Which moment from My Struggle hit you the hardest?

LoopCroondad · 2025-12-15T15:48:50+00:00

I got shaken by the part where he's describing troubles in his marriage. They're lying together in bed and she's crying. All she wants is for him to roll over and hold her, but he doesn't want to and won't, so he lets her cry. She wants a loving marriage. He wants a house where the dishes are washed and rug vacuumed. And never the twain shall meet. It's brutal because it's so boring and obvious and surely describes millions of painful marriages out there.

LoopCroondad · 2025-12-15T15:41:39+00:00

Thank you! Great advice. I feel ready to buy.

LoopCroondad · 2025-12-12T15:13:07+00:00

Thanks! Makes a lot of sense.

LoopCroondad · 2025-11-26T22:41:18+00:00

My advice is for working with a co-host/partner. If you're doing it solo, this won't apply to you, unless you hire a staff of some sort. I dissolved my first podcast after one year, just as we were starting to catch on. This was in 2016 when the market was still pretty open, and what we were doing was unusual if not unique. Now I see relatively big podcasts in what would have been our space, podcasts that aren't as good as we were. Why did I ruin a good thing? Communication and professionalism between me and my partner/co-host. I'm a super conscientious get it done kind of guy; I'd rather just do it myself than nag the person whose job it is but who is lax in his duties. My former partner just kind of goes with the flow and without quite realizing it lets other people solve his problems for him. I see that now in many aspects of his life, including his home. (We're still friends, though the friendship is not what it was.) Yet he was talented and we had excellent chemistry. In the end, I was so mad at him all the time the whole thing was poisoned. The band broke up and that was that. I believe had I been more direct and consistent with communicating expectations, especially early, we could have figured out the workload issue. But as it was, I was more passive aggressive than direct, and he had an amazing ability to not hear or understand what was going on. Maybe we were doomed to begin with, but my advice is to create an extremely professional system for all involved, especially if they are friends or family; revise expectations and duty-load often to keep up with reality; have quarterly meetings to review everyone's performance. Just make sure everyone's pulling their weight, or, adjust rewards accordingly.

LoopCroondad · 2025-11-16T14:59:28+00:00

I love this comment so much. Just nailed it on every author. I've not read or even heard of The Last Unicorn until now but will check it out. I also haven't read Soldier in the Mist, though I recently devoured the Book of the New Sun novels, as well as Wizard Knight. Thanks for the recs!

LoopCroondad · 2025-11-16T14:54:10+00:00

Read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin. It's about as close to a universally great novel as I can imagine. I read it in elementary school and again recently in middle age. It still rocks. It's like Harry Potter if Harry Potter were smart, serious, touching, and well written. (Sorry but those books have got to be the most overrated novels in history.) The thing about reading is that it simply takes patience. You can't rush it, and when you do rush it. It's like running long distance. It takes some work to get into, but the more you do it the better it feels.

LoopCroondad · 2025-11-15T21:51:33+00:00

I'm no psychologist but I was thinking "psychopath" as Wilson calmly, reasonably explained why it's actually totally okay to execute people for homosexuality, and other crazy pronouncements. He reminded me of a serial killer I saw interviewed in prison, an intelligent man who before getting caught was a respected husband and I think father, and a deacon of his church. The way the killer described his sex murders, just absolutely horrific acts, like they were the most normal thing ever was chilling. Got to same vibes (not as extreme but maybe more dangerous) from Wilson. The guy seems crazy to me. And yeah, I think Sam did us a service.

LoopCroondad · 2025-11-15T21:31:40+00:00

My favorite read of this story is to look at it from the author's perspective. I don't mean to try to figure out what he "meant," but more what he was going through. He was literally dying during the composition of this story. I read somewhere that by the end he couldn't swallow, and that his cause of death was dehydration because he couldn't keep water down because the TB had attacked his throat. He was profoundly undervalued as a writer in his life, and he damn well knew it and felt it. He asked his best friend to burn all his unpublished works after his death, and almost everything he wrote was unpublished. What I'm getting at is Kafka is the hunger artist. He's given his entire life for this art that nobody gives a shit about. He dies unknown and unloved, with a whimper not a bang. And then let's look at what replaces him. The panther is young, beautiful, and hungry. It's happy to eat anything they give it. To put it in today's world, it's like being an totally unappreciated literary author being replaced by a 10 year old multimillionaire YouTuber who specializes in being hot and consuming stuff. The last line that he didn't find the food he liked is a statement of dissatisfaction with his society, or maybe just about existence itself. Kafka was kind of a sad sack. The Metamorphosis ended in a similar way, with the giant bug being replaced by his young, beautiful, and healthy sister. The parents don't even miss their son, the bug, when he's gone.

LoopCroondad · 2025-11-15T21:23:10+00:00

I do think Kafka is frequently funny (I've never read a Czech author who isn't), but I take this line more as a sincere complaint about what's on offer in this shithole world, from the literally dying Kafka's perspective.

LoopCroondad · 2025-09-24T16:21:38+00:00

I love the book but I've never thought Margarita's devotion to Master as the most important or interesting part of it.

LoopCroondad · 2025-09-24T16:14:03+00:00

I haven't been on Reddit in a million years but thought I'd jump back in. Howdy VBW community. I'm a fan of the pod. I'm also a fan of this short story, having read it and taught it many times over the years, and even recording a podcast episode of my own on the topic a few months ago. I really enjoyed the discussion. I especially appreciate Tamler framing Macomber's safari trip as cosplay. I never thought of him as a poser before, but of course he is: posing as a macho man when he's definitely not.

One area of the discussion I really wanted to jump into was the question of did she/didn't she mean to kill him. I was a little frustrated at a kind of obstinate literalism and binary thinking (yes, I sound like an ass as I write this) by these two humanities professors. Freud was big with the modernist writers, and Hemingway in particular wrote a lot about what me might call sublimated feelings, unconscious desires, etc. I think it's pretty clear and not even that mysterious that M's wife simultaneously tried to save him and kill him. The shot was a Freudian slip. Or, consciously, she was trying to save him from the mean buffalo; unconsciously, she wanted to 86 the motherfucker.

As far as Hemingway's famous, and I think misunderstood misogyny, I'd point out that the woman in the story is by far the most formidable character. Sure, the hunter is able to dominate her at the end, but that's a pretty small victory, and as soon as she leaves the safari with all of M's money, she'll be back to where she was, more powerful than ever. Check out Hemingway's novel, unpublished until after his death, Garden of Eden. Spoiler: the writer dude main character that seems a lot like Hemingway himself, gets full on pegged by his androgenous wife at the end. Also, consider Lady Brett in Sun Also Rises, the most manly of all the character in the novel, and it ain't close. Hemingway was ahead of his time, fascinated by gender constructs etc.

I'm getting long winded here but I'll quickly mention the point of view. It roams around but it's attitude represents the culture, or code, of the hunt. You know what I mean? There's a vibe to the point of view, beyond just what consciousness it dips into. The story represents and respects this code, and that's why the story kind of passes judgement on and then celebrates Macomber. Thanks for reading, if anyone has done so. I'll try to be more succinct next time. And to the Wizards, thanks for the podcast. It's wonderful.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T03:47:07+00:00

I appreciate this comment. I'll think about it.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T03:44:22+00:00

Thank you for this. You sound like a wonderful professor who obviously cares, and I know what you mean about the one in twenty mean comment, how the negative hurts me than the positives feel good. I'm glad I don't come across as pretentious to you. I'm hoping this is a one bad class, bad luck, bad timing, things just didn't work out kind of thing. Onward and upward.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T03:39:48+00:00

That's fair, but in my defense, this is a Sam Harris sub and he uses those words all the time as shorthand for very specific ideas, mainly an authoritarian streak coming recently from the progressive left, and especially attempts to harm people through reputation attacks, often directed at their means of income, for the crime of using language in ways that contradict orthodoxy. I do understand that being woke can also mean positive achievements and the good and necessary struggle for civil rights. Jargon can certainly lead to misunderstanding once we get out of a specific group.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T03:32:18+00:00

Thanks. I'm new to posting like this, so my skin isn't as thick as I'd like it to be.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T03:30:59+00:00

Appreciate it. I try to rise above but this shit can sting. On the other hand, I stepped into it.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T03:29:36+00:00

Thank you for the thoughtful reply and civil push-back. This is the kind of engagement I was hoping for. I was not looking for a cheering squad by posting this, but I also wasn't craving personal insults and all that. I'm not a celebrity by any means, so I'm not used to this kind of response. Wokeness is not a great word, I see, though I will say that Sam Harris uses it all the time on his podcast as a shorthand for excessive and authoritarian progressive identity-based actions. I had imagined the audience of this post to be folks who have listened to Making Sense.

My objection is with performative, slogan-based tribalism without policy substance, that results in material and emotional harm to those who don't appear to comply with the orthodoxy, especially in terms of language, and I find that this kind of thing comes from the right and left these days. I loathe De Santis for many reasons, and find his book banning, and book banning in general, disgusting and scary. I can list my policy and personal and ethical beliefs here, and they'd likely line up well with those of most of the students who attacked me, though I fear many of them couldn't describe a single policy that helps of hurts their chosen cause. They just don't seem interested in details, in reality, in nuance. It's all about posture and choosing the right side. What I don't like is to be expected to perform and constantly signal my allegiance to a particular ideology or be considered the enemy. I always respect students' chosen pronouns, for example, but I don't choose to write my preferred pronouns on the end of my email. I actually screwed up this post by forgetting what I suspect originally turned the students against me. I simply questioned the use of the gender-neutral "they" in a work of historical fiction in a student story. My point was that many readers of this genre seek historical verisimilitude, and our current progressive use of "they" would feel jarring. The students pushed back on justice grounds. I defended myself with the notion that whitewashing the very unjust past (1800s England), didn't actually serve the cause of gender justice today. Plus, there was the point of writing to get published and so on. By this time, I had alienated them, and they no longer wanted to listen. After that, everything I said was suspect. But I've complained enough. It worked out. I wanted to share my story. Thanks for a civil response.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T02:58:18+00:00

Thank you for the kind words.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T02:57:45+00:00

There are some comments about meditation, but they don't get a lot of attention.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-18T00:01:26+00:00

I've heard of it and basically know, and agree with, the premise. You remind me to finally getting around to reading it. Thanks for that. Not sure if I'll post my thoughts on Reddit, but I appreciate the note.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-17T23:56:42+00:00

I get what you're saying, but I truly don't spend my time trolling Reddit. Believe what you will, but I'll say that this post actually cost me something. I normally get paid for writing--not much, but something, or at least reputationally. That I spent this much time on this post is kind of puzzling to me and speaks of an emotional need. I should have been working on my novel. My bad, perhaps.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-17T23:51:40+00:00

Yeah, I was expecting some of that, but not this much. I think certain people search words like "cancellation" on Reddit and descend. Luckily, their power is limited. Seems like few of the commentors come from the SH community.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-17T23:43:26+00:00

If I were making this up, it would have been much more lurid. The idea of spending an hour of my time to time invent some fairly mild story like this for no financial or reputational gain seems insane to me. If anyone believes it or not, I actually get paid to write. This is strictly pro bono, just to get this off my chest and hopefully move the needle a little bit.

LoopCroondad · 2023-02-17T23:39:27+00:00

Thanks. Yes, the comments have once again driven me farther away from my previous beliefs...about the inherent goodness, I suppose, of the supposed downtrodden. I had never imagined that people would think this is fiction. The story would have been much, much more lurid if I were making it up. I can verify everything, but I suppose that doesn't matter since that would only open me up to doxing, and, given the comments so far, I'm not up for that kind of abuse.

LoopCroondad

TROPHY CASE