Episode 219: Multiplied by Mirrors

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] Truth is like grits. You'll serve it up plain, pull salt on it. The Queen in Oz has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. He's fought, and with no more brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain? You're a very bad man.

[00:01:06] I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, according to a recent series of studies, I'm both more masculine and more sexually adventurous than you are.

[00:01:23] This is more of a comment than a question, but I think I'm starting to like psychology again. I think that you're misinterpreting. I think what this is saying is that you're a slut. Yeah, like a pervert. Like deviant.

[00:01:41] It is true that we're going to talk about this paper in our opening segment on willingness to try new foods and perceptions of sexual desirability. But I have some thoughts that will defend my vegetarianness from your gross attacks on your just manhunt. Unethical attacks.

[00:02:00] But before we talk about that, we should say we're going to talk in the main segment, we're going to talk about two Borges short stories because we always forget to say that. Yes, Emma's Zunz and Borges and I. Both of these are combined to like five pages.

[00:02:16] So readers should get their hands on it. Maybe we'll put a link to we can find you guys. They're easily found and even Borges and I was like maybe we should just read it. I was thinking that too actually. Read it in Spanish.

[00:02:31] Yeah, but first you put this into the very bad wizard slack. The an article like a social psychology at its finest. You are what you are willing to eat willingness to try new foods impacts perceptions of sexual unrestrictedness and desirability. Sexual unrestrictedness. I know what it is.

[00:02:56] It just means you do butt stuff. Are they there like a scale for that? There is. Of course there is. But it's the scale in this case would be how sexually unrestricted you think somebody else. That's right. This is all about perceptions.

[00:03:16] There's an interesting question as to whether people's food references actually predict what they do sexually. And I think they taught they cite some work maybe that addresses this, but this is about what does it say about you?

[00:03:27] Like what do people think about you when they hear that you have food neophobia and unwillingness to eat like new food novel. Yeah, unusual foods. Right. And so they have measures of sexual desirability and sexual restrictedness.

[00:03:46] They only have one only one of them has a measure of sexual desirability the first study. And basically the gist is across four studies. This and this is by Hannah Bradshaw, summer Menville cock, Matthew Espinosa, Alex Darrell sir. That's not a real name. Don Snicker Sarah Hill.

[00:04:06] And weirdly it is from the Department of Psychology. They're all from Texas Christian University. They're really going to get to heaven publishing this kind of filth. St. Peter is going to have some very tough questions.

[00:04:24] So the basic idea is just that if you see another person as somebody who will try anything, you know, like there are people and I actually am one of these people who will try anything once. Yeah, like whatever rat, guinea pig, raccoon.

[00:04:42] Like did you eat guinea pig when you were in Peru? Yeah, I did. It was really great. And it was the ultimate like free range guinea pig. Like I saw them like running around like the little village that I was in. Yeah.

[00:04:55] And yeah, and it was actually good. I mean, it's kind of good. You know, like I felt bad because they're cute. But yeah, like I am I will try. I don't like you know, there are certain things I don't like and then

[00:05:07] once I don't like them, I won't keep eating them. But I will try things. Right. And that's what yeah, that really is about the willingness to try new things. It's not really about just like liking a lot of things.

[00:05:20] But yeah, so they find in these studies, basically like the general template of the studies is they'll ask, they'll describe somebody. In some cases it's just a vignette. In some cases like a fake okay, Cupid profile. So this is the vignette from the first study.

[00:05:39] Austin goes out to a new restaurant in Fort Worth that has exotic foods from all around the world. He sees the name of a dish that he has never heard of before as an entree and decides to order it when the food comes.

[00:05:49] It looks kind of strange and in one condition it continues, but it doesn't stop him from digging in with gusto. And then the other condition it says Austin picks at the food with his fork smells it and takes a few tiny bites before sending it back.

[00:06:06] And so then after the vignette and these were in some cases it was Jessica, these were all heterosexual participant college students who... I like also like the first one, like Austin picks at the food with his fork smells it and takes a few tiny bites before

[00:06:26] sending it back. Like of course you're not going to think that person is... He definitely doesn't eat pussy. I mean what a fucking... What a loser. Like if you don't want it, like fine, but don't just like pick

[00:06:44] at it and like smell it and do all the little like fussy little... Well he decides to order it which is kind of weird. But yeah, so I know. But it doesn't stop him from digging in with a kind of animalistic... They've got to go.

[00:07:02] And then it's following the vignette participants responded to two items rating the target's desirability as a sex and romantic partner relative to others on seven point scales. By the way, so Jessica was the name of the person who

[00:07:14] man read about, Austin was the name of the person who women were about. In each of these studies it said all students reported a heterosexual sexual orientation. And I was like, man what are the chances that that's true? And then I read it was Texas Christian University.

[00:07:30] And she's like, oh this might be a little bit of pressure. Yeah. But they find that people perceived the Austin who ate the food with gusto to be more a more desirable sexual and romantic partner than the other person.

[00:07:46] In the next studies they use fake okay Cupid profiles that describe that a person saying, I know I like a lot of things but I'm always up for trying something new and different. I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to food.

[00:07:58] Or they say I'm pretty thicky, I know what I like and I stick with what I know. If I've had it before I'll probably have it again. Newer exotic foods aren't really my thing. And they had people rate. This is like so they in

[00:08:08] the following studies that aren't study one they have people rate the what's SOI. I'm trying to remember what, socio sexual orientation inventory. This measure includes three sub scales which assess behavior attitudes and desire for short term sexual relationships. So basically like how slutty you are and also whether

[00:08:31] or not people were more likely to have had like how many partners people were likely to have had. Which okay so just taking a step back it kind of meshes with my intuition that this is true right? Yeah. Right, so I'm vegetarian.

[00:08:48] You which like could be seen as being picky but I'm actually willing to try for if it's vegetarian for sure. If it's vegetarian yeah. But I've also tried most meats at least once. Because I was raised not eating meat it just seems

[00:09:03] weird to me but fucking Steve Stitch pressured me into trying foie gras. Oh yeah. He's exactly like the he fucks this guy fucks. He seeks it out. Like he seeks out like he'll go to a restaurant. We had him up in Morris, Minnesota and he was

[00:09:19] still wanting to try something disgusting. I mean it's all kind of disgusting but it's not in the way that you want it. You know what to be disgusting? It's just like casserole or something like that but he is all about just trying to...

[00:09:35] Now it would be interesting, you know I don't know Steve Stitch's sexual proclivities. Have I told you my Steve Stitch butt plug story? No but I think you should tell the just the world. So I was hanging out with him this

[00:09:52] was actually the night after at a conference. It was like an APA night after or right after he had made me try foie gras. And we were talking about John Hyte as we were walking out of the restaurant. I think it

[00:10:06] was maybe Josh and I open Steve Stitch. And I was saying something about how John Hyte is so soft spoken and he seems like such a nice guy and then he'll get up there and he'll put up these slides that are just like what the fuck right? Like

[00:10:18] fucking chickens. And he has a slide with a picture of a baby Jesus butt plug as part of his talk. And I'm like laughing and and Nob is laughing and Stitch goes what the hell's butt plug? Yeah. We just are laughing and I'm like Steve

[00:10:36] would a man in a piece of plastic love each other. To be fair he is of the generation you know... Yeah I'm not mocking him I wish I didn't know something. You know the only meat that I've had that I didn't like in terms of the taste

[00:10:57] because I think in most cases where I've tried meat it's been like somebody saying it's so good you have to try it so I've had like lamb roasted over an open spit at my family's farm in Argentina actually I had a bacon that tasted bacon cheeseburger at

[00:11:13] Carl's Jr. Tasted good foie gras tasted fine tasted good bacon cheeseburger at Carl's Jr. Fuckin bacon cheeseburger I wanted to try bacon That's like diving into the world of sin right there Even I don't have that But you tell me the worst thing I've

[00:11:33] ever tasted was when I bit into a shredded beef taco by mistake like an al-Turrito that tasted so gross that I've never been able to like get myself to eat beef again but is that particularly gross? I don't know I've never had that

[00:11:49] but like you shouldn't be going to Carl's Jr. or whatever like Topo Chico El Trito You're going to the Belong Place You don't even know what that is and you're saying that I shouldn't go It's a very anti-Mexican of you No Mexican food can be really good

[00:12:07] I live in a really good city for Mexican food but it might not have been the best place to have It was by mistake Also like biting into something unexpectedly is not the best experience Doesn't Carl's Jr. kill people or was that a jack in the box

[00:12:23] It might have been a jack in the box I don't know with like E. coli or something I forget but there was like a series of killings that were all traced back to I think it was now that I'm thinking it was Jack in the Box

[00:12:37] If that didn't shut the place down and the fact that like nothing will Anyway, so back to this So here's the other thing Is this about general openness to experience or is it specifically about food They tried to test this out in one of the studies

[00:12:55] where they designed okCupid profiles fake profiles where somebody says I'm super open to all kinds of new things like books, music, TV except for I'm not when it comes to food. I'm pretty picky about that Or the person said I'm super open to new foods

[00:13:13] but like I'm pretty picky about like books, music and TV And They were trying to test whether it's general openness that makes people seem like they're more sexually adventurous And it seems as if it really is the food thing And so what they find is they

[00:13:31] Yeah, go ahead I was just gonna say they find that it is that the conditions are correlated with perceived sexual disgust So people think that people who are neophobic when it comes to food are particularly easily disgusted in the sexual domain not other domains of disgust

[00:13:49] And so they think that that's what's driving it They do like a little mediation analysis showing that that's what's driving it By the way, I got a little depressed when I looked at the procedure data analysis section or whatever because they're interviewing a hundred

[00:14:07] and something like Texas Christian University students And kind of generalizing about these enormous correlations between how people are perceived which I agree also to some extent according to my intuitions But the idea that they're gonna be like and we did the T-value whatever

[00:14:31] like it's like no, no, no, no let's be honest here and I know they're not denying that they did undergraduate students they even say that in a limitation although they didn't say undergraduate students at a religious institution but just the idea that this probably generalizes

[00:14:53] but somebody needs to do their study to confirm that is insane and just the idea that statistical analyses are the things that really matter here I actually got depressed for a second But those are two different things the statistical analysis is necessary because even if you're showing it

[00:15:13] in a really restricted sample if there's no statistically significant difference then you don't have support I agree, it seems like that's almost secondary given the way the data was collected and also the thing that depressed me that obviously you need to do statistical analysis it's that

[00:15:31] it feels like when you use this language which admittedly I don't understand it seems like it covers over the absurdity of what's being said based on the experiments that were done and even just the idea maybe this is my bias for not picky eaters which I probably have

[00:15:55] the picky eaters seems worse than how a picky eater actually is the idea that they pick at their food and smell it or the person who's like yeah I'm open to a lot of new things except food so don't even try

[00:16:11] to give me food that I don't like whereas somebody who is picky about their art what they watch that just seems like you have discernment that's a good point that you that your tastes about art, books, music, TV say something more about your perhaps expertise in the domain

[00:16:35] whereas not willing to try a new piece of food it's not like communicating that you're like a chef like you're like a foodie but you're just communicating that you're not gonna be like every other doofus watching Black Widow and thinking this is high art Black Widow

[00:16:57] didn't perform that well Scarlett Johansson is pissed off she's suing about it this is what people tune into our podcast but on the streaming the fact that a movie goes straight to streaming and what that means for the industry it feels more straight to videoy

[00:17:17] it takes something away from it but back to your point so that the stats might give it an air of objectivity and generalizability I get it but it's not a fair critique of the paper but I do think what is a fair

[00:17:35] well, and the reason I don't think so is because as I said they have to do the stats but what is a fair critique is even though as you say they do mention the limitations they have a paragraph there is something about the way that researchers

[00:17:51] talk about the limitations of their studies when as you say what they're communicating is that this seems like a generalizable phenomena and then they have one paragraph that says while the current research has many strengths and provides insights into directions

[00:18:05] for much future research it also has a few limitations that should be considered and it's like I'm not gonna be hypocrite here and say I do think that generalizability gets too much attention as a limitation but in this case you can't they're making it such a little deal

[00:18:27] on purpose that it screams out almost like they have to do it as a formality but come on we all know this generalize yeah, this has many strengths you might not think about it though but there are a few little things that may be upon scrutiny

[00:18:43] you might not and as you say collecting data on sexual restrictedness from a Christian university I went to a fucking Christian university and look, we were like normal people but at least half of the students were not like normal people they're really gonna say something else

[00:19:01] so even having just an M-Turk sample in this case would have been said something I don't wanna put too much weight on the Christian university Muslims suck too that's what you're saying when I said I don't think it's a critique of the study obviously they include statistical analysis

[00:19:23] but I guess the depressing part was this is a decent journal well, it's the same journal that published the last Evo Psych thing that we mocked but it's a mainstream journal it's a mainstream journal and it's you know, like it just feels like

[00:19:43] that's the thing that they put in that disguises these other like massive like screaming limitations that seem prior to the more technical statistical in other words like dealing with that seems like it's something that should be dealt with like before you start worrying

[00:20:03] I mean I know that's not that's complicated and like ideally you do both of them that's not unfair though it might be unfair to these specific people like every paper doesn't but it is true that we hyper focus on certain details I mean this is something that

[00:20:23] there are certain things that sociologist or maybe psychologist do poorly and we're learning more and more about what those things are but even before I remember thinking experimental philosophers would have these beautiful introductions to their papers with like this like really in depth

[00:20:41] conceptual analysis and then they would do like a really shitty survey it was like really poorly done and social psychologists would have these super you know like complicated methodologically interesting manipulations and all these different ways of measuring it but their conceptual analysis it was like they were

[00:20:55] measuring the same thing twice it was like dumb or what they were measuring it wasn't clear that it matched anything that we normally associate with that concept yeah right and so yeah and I feel like I was always sort of on writing

[00:21:11] the ass of social psychologists to be more conceptually clear about that stuff but in this case like I think we have to be just a bit more clear about like this does implicitly and explicitly communicate that this is saying something about humans in general and it would be

[00:21:31] if they just stage it as like this is a really limited you know set of studies would be one thing but it wouldn't be hard to collect data from just like one other population right one other just to see if they found the same thing

[00:21:47] and like look but don't anybody look at my discussion sections because I'm sure I'm guilty of the same thing but we've actually had to do data collections or chosen to do data collections at malls to get like real people especially when we're talking about political orientation

[00:22:01] and it's like well you can't generalize from Cornell students right especially about conservatism these people are not so we would go to you know we're surrounded by a red population so we would go to the mall and get like real people and I think that's necessary

[00:22:17] and I think the reviewer should have pushed for that but hey I still meshes with my intuition I have a question though if you find out that somebody's like porn hub history has like all kinds of shit you know like gang bangs but also like you know tender

[00:22:35] lesbian porn would you assume that they would eat a lot of different things I mean it goes the other way I see that you like BDSM but also gay porn this is a study that you need to do like the future research

[00:22:53] future research should see where the prediction goes the other way you know all I know is now I finally understand why I ate that bacon at Carl's Jr because I wanted the chicks around me to know that I go down I go down this guy

[00:23:09] he'll lick booty if he eats that he'll lick some ass he will lick my ass and let me ball gag him hang him upside down and I think whip him that's a good question actually like would you assume like if you go to like some S&M

[00:23:25] like dungeon do you then assume like if you see that person out at a restaurant that they're gonna be culinarily adventurous I have no experience with that I don't either it's weird because I have like the people who are into that specifically BDSM

[00:23:47] I could see them also being super highly regulated in their normal lives in a way that they're that's totally true or they could be like me like I hate eggplant but maybe if I was into that I would like make myself eat the eggplant

[00:24:07] because the pain feels so good the pain of eggplant I've been naughty I need more eggplant alright so let's turn to a couple really cool stories from one of our favorites Borges today's episode is brought to you by one of our all-time favorite sponsors Givewell

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[00:33:21] so as tamler said at the beginning of the episode we're talking about two very short borhis stories the first is emezoons and the second is borhis and I borhis and I is literally a page long so emezoons is like five pages long so we'll put links

[00:33:37] it's freely available online so you should definitely read it but let's start talking about emezoons emezoons is a short story about a woman who takes vengeance for her father who recently died and had been imprisoned she thinks unjustly for the crimes that a different person committed

[00:34:01] so she formulates a plan to kill this other person and she does it and I think that's the gist so why don't we talk about it tamler what did you think about emezoons because I'm the one who recommended it curious how you liked it

[00:34:17] yeah and I was wondering why you recommended it I mean this is a very Jewish story borhis had a fascination with Jews much like I think you have a fascination with them we're outsiders looking in you know fascinated by it

[00:34:37] so like a couple of things that struck me about it it's the easiest to have a story to read by like a long shot at least on the surface and it's definitely on the surface it's the most straightforward story of his that we've talked about

[00:34:55] there's all sorts of other things that complicate the straightforward revenge story and also I am a sucker for daughter revenge you certainly are you almost want somebody to wrong you can see if your daughter will come I want to be killed by someone

[00:35:13] so that my daughter can avenge me and just like it'll be worth it for me to die but no like I don't know like my probably my favorite Tarantino or at least it's up there is in glorious bastards I devoted the revenge chapter and why honor matters

[00:35:29] to like three daughter revenge Sophocles Electra Maddie Ross and true grit and then this Laura Blumenfeld who I think we've talked about who wanted to get revenge for her dad being shot by a Palestinian militant and what I was trying to think why I like these stories

[00:35:47] so much I think there's something about the fact that the daughter is kind of you know in a real the odds it's a underdog story the odds are stacked against the daughter and all the power imbalance is usually massive in this genre and they all

[00:36:03] they have to go to lengths that nobody else is willing to go to to get justice to get vengeance and I think Emma Zuntz is like the purest example of this kind of narrative given the thing that she sacrifices which I think no father would

[00:36:21] want for their daughter but she is I mean you didn't mention this in the very short summary but she's a virgin she's 19 years old and as part of her way of framing the person who she thinks framed her father she has sex with a Scandinavian sailor

[00:36:45] and under the guise of a prostitute she gets paid for it too yes right and so that she can then claim that Aaron Lowenthal she can say that he raped her and that's why he shot her it hits the beats of some of these of this complicated genre

[00:37:05] because they're all complicated in their own way but this one has like extra like Borges complexities you know like the meta-narrative touches I think there's a huge cloud of uncertainty about what actually happened whether the daughter really is right that this guy framed her father and

[00:37:25] even whether the father killed himself or not and so like while it's a genre piece and you can read it in like five minutes which just isn't true of the other Borges which like make you like it's like hard to get into some of them at first

[00:37:39] even though you end up just being obsessed with them but like this one is just like kind of easy to read but it's still a Borges story in the end which I really liked yeah I'm glad you liked it I loved it because of the layers

[00:37:55] that he adds and he just gets a letter that her father died from overdosing on a barbiturate actually and she just infers that he committed suicide because the letter says that he accidentally ingested too much of this drug and the letter is from Brazil she's in Argentina

[00:38:19] she receives this letter her stump you know her heart drops when she reads that her father has died her father is clearly living in Brazil and he's yeah fugitive maybe fugitive probably yeah he had been accused of a crime and sentenced to prison but we know that

[00:38:33] he has taken a different name in his living in Brazil so she gets a letter from Brazil saying that he had died and she has what she believes to be the truth about the crime that he was accused of which is that the crime of

[00:38:49] embezzling funds was actually committed by a person who owns a country in which she works that her father worked for as well and her father had told her this guy was really the guy who embezzled the guy is now a co-owner of the plant a rich

[00:39:03] a rich fellow and a rich Jew he was on the tip of my tongue I didn't want to I don't like insulting Jews although it's the name of the male is Tarbuck and Loanthal yeah and given the alphabetic like he's clearly second author of the leading now

[00:39:23] that's right so she you know she formulates this plan as you said to justify her act by claiming that he assaulted her and the way that she does it is that she goes to this owner of the plant Loanthal under the guise of being a

[00:39:41] snitch that there's going to be a strike at the factory yeah and she sets up a meeting with him on the weekend and she knows as everybody on the Sabbath Jewish that's right and everybody knows that he the guy has a gun in his drawer

[00:39:57] so with that knowledge she sets up this meeting when he goes to get her a glass of water after she's pretending to snitch on people at the factory who are going to strike by the way this guy is described as sort of like a stereotypically greedy Jew

[00:40:11] like he's fat he's bald he's clearly money hungry and at least according to the narrative according to the narrator yeah he is he married a rich wife the wife died the narrator says that the guy always loved money more anyway and so she picks up the

[00:40:33] gun while he's getting her a glass of water and shoots him dead doesn't even get to say the things that she's been preparing to say like the whole revenge thing that she was going to say about her dad as she shoots the guy

[00:40:45] and as he's dying she tries to get it out but she's never quite sure whether or not the dying guy heard that this is why he was being shot but I think this is characteristic of these kinds of narratives is the actual act of revenge doesn't go

[00:40:59] as the Avenger imagines you know you have this perfect justice being served ideal like a form or something in your head but what actually happens is just kind of it's clumsy it's a mess because of course that's how it would be like a 19 year old

[00:41:21] Jewish virgin isn't going to pull off the perfect act of revenge you know it's kind of amazing that she if we are to believe the narrative as it's being relayed to us it's kind of amazing that she did it as well as she did

[00:41:35] and Borehouse has a kind of interesting reason for why she got away with it which is really why I started even saying this and I ended up in a long summary but it ends with her reporting the killing and saying that she was raped she's telling this story

[00:41:53] that she's trying hard to make herself believe it seems like a very intentional kind of self-deception but I think it's worth reading the last couple paragraphs so this is her reporting the crime then she picked up the telephone and repeated what she was to repeat

[00:42:11] so many times in those and other words something has happened, something unbelievable Senor Lowenthal sent for me on the pretext of the strike he raped me, I killed him the story was unbelievable yes and yet it convinced everyone because in substance it was true and Mazzanz's tone

[00:42:29] of voice was real her shame was real her hatred was real the outrage that had been done to her was real as well the circumstances, the time and one or two proper names that's how it is one of the things I want to ask you about

[00:42:45] is the one or two proper names because I think that's a great that's a perfect little boar head ambiguity there I think you can interpret that in a lot of different ways but before getting there maybe we should talk about to what extent we trust what's going on

[00:43:07] in this story because I think you can read this pretty straight forwardly and that's not an invalid reading I think, you know there are things that make you question what it is that you're reading but like I think you could just take it as

[00:43:29] this is what happened so her dad really did get framed and then had to flee the country and go to Brazil which for Argentinians is torture it's shameful and then like just took a bunch of sleeping pills to kill himself and so she came up with this plan

[00:43:49] which she executed and it didn't go perfectly but it went well enough for her to do what she set out to do and to the extent that we're supposed to question the story it's more over this just, is this did she do the right thing

[00:44:03] so I think that's definitely one way of looking at it and I definitely want to talk about is this a just thing would you want your child to do it especially given the specific thing that she does in order to make her revenge happen which is to

[00:44:23] have sex with somebody that she deliberately chooses as a kind of like foul mouth smelly like it seems like there's a sailor she could have chosen that was nice but she decides not to do that because she says so that there might be no mitigation of the

[00:44:41] purity of the horror in other words so I think what she either like there's a lot of ways to interpret that one is just for the plan to go properly she has to be truly disgusted by what happened to her and if she shows any signs

[00:44:57] of like well that wasn't just a utterly repulsive experience you know like then the cops won't believe me but it could also be that she is like there's some sort of meaning to what she's doing she wants that utter like pure sacrifice the ultimate sacrifice worse than death

[00:45:17] you know using your virginity to somebody that is yeah because the way that I read it initially is a sort of masterful way of preparing for the lie that that disgust was truly in her voice when she reported the rape and so it seemed like a pretty genius

[00:45:37] way of making your lie convincing to find the most disgusting sailor that you can but the way that you say it as not just as a means of being truly disgusted but rather as a way to not insert anything pleasurable or nice into this act because

[00:45:59] to give herself the right to take vengeance in this way and she clearly didn't enjoy it there's a line that made me laugh about she says she thought she could not help thinking that her father had done to her mother the horrible thing being done to her now

[00:46:17] I take it that that sailor did not eat a lot of different foods I want to read that whole paragraph so she says in that time outside time in that welter of disjointed and horrible sensations did Emma Zunz think even once about the death that inspired her sacrifice

[00:46:35] so presumably her father in my view she thought which is interesting that the narrator says in my view she thought about it once and that was enough to endanger her desperate goal she actually thinks she thought she could not help thinking

[00:46:53] that her father had done to her mother the horrible thing being done to her now she thought it with weak limb astonishment and then immediately took refuge in vertigo so this is what complicates on a surface it's what complicates the narrative because you are getting revenge

[00:47:13] on behalf of your father but as part of that process of having sex with somebody and the first thing you think is this guy who I'm totally repulsed by is like my father and he violated my mother in the way that I am being violated right now

[00:47:31] if that's already like okay this isn't going according to plan in terms of a perfect revenge narrative how this is supposed to go it's like you are getting revenge on behalf of somebody who is doing something that is completely shameful that's how she feels at that moment

[00:47:53] and then just to keep with this but she says right before she shoots Aaron Lowenthal she says that sitting before Aaron Lowenthal Emma felt more than the urgency to avenge her father the urgency to punish the outrage that she suffered she could not kill him

[00:48:17] after being so fully and thoroughly dishonored talk about it like if what she's doing is some sort of pre-commitment strategy to make sure that she was properly in the mental state to shoot a man and so she let herself get violated it's pretty brilliant

[00:48:39] if that's what she's doing is she taken by surprise at this it seems like the motive was enough because the motive to avenge her father got her to do that horrible thing in the first place have sex with some dirty swede I said Norwegian by the way

[00:48:57] I meant Sweden or Finn it says a swede or Finn but I said Norwegian I didn't mean to implicate the poor Norwegians that's racist it's like weird kind of reverse causation where the imagined act of revenge causes the act that ends up being avenged she imagines killing him

[00:49:23] that's the goal is to kill him and bring justice to her father avenge her father but then that leads her to do something that is the thing that actually motivates her to kill her dad the act of revenge causes her to do the thing

[00:49:39] that ends up being the thing that makes her avenge her father so the causation it gets jumbled there so it's interesting when I was thinking about what she did so why she let herself get fucked by the sailor by the way she rips up the money

[00:49:59] that the guy pays her it's a hilarious sort of like but then she immediately regrets having ripped up the money because it's an act of impiety which is this may be betraying my own heritage but I get that just ripping up money

[00:50:15] even ripping a dollar bill seems wrong it seems like you could give that money to somebody before ripping it up so I was thinking about why she had sex with the sailor nowadays well because they're going to do a rape kit they're going to check

[00:50:35] whether or not she really had sex and then I was like but would they do that back then I guess if she was a virgin they might check that's not very reliable but they might check to see if she was still a virgin

[00:50:49] to see if her hymen was intact by the way hymen Roth is also a Jew good connection so I wasn't sure if she did it for the emotional reasons or for the physical reasons right could she have done this and just said she was almost raped

[00:51:09] did she have to actually go through or said she was raped and just like would they check to see for his sperm to be in it doesn't strike me that's something they would do but she could have tried also to seduce Lowenthal himself yeah he doesn't seem like

[00:51:29] cared more about me although but I mean like neither did the guy you know but maybe he probably wouldn't have he'd be like look do you like I'm trying to put down this strike do you have any information for me or not you're not that hot

[00:51:47] I don't eat adventurous foods so I inferred that this was commitment device a pre-commitment device emotionally but I don't know it would be some sort of twisted moral luck not moral luck but as you say that the very thing that she had let happen to herself

[00:52:09] wasn't the thing that motivated her to pull the trigger but we don't know if she would have pulled the trigger for vengeance reasons had she not been violated by the Swede or Finn there's also like I really think we should talk a little bit about

[00:52:23] to what extent any of this really happened like you know I think you can ask that about a lot of things first whether he truly died by suicide which is the thing that she kind of like pushes her over the edge I have to get justice now

[00:52:39] and then because all she gets is a letter from somebody who she can't even read their name but to the extent that she can it says feign with an E or feign with an A and so like feign like make up you know it's

[00:52:55] like an allusion to the word feign feign in English that Borges was doing Borges definitely knew and wrote in English so he would know and then just the way that the narrator then says you know after making it this just letter from

[00:53:15] a total stranger who doesn't even know who he's writing to like how did we get to suicide there based on like somebody some Brazilian stranger saying he accidentally ingested an overdose of Verona and then you read a few sentences down and you get her just kind of memories

[00:53:35] including the Chekhov's yellow lozenges which will come back later he says like and at the end of all these little reminisces says yellow lozenges on the window cell like her mother who we assume is dead like anonymous letters about embezzlement of funds like the dad

[00:53:53] being but then just and then also on the last night her father had sworn that the thief was loan thaw now one of the owners of the mill which she never told anybody and so it's like well just on the last day that he said

[00:54:09] that one time is that enough for us to be sure that this that that's true I don't know you know like I don't know the story but I want us to know she clearly has made a leap I think it's interesting why

[00:54:25] she would be so motivated to make that leap immediately but you know what one of the things that I really liked as reading this out loud to Nikki because I thought it was so powerful when she gets the letter that her father is dead

[00:54:41] this is what I want my daughter to feel Emma dropped the letter the first thing she felt was as a sinking in her stomach and a trembling in her knees then a sense of blind guilt of unreality of cold, of fear

[00:54:53] then a desire for this day to be passed then immediately she realized that such a wish was pointless for her father's death was the only thing that had happened in the world and it would go on happening endlessly forever after I thought that was such a

[00:55:07] that's how you want your daughter to know that you're dying yeah we'll just go on endless into infinity but it seems like the kind of reaction that I would genuinely have upon the notice of a death of somebody I loved where it seems

[00:55:23] like it's the only thing that has happened in the world and it will forever keep happening like it was so striking and so in that grief her leaps to concoct this revenge fantasy you know makes sense that this was born out of such a grieving

[00:55:43] person so I really think that is open to question deliberately by Borges which does make one possibility that this is like a revenge fantasy as you put it that is concocted in some in some sense by her familiarity with like the genre that I love like the daughter

[00:56:05] Avenger you know like she just kind of you know she has this job she works at a steel mill or what kind of mill is it weaving mill so she works at a weaving mill where her father was disgraced and left it's like

[00:56:21] she can now give her life maybe this is a pointless life from her perspective and she can give this life a kind of romantic I don't know she can give it significance in some ways some kind of substance that isn't just going to work and like pretending

[00:56:39] to care about men but being terrified by men and like you know I so it definitely seems like that could be what's going on too like this is reminds me of Garden of Forking Paths which also had kind of on the surface perhaps a straightforward story

[00:56:57] but at no point did you were you sure that this wasn't just like a fever dream of right and a massive delusion on the part of the protagonist yeah and that's interesting like because that's different than most revenge stories most revenge stories the facts are pretty much

[00:57:15] stable and it's just the ethical questions that are being addressed they're always as straightforward as my name is Inigo Montoya you killed my father prepared to die or like you know like unforgiven or like you know like there's no doubt about what actually happened there's no doubt

[00:57:33] whether the act that is being avenged actually happened there's just the most I'm sure there are exceptions to this but this is like there's doubt at every level there is your right there is I was thinking about this earlier there's a fuzziness to the whole thing

[00:57:49] yeah it's like nothing is quite certain and it's well captured by the nine or ten smudgy lines covered almost the entire piece of paper it's all just kind of there she even seems to when she goes out

[00:58:09] to find a bar where you know she could pick up a sailor it's described as in this way where she's like seems almost to dissociate when she's walking through the streets right that paragraph like to this is the narrator speaking to recount with some degree

[00:58:27] of reality the events of that evening would be difficult and perhaps inappropriate one characteristic of hell is its unreality which might be thought to mitigate hell's terrors but perhaps makes them all the worse where the narrator is just saying look I'm not like

[00:58:43] I don't even think it would be appropriate for me to tell you even if I could what actually happened to that night so I'm just going to give you a smudgy vision of it yeah that's that's a really interesting twist on this thing where we don't even

[00:58:59] yeah we have no idea how this all went down at every level yeah I feel sorry for lointhal to be the victim of such a fuzzy headed vengeance scheme where if it's if it was her trying to make meaning in

[00:59:15] a shitty life you know and he gets shot for it there is just yells at her and yiddish at the end he's cursing at her in Spanish and Yiddish like a whole bunch of just curses coming out of his mouth I would love to hear those curses

[00:59:31] because Yiddish cursing is great and even the sentence she recalled or tried to recall her mother there's just a fuzziness throughout you know it's like what's going on in his mind but she wouldn't happen to the mother we don't know she recalled summer

[00:59:45] outings to a small farm near Gua Ligua which I just needed to say is in the province in Argentina in which I was born oh nice and you can see her father is a last ditch effort to preserve honor accusing this other guy just so his daughter doesn't

[01:00:07] think of him as a total fuck up and disgrace giving her a little sense we're not a shameful family we just got hosed so this is something I wanted to ask you for the last 20 minutes what do you think is behind your love of these daughter revenge stories

[01:00:27] is it that it's the ultimate expression of love by the daughter to do this? I mean that is, you know that was sort of in my book I said that that was one of the functions of revenge like one of the good aspects

[01:00:41] of revenge is that it is an expression of love and closeness and loyalty because of the sacrifice that you have to make the costs you suffer the risks you undertake but like what completely fucks that up and what makes me think

[01:01:03] I would never want my daughter to do this is the part where she has sex with a dirty sweet or a fin like that's her first sexual experience there's nothing that could happen to me that's what I would want she doesn't have to do that

[01:01:19] she has to risk her life and she has to you know, Elektra has to do all sorts of things but not that there's something about that it's especially bad to me that her thoughts about her father while she's getting basically she's not getting raped she's consensual

[01:01:43] but it's not for pleasure and that her thoughts would go to her father I thought to myself she's just saying that the act of sex is so disgusting as a young virgin having a drunken sailor fuck you this is the first time you ever have sex seems terrible

[01:01:59] but I was hoping that she wasn't saying that her dad raped her mom or like she could be almost and the thought that she would have that thought that this is what men do the thought that linked her to like this is what my father did

[01:02:17] it's a terrible, terrible thought that would pop in which is why that when she actually kills him it's not anymore out of avenging her father it's about avenging the thing that happened it's the thing that men do yeah there's none of the kind of

[01:02:37] whatever I like about these kinds of stories it's never uncomplicated there's always all sorts of things that you have to question yourself and your reaction to it but here these things are multiplied and like you said there's layer upon layer of uncertainty by it

[01:02:57] that it actually just made me question maybe this is kind of a romantic fantasy or something the relatively powerless underdog, the oppressed on behalf of her family doing the thing that nobody else was willing to do there's something wrong with even wanting that you know because this is

[01:03:21] how it could all be it could all be disgusting uncertain messy and like the only thing that comes of it is just a bunch of Yiddish curses hurled at you let's get then to the question that you asked about the end and I want to read this

[01:03:41] last paragraph again after we've discussed it for the listeners because it's more powerful now that we've gone through the details then she picked up the telephone and repeated what she was to repeat so many times in those in other words something has happened something unbelievable

[01:03:55] senior loanthal sent for me on the pretext of the strike he raped me I killed him the story was unbelievable yes and yet it convinced everyone because in substance it was true Amazon's tone of voice was real her shame was real her hatred was real

[01:04:09] the outrage that had been done to her was real as well all that was false were the circumstances the time and one or two proper names yeah so the one or two proper names is yes the kind of mind fuck that Voorhez would toss in there

[01:04:23] because in what she said there's only one proper name there's only Mr. Loanthal and the one or two is just what does that mean what's the second proper name that was wrong a reference to her father her father's name is it a reference to her it's funny because

[01:04:49] I don't even totally have an interpretation if you go like the other way so it's not Loanthal that raped her right it's this guy so like here's one possibility I don't know exactly how it works but one or two proper names could be like her outrage was

[01:05:11] real but maybe Loanthal didn't frame her somebody else didn't frame her father somebody else framed her father and so she got revenge on the wrong person but I guess that would be the same name it's just that he's being accused of two crimes

[01:05:29] that he didn't commit in her mind but like is the tone of voice shame hatred and outrage all just a result of having sex with the sailor yeah I think so right like that's the thing is that I think it is maybe the hatred is of Loanthal

[01:05:49] because she really thinks he framed her father and not only did she he frame her father but because she framed her father then she had to have sex with a dirty sweet or thin right yeah I don't I don't exactly know what to make of that

[01:06:05] and I think that the narrator is kind of interesting in this because it's not an omniscient narrator narrator but it's not a narrator that is just going by like events as the narrator heard it either the narrator seems to have some sort of special access to

[01:06:23] what happened but also certain things that are closed off to the narrator and so I think it's also like the narrator is constructing some kind of story where the narrator knows some details but not all the details and the narrator even has opinions which is kind of interesting

[01:06:43] like in my view this is you know one thing we didn't talk about two paragraphs are devoted to what she did that the day before revenge like getting together making sure the day was as normal as possible she went to work then it says she went

[01:07:01] to a women's club that had a gymnasium in a swimming pool she discussed with Elsa and the younger the cronfisk girls which moving picture they would see Sunday evening then there was talk of boyfriends no one expected Emma to have anything to say

[01:07:13] in April she would be 19 but men still inspired in her in almost pathological fear home again she made soup thickened with manioc flakes and some vegetables ate early went to bed and forced herself to sleep funny details unclear why I think she's like

[01:07:29] I mean again you could read it straight forward she's trying to act normal so in the end we don't know whether or not she's satisfied with this revenge but that last paragraph or the last couple sentences weirdly the English divides it into paragraphs that the Spanish one doesn't

[01:07:49] it's like it seems as if he's hinting to the possibility that she will that this will in her memory at least she might self deceive that she set this up so that her her emotional reaction is going to feel genuine

[01:08:07] and that in the end she might have done this in order to like truly believe that she was justified in killing right right right right and in fact earlier she says how to make plausible an act in which she who was to commit it scarcely scarcely believed

[01:08:25] how to recover those brief hours of chaos that Emma's Zunze's memory today repudiates and confuses so like that just makes it seem like right now she doesn't even really know what happened then like she was on autopilot maybe after the after the act and now she doesn't

[01:08:43] even know what happens which again it's very again just throws into confusion what happened at any point in the story but there is an interesting line right after that where she said where it says on the infamous passio de julio sorry for the pronunciation

[01:09:01] she may have seen herself multiplied in mirrors made public by lights so like I think that is like she may have seen herself just all these different versions of herself and she doesn't know which version is the real Emma's Zunze and like that will never she'll never know

[01:09:21] and maybe like you know there's a question of whether any of us know which could lead us to the next story but like I think that's an interesting image that is very befitting of the story is this she may have seen her image reflected by multiple mirrors like

[01:09:39] all these different kind of possible Emma's Zunze are proceeding the act that was going to be you know her shame her ultimate shame yeah that's super interesting it does it does seem like a dissociative act like her her self is breaking like this the self of Zunze is

[01:09:59] breaking into many different selves and she can't even tell you what happened that night super interesting you know that multiplied by mirrors reminds me of the quote about before Borges says in Toulon, Uqbar and what Orbus mirrors and copulation are

[01:10:17] abominable since they both multiply the numbers of men yeah yeah no that's super interesting that her psyche is disjointed almost that that mirrors line as is the case with many Borges stories we just are we don't know we're not given the satisfaction of knowing and the narrator is

[01:10:37] never too reliable in this case the protagonist is too reliable either yeah even if she were telling us the story we wouldn't know the ground is shifting beneath the reader like in every possible way with this story and yet it's his most straightforward like kind of like

[01:10:55] genre piece narrative that's what so unbelievable about Borges that's great this episode of Very Bad Wizards is sponsored by BetterHelp Online therapy check out betterhelp.com slash VBW you know as I'm getting ready to start up my semester everything is building up

[01:11:13] and I'm feeling a whole bunch of stress and that stress is taking its toll on me on my relationships on the way I respond to people you might be the same way you don't need to be me to know what stress is like

[01:11:25] or to know what feeling down and out or feeling depressed is like or having anxiety or feeling straining your relationships if you want to if you're looking for some help and you want to talk to somebody who's completely unbiased about your life

[01:11:39] someone who's not going to judge you or take sides on anything you might want to turn to BetterHelp because when there are things you can't really tell anybody or you feel like you can't unload on your family or your friends you're probably already

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[01:12:21] and very bad wizards listeners get 10% off of their first month at BetterHelp.com again that's www.herhelp.com slash vbw our thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards should we move on to poor his and I yeah maybe that's a bridge

[01:12:41] you know this idea of multiple selves because that is certainly the central theme of this let me ask you as a way of transitioning you were the one who suggested doing both of these why these two stories so aside from them both being short there is

[01:13:05] a part of poor his and I which I've always loved there's a sentence in there where he talks about he says years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity

[01:13:21] and it's always been an interesting move to me by the way the word suburbs here is just wrong it just doesn't feel right that doesn't have the connotation that it does in the Spanish word it's more like outskirts like bad neighborhoods we associate suburbs with like

[01:13:37] yeah I actually don't have that I have good and went on from the mythologies of the slums and outskirts of the city that's the right cause early poor his was more like straightforward narratives stories of like the knife fights in the slums that kind of thing

[01:13:59] and we've never really talk about any of those stories and it is interesting for bore his himself to mention that that's where I went from these more straightforward narratives of the outskirts and two games of time infinity which is obviously what I love

[01:14:15] like the part of bore his that I came to love but these straightforward stories aren't even that straightforward but I just wanted to read one of those and it was interesting to me that even what on the face of it would seem like a straightforward narrative

[01:14:29] of revenge was always peppered a little bit of you know there was bore his late bore his sprinkled into early bore his he just you know but you know like emezons is in pretty late yeah it's pretty it's not it's not it's like after the garden

[01:14:49] before king paths and library of babbo and yeah it's in the it's so maybe so you know for me straightforwardly was like let's read a straight up bore his like story story but do you want to read the whole story or should we just talk

[01:15:05] about it well let's read it people can sit what so short we might as well read it let me do it since I probably have the best chat translation it sounds like it's bore has the other one that things happen to I walk

[01:15:17] through Buenos Aires and I pause mechanically now perhaps to gaze at the arch of an entry way and it's inner door news of bore has reaches me by mail or I see his name on a list of academics or in some biographical dictionary

[01:15:31] my taste runs to hour glasses maps 18th century typefaces etymologies the taste of coffee and the pros of Robert Louis Stevenson bore has shares those preferences but in a vain sort of way that turns them into the accoutrements of an actor so what are you

[01:15:49] thinking right then like you just the that opening you know like like what's he talking about okay there's a few things that I just love about this so knowing of bore has from the mail and seeing his name on a list of professors when he says

[01:16:05] one thing that I just love is when he summarizes what he's into I like our glasses maps 18th century typography the taste it's such a rich it's just said of like a description it's something that I would want to write about myself like I like

[01:16:19] the Wu-Tang Clan and fucking you know stories about him picking locks exactly and card tricks and so it just seems like this is a very indulge self-indulgent story he's like giving he's just sort of saying like this what I like but what what's the separation

[01:16:43] yeah well the part that he says like I received news of the other guy in the mail and this guy takes all the things that I like and makes them turns them into the performance of an actor yeah it's just something

[01:16:55] that resonates with me you and I have talked about this before like this is not something that is limited to people like us who are podcasters or professors but it's certainly something that is true about our lives that we currently are

[01:17:11] turning the things that we are obsessed about into something for other people and I feel like that when I lecture I feel like that when I have office hours with students I feel like that sometimes when I podcast and listen to myself I like that if

[01:17:25] I look at the list of our 200 and whatever 18 podcasts it is like our sentence of Our Glasses Maps 18th Century that's what but it's turned into something else now it is it is for other people it is now external to me right it's a role that I've played

[01:17:47] even though I was trying to be sincere right and I think that's an interesting question throughout this is the Borjas so like one way of reading that is there's this kind of pure essence of Borjas and then there's the public Borjas now that he

[01:18:05] is creating things for other people he has a public persona he is performing in some ways and that corrupts it even though it was meant totally sincerely and that's me that's definitely one way you can read it now like I think that like I had all these

[01:18:23] things that I was genuinely interested in but now I'm adapting it to the fact that other people give a shit about you know what I care about and that makes it somehow you know through no fault of my own corrupted in some way but like the other way

[01:18:43] of reading it is that this is something that he that he's mad at himself for allowing his public image to I don't know attack his own more pure identity yeah it's like I resist the public private thing it seems too straightforward to me even though I just

[01:19:07] said it it seems as if it is something that we all do there is a part of us that we present to the world that becomes like who I am is very much just a collection of who other people think I am and there's something in

[01:19:23] giving that to the to all of the people around you who you interact with you're giving them you're performing something you're giving them something of you that then turns into its own thing and I can see why you might resent that like you might grow to

[01:19:37] resent that you are not what other people like have of you you are something else like but you know what there's a lot of overlap between those two guys like yeah right and maybe the other guy the guy that you're giving to others in your interaction is

[01:19:55] sort of infecting the pure version of what you imagine yourself to be yeah well the way that he says in my translation in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor there is a vanity about sharing yourself to other like

[01:20:09] there's a weird vanity about it sometimes I'm self conscious about it like I'm it really does feel like I don't know that vanity is a good word for it it's I mean anyone who is just posted on social media can get this you don't need to have a

[01:20:25] tweet or a post made a facebook post or an instagram picture or whatever even your personality in a party or something like that the thing that you're giving to everybody else just right becomes a different thing it's hard it's yeah you just have to have had that feeling

[01:20:41] which I've definitely had of just all of a sudden you're hearing yourself talk and you're like carrying on in a certain way and doing something and then you just like like ew like what the fuck is this that is exactly right exactly right it's one

[01:20:59] it's one of the reasons that I found it so hard to ever listen to our own episodes for like right I mean it is like as somebody that has to edit there like I have to like just be like oh god you know and I'm

[01:21:13] glad I got to edit out some of the worst ones but it's invasive almost although like what that even means because unless you feel like you have some sort of soul that's different from your interactions with anybody like it's hard to

[01:21:29] totally make sense of what but at the same time it does feel that way sometimes and by public I don't mean like public in the sense that you know like Tom Hanks is a public figure but public in the sense that it's not just

[01:21:41] you and your thoughts it's there is a sense where it's there's you and your thoughts and then there's how you act around and so okay keep reading keep reading yeah it would be an exaggeration to say that our relationship is hostile I live I allow myself

[01:22:01] to live so that Borges can spin out his literature and that literature is my justification so that's really interesting so that Borges can spin out his literature just it's very like dismissive he's just gonna pump out these like mind fuck stories and like that's my justification you know

[01:22:23] but then he goes on I willingly admit that he has written a number of sound pages but those pages will not save me perhaps because the good in them no longer belongs to any individual not even to that other man Borges presumably not

[01:22:39] even to that other man but rather to language itself or to tradition beyond that I am doomed utterly and inevitably to oblivion and fleeting moments will be all of me that survives in that other man now it does seem like this is something that is maybe

[01:22:57] more particular to somebody who is old has achieved some level of fame and a public persona I don't know what do you think yeah but but more because that's who he is not like that's the way that he has to describe this feeling because

[01:23:17] that's the circumstance of his life is that he has written things for the public because I think that this is a feeling that anybody will have and I think Borges would think that anybody would have it it's just that in his case it's like

[01:23:31] you reading yourself in Wikipedia I can't say that for myself he talked about Alex Rodney that's that's how it says yeah because that was like the Houston Chronicle where they interviewed me that's the only reason I'm on there and you're not yeah I'm really interesting though to

[01:23:53] where he describes his work as the thing that justifies him I'm not sure yeah that he allows himself to live so that Borges can spin out his literature now literature is my justification it sounds like what does he mean to allow myself to live it's weird it's like

[01:24:13] the self that is truly me the Borges the I is what has to causes all the things that Borges does I will I will admit that he has written a number of sound pages but those pages will not save me perhaps because

[01:24:29] the good in them no longer belongs to any individual nor even to that other man but rather to language itself or to tradition so he's saying even the good stuff that I've done not the bullshit not the stuff that he's kind of corrupted and

[01:24:45] turned into his little games like turned to my real intrinsic curiosities into like fodder for his for these cool stories that people seem to like but then he says that like even like the other Borges isn't saved by those because once they're out there they belong to everybody

[01:25:03] all of our podcasts once we put them out like they just belong to America they belong to the world the world yeah homo-sapien yeah I mean there's something that's so true like the thought of all of the people who are trying to interpret Borges

[01:25:23] you know at this stage in his life having seen all of those people say like well this is what Borges said and this is what he meant and this is what it means it seems like you have to come into terms with the fact that

[01:25:35] the things that you produced are linked to you in some sense but they're no longer up to you it's interesting you know and I think they're not yours anymore and you have to let go like I think an artist would might find a struggle to correct

[01:25:55] the people who are speaking about his work or her work and realize at some point realize that they can't they can no longer speak with the authority about what this work means because it's mean something to everybody who's read it in a way that

[01:26:13] is separate from you now that you've done it it's separate from you not to compare us in any way sorry about self-indulgent but did you ever get the feeling sometimes when there's some long reddit thread on one of our episodes that if we go in there

[01:26:33] it's almost like we're doing a bad thing even if it's just cl- yeah, recently had that I was like I'm not going to comment on this because I think it would ruin the discussion exactly which is interesting that you would do that

[01:26:47] and especially since we're not putting out works of art there are artistic maybe elements to what we're doing except for my beats your beats are pure art pure as form it's interesting that he puts it in the terms of salvation or saved though okay, I'll keep reading

[01:27:05] beyond that I am doomed utterly and inevitably to oblivion and fleeting moments will be all of me that survives in this other man so it's like something that sounds like there's this kind of pure self but it's slowly getting gobbled up by the interactive

[01:27:25] self or something like that little by little I've been turning everything over to him though I know the perverse way he has of distorting and magnifying everything Spinoza believed that all things wish to go on being what they are stone wishes eternally

[01:27:41] to be stone and tiger to be tiger I shall endure in Borjas not in myself if indeed I am anybody at all but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the tedious drumming of a guitar it's quite a sentence there yeah

[01:27:59] I mean I want to go on to this next part which I think we'll have a lot to say but what do you I like this idea that you start it just devours you slowly until you and you just start to dwindle it's an interesting idea

[01:28:17] so that you know it's like a hole that's like closing in on you and your impact makes less and less of a difference right it's I mean there it something that seems to resonate for me just so much which is you the part that feels like you

[01:28:39] that subjective inner sense of self as you live and as you produce things as you whether those things be utterances in public or whether works of art or whether they're whatever whatever it is that you're producing those things if you're lucky get bigger than you

[01:29:01] and for someone like Borges you know the Surreality that it must be to experience listening to other people talk about you and your works or write about you and your works where you it starts seems to be associated it seems like man

[01:29:21] that's a different person and you and I have had this feeling both in my writing and for Surre in my podcasting and in my lecture then I even forget the things that I've said to the point that upon hearing them or reading them they seem foreign to me

[01:29:37] but that is what I'm leaving that is what I will be to other people those things are the only things that they can possibly after I'm gone and we work in a form that allows us it allows some degree of connection between your personality and

[01:29:55] the thing that you're doing I think like podcasting is the best example of that where I feel like I can be as close to myself as I can in any kind of public forum but like I think Borges is writing he's in a genre his form

[01:30:13] of expression or his way of interacting publicly with others is one that is so kind of cryptic and that there's like all the you know it's like the multiple mirrors from Amazon's right it's like it's so disassociative I would think like I you know trying

[01:30:31] to imagine what Borges is like based on his stories is really difficult I could imagine so many different kinds of ways of understanding him as a person you know yeah he also seemed like a person who was uncomfortable with that public ness in you know I think

[01:30:53] I told the story once of that have a friend of the family who wrote his dissertation in Argentina got uncle wrote his dissertation on Borges and met Borges and Borges reaction was don't you have anything swear you have something better to write about than me

[01:31:05] like right it's it was very reluctant when he says that he recognizes himself less in his own books than in many others seems to me that that is the feeling that one has so like I my deepest interests right like I whatever I love MF do

[01:31:23] and picking locks or something I see myself in those works of art or in those you to be it's that I right right that is me like I feel most myself when I am indulging my own interests by like reading other people and so

[01:31:39] that's where I might recognize myself the things that I produced that other people are doing you know I am now recognizing myself in Borges stories that's because it's such a fundamental part of my interest and what I love that is now part

[01:31:53] of me and and Borges might realize I didn't say like that those now now those that those stories or things that other people recognize themselves in like I recognize myself in Robert Lewis Stevens and that's what I recognize in hourglass right you recognize yourself in like that's

[01:32:11] so that's interesting you know like remember what we were saying about writing public pop philosophy or pop science and just the kind of alteration that you have to do to your kind of prose and like lead off with the story and I've done voice that voice

[01:32:29] that you have to find that voice and it's not you and like I think the best you can do is make it as much you as possible but you really can't and so and then I'll read like you said like

[01:32:41] I'll just see some other great work of art that just feels like it captures my essence or at least what I take myself to be so much better than the thing that I'm actually putting out there that's got to be a very strange

[01:32:53] I mean think about like if I had to put myself together with building blocks those building blocks would be other things not my things they wouldn't be the things that I produced like those are other things right the bad news bears is me like that's who I am

[01:33:13] the transformers cartoons are me that's what built me um yeah the laborious storming of a guitar I can only assume that like he's he's referring to music that he likes because or else I don't understand that and why laborious then in many other books

[01:33:31] or in the tedious storming maybe he's just saying like even the tedious strumming of a guitar is closer to me than that um so then he says years ago I tried to free myself from him and I moved on from the mythologies of the slums

[01:33:45] and the outskirts of the city to games with time and infinity but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to think up other things so my life is a point counterpoint a kind of a bug and a falling away and everything

[01:33:59] winds up being lost to me and everything falls into oblivion or into the hands of the other man and then this the second paragraph last sentence I am not sure which of us it is that's writing this page so good it's a perfect little like story

[01:34:17] and that last part is so in some ways pessimistic it's like even when I just branch out and you can think of like everyone has this idea like I'm doing some new totally new project like this thing that I've been doing is tired and

[01:34:33] like the real me is really is interested in these things but then your persona ends up gobbling that up too and there's just no escaping it and you are doomed to just just have everything that you do be appropriated by your like your other persona your public persona

[01:34:53] and to the point where even you having these thoughts even us having this conversation which we're doing on a podcast like and like surely that's corrupted by just the medium that we're even having this discussion in the first place you know totally and just even

[01:35:11] thinking about it like even reading the story knowing that we're going to talk about it there is a dis that despair toward the end there is just you can feel it just those games belong to and now I'm going to have to think of other things

[01:35:29] and then that end I don't even know which of us wrote this because he's writing his inner feelings and now they've become a borehis story it's just so good it's so good and this is something borehis would do he would turn this like inner crisis into some

[01:35:43] cool little story like oh man it's so good it's so good I do get feeling you know we we've produced work and we've produced podcast episodes and there are things that we were interested in 10 years ago or whatever that we're less interested in now but that's

[01:36:03] but somebody might think oh that's you you're the guy who's into that and you're like ah not really I was like I'm not anymore and it feels like almost someone falsely recognizing you someone accusing you of being someone you're not it does feel dissociative yeah and just

[01:36:27] the idea that he went in this whole new direction and then but still couldn't escape the fundamental like curse of human beings and he doesn't seem like a particularly social guy borehis which is that you have to interact with others and you have to

[01:36:45] have a personality that is that is public not necessarily as being a famous author but as being just somebody who interacts with the world and no matter what you do in your private moments that will end up being just gobbled up by this persona and

[01:37:03] you won't end up knowing who's who no one can experience you as you experience you like there is it will the you that is belongs to the world can the private you can never be shared in that way so of course it's gonna be gobbled up

[01:37:21] and the public you will end up influencing the private you like that's the thing is that it'll be invaded it's like the other is like a beast devouring you know it makes me think that I've always thought of the profession of acting as being very odd because

[01:37:41] you're always portraying someone else and it always struck me that actors must it's always made me think twice about what an actor is and what their personality truly is because they lose themselves in their roles their job is to be other people and it's always

[01:37:59] seemed a little weird and fake to me that like or like suspicious of who the real person is but now I'm thinking that's might be the most genuine profession that there is because you are very clearly with no self deception portraying someone else but we're all portraying

[01:38:17] someone else we're just deluded in thinking that we're portraying ourselves exactly that's just like there at least being on us yeah whereas we think that like there's a kind of genuine yeah now and that's yeah I think this is something that is completely universal

[01:38:33] and we're talking about our experiences but everybody unless you are a hermit in a cave you can relate to this exactly well that's the power of it because yeah it's not I would be saying this in private conversation if

[01:38:47] nobody knew who I was except for my immediate family and a couple friends like it's the same thing you know this is like the snootyest thing to say ever but there is something about reading it in Spanish that is just powerful in a way that I feel

[01:39:03] I don't feel it in the English but that's probably just because the private is really embarrassed that he said that no but I can imagine that's totally true reading something in the original language I think a lot of it is not for the language reasons but just because

[01:39:21] there is some feeling that you're closer to what the author intended to do now this is like what he actually wrote about some other interpretation especially a story like this which is about like multiple you know that you could look at this we have to stop but

[01:39:39] you can look at this as like there is a again like a form or ideal of Borges and then there are these increasingly corrupted copies and images that go out for the public as an artist as just a friend as

[01:39:57] I guess he never got, did he get married? No. He never got married but as as you know in his profession when he was a librarian like there's all sorts of like just corruptions of the true Borges but I think that he's too savvy like a

[01:40:19] thinker to think that it's that simple that there is this essential Borges like platonic form of Borges that is you know then just gets transmitted in all these other ways but I think there is something to that idea that we can all relate to

[01:40:37] that there is and I think it's especially true when you're young I think it's at least more true sometimes when you're young where just where you feel like the real you and the you that presents to the world are just two completely different people you know and

[01:40:53] and and and we have a way of making sense of the real me without thinking that there is some sort of essence or or soul or something like that well that's I mean that's the part that makes it confusing that's the part that is like

[01:41:09] I understand that there is like a relationship between who I am to the world and who I am to myself there is but like and and so I am like myself is sort of influence like I'm you know my life is a flight like it's a it is

[01:41:31] it's not but yeah it would be weird it would be dumb if it was a platonic self that's pure or you know it's just I don't know who that self is now anymore like in some ways like it's hard to even

[01:41:43] know which one is me that's why the ending in the confusion of like I'm not sure who wrote this is so great because it's like yeah I mean I am my public self I am my private so we're both both of those are Borges but I can't

[01:41:57] shake the subjective feeling that the me that I feel the me that was me when I was 10 that's the same me that I am now is is now lost sort of in all of the other things like I like not just because there's me this private

[01:42:11] thing in the world sees me as this other thing but also because the both of those are part of me you know like it feels better to think that they're closer together then when I thought that they were further apart absolutely like he paints

[01:42:29] it as despairing that like the real but in some ways I feel like that the good thing is when you don't feel such a disconnect between the person that's interacting with others and the person that you are it's yeah and it sounds like he doesn't feel

[01:42:47] that yeah when he says he's losing like over time he's losing everything and everything will belong to oblivion or to him that is you know in some sense like when you die it's true Borges survives in all of the things that he did but like that

[01:43:09] part that mattered to him is lost to oblivion and the Borges that survives is not the Borges that he feels is true Borges it feels or at least that this aspect of Borges doesn't feel as true Borges it really feels like somebody

[01:43:23] just reflecting on their life at the end of their life I don't know when he wrote this though it's 1960 but I love that last little bit I don't know which one of us is doing this because it is it turns into kind

[01:43:37] of a Borges mind fuck you know at the end and so like it's like oh this is what he does you know he takes something that's genuine and upsetting and he turns it into one of his mind games so it's like even just like unburdening himself

[01:43:53] in this manner isn't can't save him you know like he said nothing can they can't save him yeah he would have been 61 when he wrote this oh yeah alright we should wrap up so we don't know who it is that is that have recorded

[01:44:09] this podcast I do hate that person that recorded two hours and 20 minutes imagine how I alright join us quote unquote us next time on

[01:45:09] you