hanks, Daniel Johnson, and Jennifer Tejada, as we all struggle with what is defined as truly "evil". . I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong. -A Clockwork Orange

Join Cezary Baranieckli, Laura Davis, Nathaniel Hanks, Daniel Johnson, and Jennifer Tejada, as we spend a very long (and with audio issues) episode deconstructing and being reshaped, by our reading of this unspeakably remarkable novel.  

Cezary Baraniecki, Laura Davis-Chanin, Nathaniel Hanks, Daniel Johnson, and Jennifer Tejada discuss the novel.

Cezary Baraniecki, Laura Davis-Chanin, and Nathaniel Hanks are joined again by the irrepressible Dan Johnson and Jennifer Tejada as we explore this fascinating and prescient story!

“I could not help feeling that they were evil things—mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss." Join Nathan and Laura, with Mark Linsenmayer, Daniel Johnson, and Jennifer Tejada, as we follow H.P. Lovecraft up the Mountain and discover where true madness lies! Hear more Phi Fic discussions at PhiFicPodcast.com.

Laura Davis-Chanin, Nathaniel Hanks, Daniel Johnson, Mark Linsenmayer, and Jennifer Tejada discuss the novel.  Support through Patreon or directly contact us at phificpodcast@gmail.com

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. –Ulysses For our discussion of this historically difficult but wholly worthwhile classic, Nathan, Laura, and Daniel are joined by Phillip Cherny. It was recorded for our original Not School group, long before that group evolved into a podcast. Hear more Phi Fic discussions at PhiFicPodcast.com.

This discussion first appeared in our Not School Group and the readers at the time were Nathan, Laura, Daniel, and Dan Johnson. As an early recording, please bear with the sound quality—many thanks! Hear more Phi Fic discussions at PhiFicPodcast.com.

Listen as Dylan Casey from The Partially Examined Life Podcast joins us to discuss this remarkable novel, in which many scholars believe Woolf found her voice. Written in a stream of consciousness, the plot of the book is written inside the souls, struggles. and angst of the characters.

Join us as we delve into Coetzee's rich, complex exploration of story and authorship in this novel that presents an origin story of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Coetzee writes about Susan Barton, a castaway at sea who discovers an island inhabited by two men, Robinson Crusoe and Friday. Once rescued, she seeks the renowned author Daniel Defoe to help tell her story, but struggles to communicate her experiences. Hear more Phi Fic discussions at PhiFicPodcast.com.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge. –Lord Jim Listen along as we discuss this richly complex novel of responsibility, guilt, shame, and redemption. Hear more Phi Fic discussions at PhiFicPodcast.

To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence… –Death in Venice Join us for our discussion of the extraordinary novella of beauty, desire, and morality. Hear more Phi Fic discussions at PhiFicPodcast.

“This very second has vanished forever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. It will never return. I suffer from this, and I do not. Everything is unique—and insignificant.” –Emil Cioran Join us as we dive into this beautiful work of nonfiction (yes, we veered from the path a bit) and luxuriate in the charmingly dismal prose of one of life's master skeptics. Hear more Phi Fic discussions at PhiFicPodcast.